Bourdieu and Social Work

Social Service Review (December 2005).� 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0037-7961/2005/7904-0005$10.00

Bourdieu and Social Work

Mustafa EmirbayerUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison

Eva M. WilliamsUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison

Despite occasional ritualistic invocations of his key concepts and references to certainfamous texts, the discipline of social work remains largely unaware of the sociologist PierreBourdieu. This essay seeks to show that Bourdieu contributed more than just a set of suchterms as “cultural capital” and “habitus”; he also provided a new relational approach tothe study of fields of domination and struggle, a new way of thinking about how poweroperates within social life. The article demonstrates as well the potential usefulness of hisapproach, which diverges significantly from much of the research currently being donein social work. Focusing upon the field of homeless services in New York City, the workillustrates how one might conduct a field analysis in Bourdieuian terms. It also exploreshow use of such an approach might lead to alternative ways of understanding social worksystems and practices.

Pierre Bourdieu was perhaps the greatest sociologist since the classicalgeneration of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Yet, despite occasionalritualistic invocations of his key concepts and references to certain fa-mous texts, social work remains largely unfamiliar with his ideas. Bour-dieu contributed more than just a set of such terms as “cultural capital”and “habitus.” He provided a new relational approach to the study offields of domination and struggle, a new way of thinking about howpower operates within social life.

This essay seeks to demonstrate the potential usefulness of Bourdieu’sapproach, which diverges significantly from much of contemporary re-search in the social work discipline. After a brief survey of his coretheoretical insights, the article provides, by way of illustration and prov-ocation to further research, an analysis of one particular empirical fieldthat is highly relevant to the discipline: the field of homeless servicesin New York City. It discusses this field in terms of its two constituent

690 Social Service Review

components: on the side of production, the field of shelters, and onthe side of consumption, the field of homeless clients.1 Finally, the articlesteps back from this dual analysis to explore the implications of Bour-dieu’s ideas for social work inquiry and practical intervention. This workdoes not present a detailed portrayal of shelters and their clients or adefinitive blueprint for improving homeless services. Rather, it sketchesin bold strokes what a Bourdieuian analysis of the field of homelessservices might look like and how it might contribute to both the theoryand practice of social work. Specifically, it shows how Bourdieu’s theoryof fields moves beyond social work’s traditional systems perspectives byilluminating, as those perspectives do not, the full significance of field-specific contestations: symbolic capital is accrued in widely varying formsand volumes by social service providers as well as recipients. Such capitalbecomes both a stake and a weapon in their respective struggles overlegitimate authority within helping systems.

Constructing the Object

The first and most important task in any Bourdieu-inspired analysis isto construct the object of study, and such a task always entails thinkingsystematically in terms of fields (or, as Bourdieu often terms them,spaces). Bourdieu conceives of fields (or spaces) as relatively autono-mous social microcosms, exhibiting, like Weber’s (1946) life- or value-spheres, their own distinctive structures and dynamics and functioningaccording to their own inner logics. He posits a multiplicity of suchspaces in any complex and differentiated society. Modern society, heclaims, is marked not by the ascendancy of any one singular logic likethat of the social relations of production but by the existence of anumber of more or less independent social universes that, althoughempirically interrelated and mutually determinative (and also, as weshall see, structurally homologous), nonetheless obey, again to someextent, their own inner laws and principles. “What happens in [any oneof these fields],” he writes, “cannot be understood by looking only atexternal factors” (Bourdieu 1998, 39). Bourdieu characterizes even thenational society itself as a field, terming this the social space as a whole(Bourdieu 1984), but within this social macrocosm he also delineatesa number of less expansive spaces, such as the legal field, the economicfield, the field of cultural production (itself encompassing still moredelimited spaces, such as the literary, artistic, and scientific fields), andthe field of bureaucratic powers (Bourdieu’s term for the state). Alsoincluded within the social space as a whole are exceedingly circum-scribed and even microcosmic social worlds, such as individual families.In between, at a level identified as intermediate (mesolevel) in termsof scope and complexity, are also such fields as the one discussed below:that of homeless services in one particular metropolitan setting.

Bourdieu and Social Work 691

Bourdieu conceives of fields as “configuration[s] of objective relationsbetween positions” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 97), such that anygiven field (one consisting, e.g., of two or more homeless shelters or oftwo or more shelter clients) can be conceptualized as a structure ofrelations not between the concrete entities themselves (e.g., the specificshelters or the specific clients) but, rather, between the nodes that thoseentities happen to occupy.2 In other words, Bourdieu takes as his unitsof analysis not concrete or empirical entities but what he calls con-structed or epistemic objects. These objects are defined in terms ofwhere they are situated within a relational system. (Hence his rejectionof substantialist ways of thinking in favor of a more relational mode ofanalysis; see Emirbayer 1997; Emirbayer and Mische 1998.) For Bour-dieu, to construct an object means to break with preconstructed, taken-for-granted understandings of that object in favor of “situating [it] at adeterminate place in social space” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 214).This is important because one gains a way of systematically taking intoaccount forces that act upon and are determinative of these objectsfrom elsewhere or from outside: “Like heavenly bodies belonging to thesame gravitational field,” objects within a space “produce effects uponone another from afar” (Bourdieu 1996b, 132).

Bourdieu indicates that the nodes or positions within a field are “ob-jectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they im-pose upon their occupants, agents, or institutions, by their present andpotential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of speciesof power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specificprofits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relationto other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.)” (Bour-dieu and Wacquant 1992, 97). In other words, positions within a field,including those that mark the dominant and dominated poles of thatfield, must be analyzed in terms of the distinctive profiles of capitalassociated with them. Bourdieu refers here to “species of capital” in theplural: while capital most often connotes material or economic re-sources, for him it also encompasses a wide range of other types ofresources, any of which, when accrued by actors within the field at hand,can enable them to climb to positions of relative privilege within thefield.3 Within any given field, different specific entities can be said toengage in the struggles ongoing within that field as bearers of differentamounts and combinations of capitals, some yielding greater advantageswithin that particular field than others.

The concepts of field and capital are intrinsically interlinked; just as“a capital does not exist and function except in relation to a field,” sotoo, conversely, the distribution of capital (or capitals) “constitutes thevery structure of the field” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 101). Capitalsfunction both as weapons and as stakes in the struggle to gain ascen-dancy within fields. Any field (from a synchronic perspective) is a struc-


ture or temporary state of power relations within what is also (from adiachronic perspective) an ongoing struggle for domination waged bythe deployment or accumulation of relevant capitals, a struggle for suc-cessful monopolization “of the legitimate violence (specific authority)which is characteristic of the field in question” (Bourdieu 1993, 73).Bourdieu’s perspective brings to the foreground the structural tensionbetween occupants of dominant and dominated positions within anysocial microcosm. It requires that any field be conceived of as a terrainof contestation among occupants of positions differentially endowedwith the resources necessary for gaining and safeguarding an ascendantposition within that terrain. Indeed, much of the contestation amongactors can be said to concern the legitimate valuation that is to beaccorded the precise species of capital in which they happen (actuallyor potentially) to be well-endowed; that is, such conflict is about gainingthe capacity to produce a recognition of the legitimacy of this capitaldistribution among the other contending parties. (In contrast to theseefforts are the delegitimizing strategies by which other parties call intoquestion their counterparts’ favored types of capital and argue insteadfor the primacy of their own.) Especially significant in all such struggles(again, as both a stake and a weapon) is what Bourdieu terms symboliccapital, or capital in any of its forms insofar as it is accorded positiverecognition, esteem, or honor by relevant actors within the field. Con-testations over symbolic authority are a crucial feature of field dynamics,and those actors who succeed in amassing it gain considerably therebyin their efforts to assume a dominant position within the field as awhole.4

