Marilyn M. Thomas-Houston

Homing Devices is a collection of ethnographies that address the central problem affecting not only the United States but also other developed and developing nations around the globe-affordable housing. These ethnographies cut across national and cultural borders, offering a diverse look at housing policies and practices as well as addressing the problems associated with providing or obtaining affordable housing. The studies incorporate perspectives of both policymakers and recipients and as such provide comparative insight into public housing policy programs and practices based on qualitative research. The collected experts provide an analysis of such problems as displacement, resettlement, policy implementation, collaborative planning, exclusionary practices, environmental racism, and silencing the voices of dissent. Editors Schuller and thomas-houston have assembled a strong volume that offers a fresh approach to discussing policy while bringing the particular problem of housing to the forefront in a way that will appeal to scholars of anthropology and social science, governmental policy departments, and activists from the general public across the nation.

This book is the result of an ethnographic study on the impact of Black cultural diversity on social action. The ethnography has three important characteristics. First, it incorporates the multiple perspectives of the ethnographer with the diverse voices of the people through an unusual form of reflexivity that provides additional insight for the descriptions, analyses, and conclusions of the book. This epistemological method is used to challenge traditional structures of ethnographies. Secondly, it argues for the consideration of non-traditional approaches to studying the Black experience - a focus away from race relations and issues of class and an emphasis on intragroup interaction and diversity. Thirdly, it investigates the processes, social institutions, and structures within the Black community of a small college town that influence social change and social action since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

This book is the result of an ethnographic study on the impact of Black cultural diversity on social action. The ethnography has three important characteristics. First, it incorporates the multiple perspectives of the ethnographer with the diverse voices of the people through an unusual form of reflexivity that provides additional insight for the descriptions, analyses, and conclusions of the book. This epistemological method is used to challenge traditional structures of ethnographies. Secondly, it argues for the consideration of non-traditional approaches to studying the Black experience - a focus away from race relations and issues of class and an emphasis on intragroup interaction and diversity. Thirdly, it investigates the processes, social institutions, and structures within the Black community of a small college town that influence social change and social action since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.