Living as a homeless woman

Living as a Homeless Woman: The Sociology of Poverty and Exclusion (Enlarged Edition)
Satomi Maruyama

Rights sold: Simplified Chinese

186 mm × 130 mm
336 pages
JPY 2,700
ISBN 9784790717591
Pub date: September 2021

What is the “will” of homeless women? This book highlights the process of women’s descent into poverty based on seven years of interviews with homeless women, reexamining the image of human beings that our welfare systems and research have assumed. This is a newly revised and expanded edition of a famous book, with added commentary.

Recommended (Masahiko Kishi, sociologist)
This is the book that Satomi Maruyama set out to write, and she succeeded brilliantly. One that isn’t about “tough” people or “pitiful” people. Just people doing things, living their lives, and having reasons for what they do and how they do them, as depicted through their own words.

Reading this book, I was deeply moved by the fact that I’m reading about actually living people. The people that Maruyama writes about have faces. I’ve read this book so many times, in fact, that I feel like I know Eiko and Tamako… Through Satomi Maruyama’s book, we are brought face-to-face with them. That is the power of her ethnography.

Reviews
“I believe that only Ms. Maruyama, who spent 14 years as a volunteer and researcher with the homeless and those around them since her student days, could have grasped the reality of the female homeless.”  ―Yamakawa Kikue Prize Recommendation

“The author has been researching female homeless people for more than 10 years, and has carefully collected the voices of these women who, in the context of their relationships with those around them, are unsure whether or not to continue living in the streets.” ―Asahi Shimbun

Table of Comments
Introduction

Chapter 1: Toward an ethnography of female homelessness

1. Current homelessness theory
2. Women in homelessness theory
3. Subjects of resistance and the exclusion of women
4. The positioning of female homelessness in feminist research
5. Gender and the subject in poststructuralism
6. Survey methodologies
7. The structure of this book

Chapter 2: Who is a homeless woman?

1. Hidden homeless women
2. Why are so few women homeless?
3. Living conditions of women in poverty
4. Processes of exclusion leading to homelessness
5. The problem of female homelessness

Chapter 3: Establishing a welfare system for homeless women

1. Homelessness-poverty policies and women
2. Prewar policies
3. Postwar policies
4. Two images of women in poverty policies

Chapter 4: Use of welfare facilities and gender norms

1. The welfare system’s inclusive view of women
2. Welfare responses to female homelessness
3. An overview of Accommodation A
4. User life histories and admission processes
5. Treatment policies and support directions
6. Gender as one social expectation

Chapter 5: The life world of homeless women

1. A history of the lives of homeless women
2. The difficulties of homeless life
3. The life tactics of homeless women

Chapter 6: Entering and leaving homelessness

1. Resistance and subjectivity of the homeless
2. Meaning in homeless life
3. Emergent communalities
4. The “choice” of homeless women
5. Being fragmented

Chapter 7: The process of change

1. Supporting efforts and the flow of time
2. “Chat groups for women”
3. Life histories of homeless women and the conditions of homeless life
4. Transitioning to residential life
5. Where is “will”?
6. The process of becoming the subject

Chapter 8: Resisting the attraction of subjectification

1. Focus on the subject and exclusion of women
2. The problem of subjectification
3. The ethics of care
4. Independence and reliance
5. Cultivating self-reliance
6. Envisioning the future

Conclusion
Appendix: Where are the women in poverty?

1. Changes since 2013
2. Female poverty
3. Subjectivity of the homeless
4. The positioning of “women”

Commentary (Masahiko Kishi): Coming face-to-face

Keywords
Women’s Poverty, Gender, Butler, Gilligan, Feminism, Another Voice, Welfare, Hidden Poverty in the Household, Life History, Qualitative Research, Interview, DV, Independence, Social Welfare 

Media Coverage
Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun

Awards
33rd Yamakawa Kikuei Prize