Within the social space as a whole, the most consequential strugglesover symbolic capital take place within what Bourdieu terms the fieldof power, a relational reframing on his part of the more conventionalidea of a ruling class. He defines this field of power as a space of con-tention for ascendancy among dominant actors from all the other fieldsthat constitute the social order (e.g., key state officials; leading lawyersand jurists; top bankers, financiers, and corporate executives; prestigiousliterary, artistic, and scientific figures). Since the field concept is meantto be applicable at all scales, from the most expansive to the mostcircumscribed, each of the more delimited social microcosms, too, canbe said to feature something like its own internal field of power. Allsuch “gaming spaces” (Bourdieu 1996b, 264), whether large or small,exhibit certain structural properties that can be said to be invariant anduniversal. One of these properties is a bipolar structure, such that thesespaces all revolve around an opposition between what Bourdieu termstemporal and spiritual (or cultural) power. At the level of the socialspace as a whole, this opposition typically translates to structural tensionsbetween the holders of economic, political, or social privilege, on theone side, and of intellectual preeminence, on the other.5 (In these


structural tensions, the former will typically have the upper hand and,hence, be the dominants among the dominant holders of capital, whilethe latter will typically be in a subordinate position and hence be thedominated dominants.) In more delimited spaces, this polarity takesother but still structurally homologous forms. Close homologies, Bour-dieu indicates, can often be found between what are outwardly verydifferent kinds of gaming spaces. Looking ahead to this article’s anal-yses, for example, the authors find a bipolar structure between thosehomeless shelters that are relatively rich in the symbolic capital oforder (at the temporal pole) and those that are relatively rich in thecapital of authenticity (at the spiritual or cultural pole). So too, thesame structure is observed between those homeless clients who arerelatively well-endowed in staff-sanctioned capital (the temporal pole)and those who are relatively well-endowed in client-sanctioned capital(the spiritual or cultural pole).

Bourdieu specifies another (and closely related) invariant propertyof gaming spaces. This has to do with the mutually opposed interestsand strategies of action that one typically finds within such spaces. Ac-tors’ interests are largely shaped (and Bourdieu speaks only probabil-istically here) by the location of those actors within the overall distri-bution of capital (or capitals) and, thereby, within the structure of powerrelations constitutive of a contested space. Their strategies of action arealso largely determined by such positioning. On the one hand, Bourdieupredicts that dominant actors or entities (or the dominant dominants,if one is speaking of the field of power) pursue a conservation strategy,one in which their overriding aim is to preserve the principle of hier-archization, the distribution and valuation of species of capitals, thathappens to be most favorable to them and to safeguard or even enhancetheir position within this hierarchy. On the other hand, he predicts thatdominated actors or entities (or, if one is speaking of the field of power,its dominated dominants) adopt a subversion strategy, in which theiraim is to transform the field’s system of authority, including its relativevaluation of different capitals and, potentially, the very rules of the gameaccording to which it ordinarily functions, to their own benefit. Sub-version strategies typically entail, he adds, a claim “to be returning tothe sources, the origin, the spirit, the authentic essence of the game,in opposition to the banalization and degradation which it has suffered”(Bourdieu 1993, 74). Bourdieu claims that, in analyzing any field, it isimportant to determine precisely how its constituent actors, differentlypositioned as they are within the field in respect to the distribution ofcapital (or capitals) operative therein, perceive themselves, their com-petitors, and the field as a whole, in all its opportunities and challenges.Actors, he asserts, gravitate in the direction of one or another of theseopposing (conservative or subversive) strategies.

One final invariant property of fields is that actors and entities within


them not only have interests (and corresponding strategies of action)grounded in the discrete positions they happen to occupy relative toothers in the field but also have shared commitments to and investmentsin the field overall. Bourdieu describes these ties as an illusio, or “ob-jective complicity which underlies all the antagonisms” (Bourdieu 1993,73). In the study of fields, it is crucial always to inquire into the tacitlyshared interests, concerns, and ultimate beliefs that constitute the ad-mission fee, as it were, into those fields; these attachments also guaranteethat the dynamism and processuality (Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994;Emirbayer 1997) constitutive of fields do not entail perpetual upheaval.Bourdieu points out that such unspoken agreements are often lodgedat the level of what he terms the habitus. By this, he means the systemof dispositions that become like second nature to actors as a result eitherof childhood socialization within the family (“primary habitus”) or, laterin life, of more specific mechanisms of socialization (“specific habitus”;see Bourdieu 2000, 164). Such dispositions include deeply ingrainedmodes of perception, emotional response, and action within the worldbut also manners and bearing, ways of speaking, forms of dress, andpersonal hygiene. Since these systems of dispositions serve as a gener-ative principle for strategies of action, differences at the level of habitushelp to explain the different conservation and subversion strategies thatactors find themselves inclined to pursue; indeed, their very habitusoften become forms of capital and, thus, weapons and stakes in struggles.Those actors who occupy the most dominated positions in the field tendalso to be those with habitus least well-suited for the contestations spe-cific to that field.6 However, commonalities at the level of habitus alsoserve to bind all these actors together, even despite the structural ten-sions that tend to separate them. “A fight presupposes agreement be-tween the antagonists about what it is that is worth fighting about; thosepoints of agreement are held at the level of what ‘goes without saying’”(Bourdieu 1993, 73).

The Field of Homeless Shelters

The field of homeless services in New York City provides an illustrationof how a Bourdieuian field analysis might be constructed. This inquirycommences by analyzing the space of production of homeless shelters:the providers of homeless services. The second half of the essay lays outa similar framework in respect to the field of homeless clients: theconsumers of those services. The intent is twofold: to highlight how onemight conduct an actual field analysis and to demonstrate how such anapproach might lead to alternative ways of understanding social worksystems and practices. While other examples from social work couldhave been selected instead, the case of homeless services in New YorkCity is featured because of the second author’s intimate and firsthand


knowledge of that field, accumulated over 5 years during the late 1990sas a director of social services and as the program director of one ofthe city’s homeless shelter programs. Her experiences of the day-to-dayoperations of that shelter, her frequent meetings with other shelteradministrators and staff from both the New York City Department ofHomeless Services (DHS) and the Coalition for the Homeless, her su-pervision of casework staff and MSW field students, and her extensivecontact with clients serve as the principal data upon which this illustra-tive analysis is based.7

Principles of Division

Even with such intimate familiarity with the field, constructing the objectof study is at best a highly challenging endeavor. Speaking practically,how are the field’s most pertinent indicators, properties, or principlesof division to be identified? How are its parameters to be ascertained?Bourdieu suggests that inquiry should be guided at first by a basic senseof the field or space at hand. But these early intuitions about the prin-ciples of division operative within that field should be empirically testedand gradually refined until they yield an objective space, defined per-haps according to criteria quite different from those that originallyguided the study. What follows is an attempt to convey how such aprocess might unfold. Ultimately, this inquiry ventures well beyond theinitial categories used by the actors who work within the field of home-less shelters. It breaks with what Bourdieu calls the doxa of that field,the taken-for-granted, unquestioned, spontaneous, and commonsensicalunderstandings that prevail across that space. The analysis demonstratesthat even insiders to the field do not always possess an immediate orunimpeachable knowledge of the divisions operative within it. Specifi-cally, it rejects three alternative ways of mapping the field of homelessshelters, three different principles of division that are commonly de-ployed by those who staff shelter organizations: single-adult versus familyshelters, general versus specialized shelters, and public versus privateshelters.8

The first of these principles of division, that between a single adultsystem and a family system, derives its legitimacy and official sanctionfrom New York City’s DHS, which has organized more than 200 sheltersfrom the perspective of this division. Initially, it seems to be a reasonableprinciple of categorization, since single adults and families require verydifferent types of social services and housing. However, while this di-vision makes sense for the DHS, it fails to illuminate how shelters areactually organized within this space; that is, how different types of cap-itals that are highly salient within this field are differentially distributedamong the various shelters comprising it. More specifically, a wide varietyof shelters exist within each system (single adults, families), and across


the two systems, some shelters enjoy particular distinctions and othersdo not. In both systems, for example, there are shelters that socialworkers at assessment centers understand to be of fine quality. Socialworkers speak highly of these places to their clients and work hard toget those clients transferred to or placed on the waiting lists at theselocations. But, within both systems, there are also other shelters thatassessment social workers may from time to time invoke in threateningfashion (e.g., “Act right or I’ll have to transfer you to shelter X”). Sincethis sort of hierarchy exists within both systems, and being part of thefamily system affords shelters no clear advantage over affiliation withthe adult system, this distinction between single-adult and family sheltersmust be rejected as the principle of division along which the space isorganized.9

Nor is a second division, that between general and specialized shelters,entirely adequate for the current purposes. General shelters (e.g., Ja-maica Avenue Armory Shelter, Brooklyn Women’s Shelter, 30th StreetShelter, Charles H. Gay Shelter, and Camp La Guardia Men’s Shelter)are typically very large and chaotic places. Specialized shelters (e.g., 350Lafayette Street Transitional Living Community, Forbell Shelter, ValleyLodge, and Borden Avenue Veterans Residence), by contrast, are or-ganized with a particular client population in mind. These sites areusually smaller than general shelters and have an intake or special re-ferral process. Admissions criteria, such as gender, a minimum age, anAxis I (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition[DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association 1994) diagnosis, veteran’sstatus, and a willingness to stay clean and sober, are some of the manyand varied prerequisites for referral. At first glance, such a division ofthe field in terms of general and specialized shelters seems like a viableway to proceed. Specialized shelters seem to be the dominant ones inthe sense of being the most privileged (admission is limited to thosewith referrals), while general shelters seem to belong in the dominatedsector of the space. In the second author’s experience of the field, someshelters did, in fact, seem to enjoy a certain distinction among socialworkers as well as clients, the DHS, and homeless advocates on accountof being specialized. Among these were the shelters that work with aparticularly difficult client population. For example, the Center for Ur-ban Community Services serves homeless women with mental illness,and Valley Lodge works with homeless older adults. But providing ser-vices for a difficult population does not always accord a shelter symbolicauthority in relation to other shelters. Some mental health shelters havereputations clearly inferior to those of others that similarly specialize inmentally ill populations. And while certain employment shelters or shel-ters for clients trying to remain clean and sober might well be seen aspathways to specialized housing, others of their ilk altogether lack sucha distinction. Once again, it becomes clear that a conventional and


pregiven division does not fully explain how the space of shelters isorganized: it lumps together entities that are highly distinct (the cate-gory of specialized shelters encompasses widely varying types of shelters)while distinguishing between entities that belong together.

Finally, there is the distinction between public and private shelters.Although New York City’s DHS owns and operates many homeless shel-ters, in the 1990s it also began contracting with private not-for-profitorganizations for services to homeless clients (Savas 2002). Two sharplydistinguished categories of shelters resulted, the distinction betweenthem seeming at first glance to be a viable way of understanding thefield. It would not be difficult to establish (it certainly was the secondauthor’s experience) that homeless clients at city-run shelters typicallywait longer to see caseworkers than clients at the private shelters, thatcity caseworkers are often overloaded with caseloads up to three timesthe size of those of their private counterparts, and that city caseworkerslack the training and credentials of their private counterparts. Research-ers would also readily find (this, too, was the second author’s experi-ence) that caseworkers at the public shelters are less invested in helpingtheir clients because of the conditions cited above. This is made evenworse by the poisoned-well effect of the negative climate pervasive incity- and state-run agencies (Passaro 1996).10 Among shelter staff andclients, circulating impressions that certain public shelters are moredangerous than others, that they are larger, and that they have a worsestaff further contribute to this effect. In the second author’s practicalexperience of the field, it was clear that a negative attitude toward city-operated shelters was pervasive among staff, clients, and homeless ad-vocates alike. The movement toward privatization among specializedshelters even suggests, in fact, that the DHS concurs with this assessment.However, there are problems with dividing the field between public andprivate shelters. While efforts have been made to privatize most of theshelters, the city plans to provide state-of-the-art programming in someof the remaining city-run shelters (Campbell and McCarthy 2000). Con-versely, some private shelters are poorly run and have acquired a neg-ative reputation among professionals as well as clients.11 Thus, the dis-tinction between private and public shelters proves insufficient forgrasping the underlying logic of the field; we cannot clearly place allthe privately run shelters at one end of the field and all the city-runshelters at the other.

Those unfamiliar with homeless services in New York City might pro-pose race as yet another possible principle of division of the field, ar-guing that the racial composition of shelters might affect their posi-tioning in relation to one another within that space. In this study, theauthors reject race as the primary way of understanding the underlyinglogic of the field, although it is certainly an important feature of thecontext within which homelessness is a social problem. In the New York


City shelter system, clients are assigned a shelter (in some cases theymust interview to get in); they do not self-select. The second author sawno evidence that such assignments were based on race.12 Nor do shelterswith a large proportion of white clients enjoy clear advantages relativeto those with large numbers of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Do-minicans, and so forth, for white clients are not necessarily easier towork with in a shelter, nor are they necessarily easier to place inhousing—two important factors, from the second author’s experience,in determining whether a shelter will identify a client as desirable. Theseparation between racial groups in New York City is not nearly theclear-cut principle of division that one might expect at first glance.13

Dominants and Dominated

Thus, all of the several aforementioned ways of understanding the field’sorganization fall well short, requiring that the current inquiry move ina very different direction, following the same tacking motion indicatedby Bourdieu: “There is thus a sort of hermeneutic circle: in order toconstruct the field, one must identify the forms of specific capital thatoperate within it, and to construct the forms of specific capital one mustknow the specific logic of the field” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992,108). Specifically, the essay proposes two other alternative principles ofhierarchization that are simultaneously operative and exist in some ten-sion with one another but that serve to distinguish the dominant fromthe dominated shelters (see fig. 1).

The first of these revolves around the struggle between order andchaos. Shelters that control clients’ choices and behaviors accumulatea field-specific capital of order and come to occupy (one side of) thedominant sector of the field. These shelters provide a smooth and timelyprocessing of clients from the assessment phase on through to housingplacement. They excel at constraining clients’ actions by imposing shel-ter rules and by getting clients to comply with conditions of serviceplans, such as engaging in money management. They also control cli-ents’ behaviors by getting clients to agree to participate in housinginterviews in boroughs that may not be their first choice, by helpingclients to interview well by coaching them in interview skills (e.g., teach-ing them to be neat in appearance, to be well mannered, and to assumepersonal responsibility for their housing loss), and by getting clients toagree to accept suboptimal housing when offered. Although the DHSdistributes housing appointments in a presumably fair manner, theseadvantages in controlling clients relative to housing appointments helpsto distinguish the more privileged shelters from the less privileged ones.By contrast, shelters that are less able to control clients’ behaviors andchoices, those with a high level of chaos, occupy the dominated regionswithin the field.14


Fig. 1.—Field of homeless shelters

The other principle of hierarchization revolves around the strugglebetween authenticity and inauthenticity. As Bourdieu points out in oneof the quotations supplied above, there is much to be gained from“returning” to the putative “authentic essence” of the game (Bourdieu1993, 74). Accordingly, certain shelters derive a special authority orlegitimacy from being the real deal, from working with the most dis-advantaged clients. These are the shelters that can point to being onthe front lines or in the trenches, fighting the good fight againsthomelessness. Although these organizations, often drop-in centers,tend to be run-down and resource-poor spaces, staff willingness to takeon certain types of clients and client problems that other shelters hopeto avoid establishes them at (another pole of) the dominant end ofthe field. Some mental health shelters and shelter programs for dual-


diagnosed clients (those with mental health and substance abuse prob-lems) and most drop-in centers, especially those with homeless out-reach teams (e.g., the Open Door Drop-In Center, John Heuss House,and Peter’s Place), are found within this category.15 Of course, it shouldalso be noted that shelters well-endowed in this capital of authenticitystand in considerable tension with those others (also occupants of thedominant sector of the field) that are rich in the capital of order. Con-ceiving of that sector as itself a space analogous to, and homologouswith, the field of power in the broader social space, one faces a familiarstructural opposition: the pole of temporal authority (order) opposesthe pole of spiritual or cultural authority (authenticity). In addition,there are still other shelters that lack altogether in both species (orderand authenticity) of capital. Together, these capital-poor shelters occupythe dominated regions of the field of homeless shelters. In what follows,we provide by way of illustration some examples of each of these varioustypes of shelters, at both the dominant and dominated regions of thisspace.

George Daly House (GDH), a shelter for 88 homeless adults, ages 45and older, serves as an example of a more privileged shelter in thedominant pole of the field, on the side of order. The shelter occupiesa converted music school in the East Village neighborhood. The build-ing has been completely remodeled to create a transitional shelter withmostly single rooms. By contrast, many of the larger shelters offer onlybarracks-style sleeping areas.16 The floors at GDH are always polishedto a high shine. Its walls, which are kept freshly painted (a goldenrodyellow), are hung with original art and photography and coordinatenicely with the large, overstuffed, dark green leather sofas in the lobby.Bookshelves, as well as end tables with lamps and silk orchid flowerarrangements, create the effect of an upscale hotel lobby. Classical orjazz music can be heard throughout the building and in a well-tendedgarden space filled with flowering dogwood trees, manicured boxwoods,climbing vines, and flowers. While most shelters’ gardens or patios wouldbe filled with stackable plastic furniture or rusting metal folding chairs,that of GDH offers teak benches, chairs, and matching tables with darkgreen wood and canvas (market-style) umbrellas.

While disarmingly elegant for a shelter, GDH’s reputation as one ofthe most privileged shelters, a reputation communicated among clientsvia word of mouth and to staff of other shelters and homeless advocatesduring public forums such as shelter directors’ meetings, stems primarilyfrom its proven track record. This record includes getting clients tocomply with shelter rules governing behavior, good results with serviceplans concerning money management, and high rates of success ingetting clients to accept available housing. Regarding compliance withshelter rules, for example, GDH maintains a zero tolerance policy foralcohol or drug use and threatening behavior. Clients who appear to


be under the influence of alcohol are questioned by a member of thestaff who may elect to administer a Breathalyzer test. Staff also regularlyconduct urinalysis screens to detect illegal drug use. Clients who arefound to be drinking or using drugs must meet with their caseworkerand enroll in treatment. Clients already in treatment are required tointensify their treatment program. Clients who refuse or who continueto drink or use drugs are transferred to another shelter. Threateningor violent behavior results in an immediate shelter transfer.17 Furtherresearch might examine if this shelter’s records (along with those ofother similarly situated shelters) contain comparatively few DHS inci-dent reports concerning fights or threatening behavior among clients.It might also be useful to compare GDH with other shelters on thefrequency of complaints made against shelter staff to either the clientadvisory board (internal) or the Coalition for the Homeless (external).18

Finally, one might compare degrees of compliance with service plansand timeliness of placement into housing. A subsequent section of thisarticle explores some of the conservation strategies employed by dom-inant shelters of this sort that help to perpetuate their reputation fororder.

Peter’s Place, a drop-in center, is a good example of a shelter locatedat the other side of the field’s dominant sector, on the side of authen-ticity. From a cramped and often disheveled space, this program serveshomeless men and women ages 45 and older. Upon entering thiscrowded setting, an observer first notices the lockers that line severalwalls. These tall, battleship gray, rectangular boxes are available forstoring clients’ belongings; clients must provide their own locks. Beyondthese banks of gray are rows of tables and gray folding chairs. Clientsare seated there day and night, reading, talking, eating, and sleeping(drop-in centers do not provide beds, only chairs, lockers, and showers).Just around the corner from this large client area are the cramped officesand desk spaces of the Peter’s Place staff. The staff spend most of theirtime interacting with the clients. Clients who are relatively new to Peter’sPlace are assessed by social workers. This process begins after a clienthas returned several times: Why would one begin an assessment, afterall, if the client is a one-timer? Staff greet returning clients in a wel-coming manner and ask how they have been faring.19

Peter’s Place, like other drop-in shelters, is a preferred shelter serviceamong those clients who are either unwilling to participate in morestructured shelter programs or who have effectively been kicked out ofthe other shelters. This population is comprised of the stereotypicalstreet homeless. The media often depict them as disheveled, drunk, andpsychotic. They move about with all their belongings and are often seensleeping on subway trains. Peter’s Place clients come and go at will. Theyare not denied access if under the influence of drugs or alcohol, pro-vided they are not threatening. Challenging behaviors are expected,


and even threatening clients are welcomed back once they have calmeddown. While drop-in centers like Peter’s Place exercise very little controlover their clients, homeless services programs of this sort nonethelessoccupy some of the most dominant positions within the shelter fieldbecause they are seen as doing the real work required to address theneeds of homeless clients. They are therefore high in the capital ofauthenticity.20

Less privileged shelters, those with less order and also lacking inauthenticity, occupy the dominated end of the field. These are the placesunderstood as poorly run, impersonal, and potentially dangerous. Suchshelters are seen as inadequate with respect to basic services, structure,and safety. Numerous ethnographic studies support these assessmentswith descriptive firsthand accounts and client-staff interviews (e.g., Dor-dick 1996; Desjarlais 1997; Hopper 2003; Williams 2003). Facilities atthis end of the field include the larger general shelters. Morale is lowat these facilities, and researchers would likely find a high level of staffturnover. Not only do staff at these shelters have more difficulty incontrolling clients, but they also lack a feeling of pride in taking on thetrue mission of social work.21 Again, further research might consider ifthese shelters have more clients from the dominated end of the fieldof clients (more on this in the second half of this essay) and if they areless successful than privileged shelters in preventing clients from en-gaging in incidents of violence or threatening behavior. One might alsoassess whether these shelters are less successful in heading off clientcomplaints to internal and external boards or less successful in findinghousing or transitional placements for clients in a smooth and timelymanner.

Strategies of Conservation and Subversion

Crucial to understanding the dynamics of the field of shelters is thedistinction between the conservation strategies of shelters that occupypositions of specific authority within the field and the correspondingsubversion strategies of shelters seeking to challenge and discredit thisauthority. To maintain their ascendant positions, the most order-privilegedshelters engage in image or reputation protection by taking advantageof their right to refuse certain clients. This is a right gained by shelteradministrators during contract negotiations with the DHS, a right to aninterview or acceptance process wherein clients can be screened forappropriateness according to predetermined admission criteria.22 Theshelters that possess this right make full use of it to protect their accruedsymbolic capital. That is, order-rich shelters effectively accept thosehomeless individuals who are most likely to help maintain their positivereputation or position relative to other, more chaotic shelters or drop-in centers. The obvious effect of this right of refusal is that the less


desirable homeless, those with challenging behaviors who are not com-pliant with their service plans, stay in the less privileged shelters. Imageor reputation protection through right of refusal is one of the numerouscausal mechanisms or “recurrent causal sequences of general scope”(Tilly 1998, 7) that a field analysis can identify and underscore, castingdoubt upon the conventional distinction in social science between de-scription and causal explanation.23

More covert conservation strategies among shelters rich in order cap-ital, strategies that also effectively keep out less desirable homeless peo-ple, are seen in the imposition of organizational rules and procedures:in this case, shelter rules. (Here we find yet another generalizable causalmechanism.) A shelter that insists on zero tolerance for drugs and al-cohol (using a Breathalyzer and random urinalysis), that enacts a strictcurfew, or that requires clients to participate in money managementwill attract those homeless men and women who are willing to submitto such restrictions (and whose habitus inclines or predisposes them todo so). Such requirements will also deflect others who reject rules andstructure. Since the DHS is mandated to provide shelter for anyone whorequests it, regardless of circumstances, it is not difficult to identify theresults of these power plays and to see the source of conflict. Homelessclients who are identified by the DHS as chronic, long-term stayers,especially those with aggressive dispositions and less social capital, tendto remain in the less privileged shelters. By contrast, temporarily home-less people, those who typically bear larger amounts of capital of variouskinds, make the move rather quickly into more privileged settings. Aclose examination of shelter transfer patterns, with careful attentionpaid to which clients move where and how quickly, might test the hy-pothesis that shelters with more order capital are able to attract andreceive clients who themselves are endowed with more personal capital,that is, clients with habitus more conducive to following restrictions,engaging in self-regulation, and exerting self-discipline. Bourdieu(1979) points out that the habitus of working-class people, shaped underconditions of comparative stability and orderliness, tend to be moreconducive to the working out and following of a rational life plan. Bycontrast, the habitus of subproletarians that have been formed andperpetuated under conditions of uncertainty, incoherence, and arbi-trariness—subproletarians characteristically lacking secure employmentand often also homeless—tend to be particularly ill suited to a regu-larization of daily life conduct.

Subversion strategies tend to be employed by the dominated domi-nants of a field in order to legitimate a claim to ascendancy within it.In the case of the field of homeless shelter programs, those shelters thatare richest in claims to authenticity are precisely the ones most likelyto engage in subversion strategies in seeking to better their positionrelative to those that manifest a high degree of order. Staff in the au-


thentic shelters frequently highlight the serious obstacles that they faceon a daily basis, thereby drawing an invidious distinction between them-selves and their counterparts in the more orderly settings. Such dis-tinctions serve to undercut the latter’s own claims to legitimacy. Ratherthan minimize the number and severity of difficulties confronting theirprogram, the dominated (authentic) dominants identify these difficul-ties themselves as badges of honor. War stories abound, and the worseoff or more challenging their clients, the better. For them to be at thedominant end of the field at all, however, other shelters, the DHS,homeless advocacy groups, and the consumers of shelter services mustrecognize and grant validity to the claims that they make. Indeed, shelterstaff at the less privileged and capital-rich (in either sense) shelterswillingly acknowledge the especially difficult work that these authenticprograms undertake. The latter’s undeniable hard work and the almostinsurmountable challenges that they face earn them a sort of mystiqueamong shelter providers. So too, word on the street among homelessclients often characterizes these shelters as compassionate, dependable,port-in-the-storm kinds of settings. A plausible hypothesis is that shelterdirectors at these highly challenged shelter programs and drop-in cen-ters utilize their own claims to authenticity to connect positively withDHS contract managers and with Coalition for the Homeless watchdogs.Such strategies help these shelters to further their influence with boththe DHS and the coalition, two entities with opinions that truly matter.24

Shelters that are without the symbolic capital of either order or au-thenticity engage in subversion strategies similar to those outlined abovefor both of the dominants. For example, capital-poor shelters attacktheir better-endowed counterparts by charging that the order-rich shel-ters handpick their clients or by criticizing authenticity-rich shelters ashorribly chaotic places. (No one pays much attention, however, to thesedominated shelters’ attempts to delegitimate their more privilegedcounterparts.) Capital-poor shelters also attempt somehow to accountfor both their lack of order, relative to the dominant shelters, and theirlack of authenticity. It was the second author’s experience that com-plaints are frequently heard at shelter directors’ meetings regarding theunfair advantages enjoyed by better-endowed shelters, regarding staffingshortages, and regarding the inadequate resources (e.g., exit options)available for dealing with challenging clients. In respect to exit options,for example, it was often pointed out that it is far easier for the dominantshelters to transfer challenging or rule-breaking clients to the less priv-ileged shelters than the other way around, leaving the dominated shel-ters with clients whom they do not want. Staff members from dominatedshelters resented the ability of their more privileged counterparts todump difficult clients into their laps. Their complaints about this asym-


metry served as a way for these dominated shelters to claim symbolicauthority in relation to their better-off counterparts.

The field of homeless shelters is a space riven with tensions andmutually opposing strategies of action. However, it is also worth notingthat all of those involved in this field, regardless of the particular positionthey occupy within it, are heavily invested in the work of helping home-less people; homelessness is recognized across the board as a problemthat is worth addressing. Their underlying belief in the game, or illusio,serves as the fundamental premise upon which the entire field is based,a shared understanding that goes without saying. The very willingnessof the various actors in this field to engage in struggle over the mech-anisms of service delivery, definition of a challenging client, reasonablelengths of stay, and whether or not shelters ought to maintain theirright of refusal supports this shared framework of investments and com-mitments. Bourdieu reminds us that small victories or “partial revolu-tions” that “constantly occur in fields do not call into question the veryfoundations of the game, its fundamental axioms, the bedrock of ulti-mate beliefs on which the whole game is based. . . . Those who takepart in the struggle help to reproduce the game by helping—more orless completely, depending on the field—to produce belief in the valueof the stakes” (Bourdieu 1993, 74).

The Field of Homeless Clients

Having explored the field of providers of services to the homeless, thisarticle now turns to a consideration of the consumers of those services.It illustrates how a Bourdieuian framework can be utilized to raise ques-tions about the homeless clients within these shelters, the positions thatthey occupy within a field of homeless clients, and how their locationwithin this space influences the quantity and quality of services that theyreceive. In-depth studies of the homeless are plentiful. This rich col-lection of qualitative and quantitative research, far too extensive to dis-cuss adequately here, provides scholars interested in that vulnerablepopulation with a range of useful approaches, both theoretical andmethodological. What follows is not an attempt to replace these studiesor to discuss homelessness in general. Rather, it is an attempt to inves-tigate in particular those homeless individuals who are located withinthe field of shelter clients, insofar as they are located within this field.As in the previous discussion of the field of shelters, the primary sourceof data is the second author’s experience as a director of social servicesand as a shelter director. In these roles, she supervised caseworkers, metdirectly with clients (especially during times of conflict), and discussedparticularly challenging cases with representatives from the Coalitionfor the Homeless and the DHS.


Principles of Division

To begin once again, two familiar questions are revisited: What are thespecific dimensions along which the field of homeless clients is orga-nized? And what separates those who occupy the relatively more privi-leged positions within that field from those who occupy its relativelyless privileged locations? As in the analysis of the field of shelters, thisdiscussion of the field of homeless clients extends beyond pregiven andtaken-for-granted categories. It requires rejection of an alternative prin-ciple of division that comes from the common sense of the social workuniverse, one that is commonly deployed by the DHS and by those whostaff the shelters: the distinction between the chronically and the tran-sitionally (or temporarily) homeless (New York City, Department ofHomeless Services n.d.). These labels, together with a third label, theepisodically homeless (often put forward as an intermediate category),pertain to a person’s length and pattern of stay in the shelter system.Over time, they have come to be associated with various stereotypedcharacteristics or features. As before, it is necessary to begin by exam-ining these doxic categories and by identifying the reasons why they failto illuminate how individuals are organized within the space at hand.

The transitional or temporarily homeless category consists of thosemen and women with infrequent or one-time shelter stays.25 These arethe homeless clients with the lowest incidence of medical, mental health,and addiction problems; they often get back into housing once the basicreasons for their housing loss are addressed. Typical reasons for housingloss include loss of employment (e.g., owing to company downsizing),family composition changes (e.g., divorce), and safety issues (e.g., athreatening ex-partner or partner or increases in neighborhood vio-lence) that resulted either in eviction or in a voluntary decision toabandon the home. Temporarily homeless clients are identified by shel-ter staff as capable of living on their own and are seen as motivated todo whatever it takes to be successful in a housing interview. They areoften thought by caseworkers to be comparatively easy to work with,and it is widely held that once they have housing, these clients willhappily put the whole experience behind them. Accordingly, it seemsreasonable that these clients would be the bearers of the greatest volumeof personal capital in the field of homeless shelter consumers. The realstory, however, is not nearly so simple. Some temporarily homeless cli-ents lack a feel for the game, an ability to grasp the relationship betweenclient and caseworker. Many are new consumers of social service assis-tance and consequently present themselves as deserving special consid-eration or as being somehow different from or better than the rest ofthe caseworker’s clients.26 These attitudes, ultimately rooted in the cli-ents’ habitus, may impede the delivery of services, alienate these indi-viduals from other shelter clients, and result in their being deemed


more rather than less challenging by the shelter staff. In the end, suchattitudes may prevent these clients from experiencing a positive tran-sition from shelter to housing.

By contrast to the temporarily homeless, men and women who arechronically homeless would at first glance seem likely to occupy the leastprivileged positions within the field. They are defined by the DHS asshelter clients who have infrequent yet lengthy (in excess of 638 days)shelter stays (Coalition for the Homeless 2003). Their longer length ofstay, as compared with those of other clients, is determined by a numberof different factors, such as immigration status, health problems, poorinterviewing skills (necessary to obtain housing or employment), or alack of familial connections. Irving Piliavin and associates (1993) alsofind a higher incidence of long-term homelessness among individualswith a history of out-of-home care. Moreover, they find that those withuntreated alcohol problems are at great risk for longer lengths of stayand frequent returns to homeless services systems; often afflicted withmental illness and addiction, those with untreated substance problemsare understood to be difficult clients. Despite the formidable challengesfaced by such clients, however, it was certainly the second author’s ex-perience that chronically homeless shelter clients did not lack in allforms of personal capital. Some are actually very well liked by both staffand clients. They may be identified, for example, as helpful around thebuilding, pleasant to meet with, agreeable regarding their service plan,sought after by other clients, and generally well respected within bothclient and staff circles. The chronic, long-term homeless sometimes ac-quire, as a consequence of their long exposure to the shelter system,an insider’s knowledge of how things work. This experience contributesto, rather than reduces, their personal capital.

The episodically homeless, defined by the DHS as those clients whoreturn to the shelters again and again, would be expected to occupy anintermediate sector (between transitional and chronic) of the space ofhomeless clients.27 Some of them make relatively few requests for shelter,but others return quite frequently. This category of homeless clients,however, comprises an exceedingly heterogeneous population and, asa result, is very difficult to characterize. For example, while psychosocialand emotional forces often lead these clients to return to shelter, thenature of these forces varies widely. In some cases, their problems closelyresemble the kinds of cognitive and affectual disturbances found amongthe chronically homeless. But in other cases, these clients return toshelter because it becomes for them a sort of microcommunity. Re-searchers would likely find that while many who are described as epi-sodically homeless find group living claustrophobic, a fair number ofothers derive emotional benefits from the congregate setting. That is,clients who develop strong connections to their peers experience dif-ficulties in making the transition to independent living. A plausible


hypothesis is that when these clients are placed on their own in roomsor apartments, some experience a feeling of loneliness for which theyare ill prepared. This loneliness is starkly contrasted with the socialenvironment of the shelter. Still other clients are forced to seek shelterbecause of social developments largely outside of their control. Suchdevelopments include neighborhood gentrification, changes in eco-nomic climate and the resulting increases in unemployment, the grow-ing burdens of health care, and housing loss.28 Accordingly, some ofthe individuals in this category gravitate rather easily toward more priv-ileged positions within the field of shelter clients; others quickly findthemselves in the dominated regions of that space.

The authors’ initial impression was that length and pattern of stayenable one to understand the logic of the field of homeless clients: thattemporarily homeless men and women (or families) likely occupy themost privileged positions within the field of homeless shelter clients,the episodically homeless occupy the mid-range positions, and thechronically homeless occupy the least privileged positions. Yet, throughreflection, as well as in ongoing dialogue between theory and the em-pirical material at hand, the authors came to see that the manner inwhich homeless clients interact with staff and with other clients playsthe most important role in determining their position. While a shelterclient may not have a lot of influence in the overall system, he or shemay wield a fair amount of power, earn a fair amount of distinction,and secure privileges internal to a particular shelter. In relation to theircounterparts, clients earn capital both from the staff (staff-sanctionedcapital) and from their fellow clients (client-sanctioned capital; see fig.2). These two often competing species of capital and principles of hier-archization cut across the categorical distinctions that we have beendiscussing. Specifically, the unequal distribution of these two species,described in more detail below, illuminates the difference between thoseclients who are successful within the shelter system and those who oc-cupy less advantaged places within it.

Staff-Sanctioned and Client-Sanctioned Capital

According to the authors’ hypothesis, staff-sanctioned capital, or, morebroadly, the placement of a homeless client somewhere along a contin-uum between good and challenging, emerges from the cumulative im-pression that staff members develop of a client in response to the latter’s(perceived) attitude concerning shelter rules, policies, and expectations,reasons for housing loss, and purpose of shelter stay. Not all clientsadhere to the rules and policies that shelters establish, which usuallyinclude curfews, restrictions on visitors, limited access to smoking spaces,no food during nonmeal times, restrictions on the amount and type ofpersonal possessions, and limited access to telephone communication


Fig. 2.—Field of homeless clients

(Schutt and Garrett 1992; Campbell and McCarthy 2000; Williams 2003).But when they do, conforming to staff expectations of appropriate bear-ing and conduct as well as being submissive and respectful, they areaccorded a certain measure of value and esteem. Along with that per-sonal capital, they are given greater opportunities to obtain housing;shelters, much like academic organizations that hold degree-conferringpower over students, are gatekeepers to housing opportunities that aregenerally unavailable to people outside the shelter system. Many clientsnaturally and easily gain such privileges, being (as an outgrowth of theirprimary dispositions or habitus) already rule abiding, nonchallenging,flexible, and polite. Others adopt in more strategic fashion the outwardappearances of a good client in order to get through the system andobtain housing (Desjarlais 1997). While certainly there are clients who


understand active participation in case plans as an opportunity for self-improvement, clients are a captive audience, and case plans are pre-sented to them as a necessary rather than optional condition of shelterstays. How else to explain the spectacle of a 57-year-old client allowinga 24-year-old caseworker to criticize his or her money management style?

Another determinant of staff-sanctioned capital is the way in whicha client understands his or her housing loss. The client who takes per-sonal responsibility for that loss paradoxically earns more symbolic cap-ital from the staff than the client who identifies other people (or im-personal social forces) as its cause. Perhaps the client who admitspersonal responsibility is understood to be more willing to learn frompast mistakes, or perhaps shelter caseworkers espouse an ethic of per-sonal responsibility that centers on patterns of action (e.g., money man-agement habits) within their clients’ own scope of influence, ratherthan on macroscopic forces such as declines in affordable housing stockor neighborhood gentrification. (The view that homeless shelter clientsare to blame for their own homelessness is a prevalent one among sheltercaseworkers.) In her study of homeless women and the shelter industry,Jean Williams (2003, 59) affirms, “Shelters do not ignore low-incomehousing shortages or the value of the minimum wage as reasons forhomelessness, but many of the most important facets of their programsaddress the perceived behaviors of the homeless. Dysfunctional behaviorsare believed to have been instrumental in the process of becominghomeless” (emphasis in original). Amy Dworsky and Irving Piliavin(2000, 212) also note that this “individual deficits framework assumesthat people become homeless because they possess or lack certain at-tributes . . . which can include personal disabilities or human capitaldeficiencies.”29 The homeless shelter client who accepts responsibilityfor his or her housing loss accrues more staff-sanctioned capital. Shel-ter staff identify such a client as easy to work with and as someonewho will be easy to place in housing. Should this client prove difficultto place in housing, staff often argue to the DHS that he or she shouldbe allowed to remain in the shelter beyond the time limits specifiedin that shelter’s policy, pointing to external reasons for the delay.30

Discourse analyses of clinical staff meeting minutes, along with in-depth interviews of caseworkers or observation of shelter interactions,would provide researchers with illuminating insights into how certainclients acquire large amounts of staff-sanctioned capital and the im-plications of such capital.

A client’s access to staff-sanctioned capital is also determined by theways in which that client understands his or her caseworker and theshelter. Good clients, those with a large endowment of such capital, tendto treat the shelter with a certain attitude of grateful reverence, behavingmuch like a guest in someone else’s home. They help to keep the shelterclean, complain only when absolutely necessary, try to frame complaints


as requests or suggestions, and avoid making negative statements aboutthe shelter facility and staff. Clients are expected to make themselvesat home within a shelter and yet not to become too comfortable.31 Incontrast to good clients, their more challenging counterparts engagein behaviors and statements suggesting permanent residency; they com-municate or behave in ways that indicate that they have little intentionof leaving in a timely manner. Other clients identified by shelter staffas problematic are those who treat the facility like a prison and its stafflike guards, those who are loud and disruptive, those who vandalize,those who frequently complain about the quality and quantity of ser-vices, and those who similarly complain about provisions. These chal-lenging clients treat caseworkers not as counselors or guides but asscapegoats or servants; for example, a client might be heard saying tohis or her caseworker: “You’re my social worker; you’re supposed towork for me.” They regard the shelter not as a temporary safe havenbut as a permanent home or as a prison. Some shelter clients, thosewith little prior experience as recipients of social services, also see them-selves as different from the rest of the shelter clients. This attitude resultsin requests for special privileges, such as increased access to the case-worker, leniency concerning curfews, or indulgence when they bendshelter rules. The more successful such clients were prior to their shelterexperience, the less able they often are to accept their present circum-stances or to receive help from someone whose experience and trainingthey view with skepticism. Often they act as if they know more thantheir caseworker and can do the worker’s job, in fact, better than thecaseworker can.

While more challenging types of clients may not gain for themselvesmuch staff-sanctioned capital, it is nonetheless possible for them togarner a large amount of client-sanctioned capital. This is a second typeof symbolic capital operative inside the field of homeless shelter clients.Unlike staff-sanctioned capital, however, client-sanctioned capital is gen-erated and bestowed entirely by other shelter clients. Client-sanctionedcapital flows to those who directly and routinely challenge shelter staff,rules, and structure. Clients who garner large volumes of such capitalare those who are strong advocates for themselves and others withinthe shelter environment. They become known inside the shelter as per-sons to consult when a caseworker is not being helpful, when a clienthas been denied a weekend pass, or when a client does not think thathe or she is getting a fair shake regarding housing appointments.32

Sometimes these bearers of client-sanctioned capital take the lead inurging their peers to refuse currently available housing appointments,encouraging them instead to wait for subsidized Section 8 or New YorkNew York (NYNY) housing.33 In providing such advice, these influentialclients forfeit their own chance to earn staff-sanctioned capital in favorof accumulating the esteem of their fellow clients. Since they often


complain to shelter advocacy groups both within and without the shelter,they are seen by the shelter staff as challenging and difficult. These arethe clients with connections. Some can quote the Callahan decree frommemory and are on a first-name basis with staff at the Coalition for theHomeless.34 They may even have earned the coveted title of sheltermonitor. This is a high-status volunteer position with the coalition. Itallows them on-the-spot inspection access to any shelter (other than theone in which they are residing) in search of infractions of the Callahandecree. By contrast, those clients who separate themselves from otherclients or who adopt an attitude of superiority do not accrue such client-sanctioned capital.

In homeless shelters, clients with large endowments of either type ofcapital may be on the fast track to housing. In the first instance, clientswho have accrued staff-sanctioned capital may move through the shelterquickly because of preferential treatment. Such treatment may result inweekend passes, easier access to caseworkers, and recommendations forhousing. Clients with large amounts of client-sanctioned capital, con-versely and paradoxically, may also move quickly through the shelterbecause staff are anxious to get them out of that environment, wheretheir perspectives and conduct may have a negative influence uponother clients. Shelter staff are very cognizant of the effects that chal-lenging clients can have upon other clients. Shelter environments arenot static but always evolving and dynamic contexts, and the presenceof putatively difficult clients can affect matters in sometimes significantand dramatic ways. At bottom, what is most troubling to the shelterstaff is the tendency of those clients who are well-endowed in client-sanctioned capital (or who aim to accumulate it) to seek to delegiti-mate the officially sanctioned rules of shelter life. In Bourdieu’s (1994)terms, such clients seek to transform “the representation of this worldwhich contributes to its reality” by denouncing the “tacit contract ofadherence to the established order which defines the original doxa”of that space (127–28). This strategy of action among so-called difficultclients undercuts the staff-sanctioned recognition enjoyed by certain oftheir counterparts. It also makes it all but inevitable that the shelterstaff will move these difficult individuals on or at least make a seriouseffort (official regulations permitting) to do so.

Empirical Illustrations

The configuration of the field of homeless shelter clients can be effec-tively illustrated through a series of composite profiles. These sketchesare fictional constructs that combine individual client characteristicswith stylized background features and narrative trajectories drawn frommultiple homeless (and formerly homeless) individuals. In order toprotect subjects’ confidentiality, pseudonyms are used throughout.


These composite sketches are meant to illustrate the different kinds ofpersons who occupy key positions within the space of homeless clients.The profiles are also meant to demonstrate that length of shelter stayand pattern of shelter use are inadequate criteria for understanding thedivision of the homeless client field.

Ben, an example of a client well-endowed with staff-sanctioned capital.—Benlost his housing when he lost his job; he worked for a restaurant equip-ment company, but the firm downsized. For 4 years, he has been in andout of most of the adult shelters available for men. Ben has two grownchildren with whom he is in touch only a few times a year. They resenthis divorce from their mother and his subsequent remarriage; Ben char-acterizes his relationship with them as, “okay but not close.” He has anumber of extended family members in the area, but, having stayedwith many of them for a few weeks to a month at a time, he has effectivelyworn out his welcome. At age 47, Ben is too young for subsidized apart-ments for adults over the age of 50 and must settle for single-roomoccupancy (SRO) housing. He finds its cramped quarters, shared bath-room, and shared kitchen to be very unpleasant. After 6 years in recoveryfor alcohol addiction, he also does not care for the drinking or evidenceof drug use that he encounters in these converted welfare hotels, andalthough he reports that he has increased the number of AlcoholicsAnonymous meetings he attends each week, he feels that these de-pressingly edgy, unsafe housing environments threaten his sobriety. Hefrequently leaves these SRO placements, returning to his previousshelter.35

Ben is a people person. Shelter staff and many of his fellow clientsenjoy his company when he is in the building, and he usually findssomething complimentary to say to his caseworkers. He routinely praisesthe shelter director for imposing strict rules and for running a tightship. These rules, he informs her, help everyone there to feel safe. Theyalso support his own efforts to stay sober. Shelter staff wish that moreof their clients were like Ben. Shelter clients, by contrast, like him wellenough, but some see him as more than a little annoying. Ben hasfigured out how to play the game. He follows shelter rules, is friendlyand engaging with staff, praises the director for how he or she runs theshelter, and provides compelling reasons why substandard housing isnot for him. This client is endowed with enough staff-sanctioned capitalto stay on at the shelter until he becomes old enough for senior housing(age 50) or to move into an apartment if shelter staff manage to locateone of the scarce studio or one-bedroom apartments sometimes madeavailable to single adults.

Charlotte, an example of a client well-endowed with client-sanctioned capi-tal.—Charlotte was evicted from her apartment after having one toomany conflicts with her landlord. She had allowed her nephew to staywith her, which was against her lease, and had stopped paying rent in


the meantime because the landlord had failed to replace a rotten bath-room floor. In fact, she had filed a civil suit against the landlord forfailing to keep the premises in good repair. In court, the judge orderedthe landlord to make repairs. However, Charlotte was unable to pay thepast rent she owed, so the landlord evicted her for failing to pay thatrent and for having a guest in excess of the 14-day period allowed underher lease. Charlotte sent her daughter to stay with the child’s grand-mother and entered the shelter system. All of Charlotte’s furniture wentinto a storage locker, and the bill for her storage exceeded her monthlySupplemental Security Income check.

Charlotte resents her caseworker and does not hesitate to tell her so:“If you really wanted to help me, you’d find me an apartment I canafford and get my storage bill paid!” Charlotte also frequently challengesthe shelter director for what she views as draconian rules and policies,often breaking them defiantly. She enjoys engaging the other clients inconversation over cards and often offers them assistance with their prob-lems. She tells them, “You ought to sue; that’s what I’m going to do!Make those bastards pay!” Charlotte has connections, she tells the otherclients, and she is not afraid of using them. This helps her to earn alarge volume of client-sanctioned capital. Clients like her because sheis funny, forthright, and on their side. She says the things to staff thatclients are thinking but are afraid to say. Staff members are eager tosee Charlotte leave the shelter program as quickly as possible. She poi-sons the well with her loud pronouncements during mealtimes, and sheintimidates her caseworker. Indeed, this is Charlotte’s third shelter in6 months. Shelter directors have been transferring her like a hot potatoto their unsuspecting colleagues at other shelters. She may even windup with one of the scarce studio or one-bedroom apartments, just toensure that this litigiously minded woman goes on her way.

Leo, an example of a client lacking in either type of capital.—Over the last6 years, Leo has been in a few men’s shelters but has never chosen tostay more than a few days at a time. This temporary status has preventedshelter staff from getting a full picture of his history and from providingthe kind of assistance that might help him to find permanent housing.Leo’s employment history is filled with short-lived, part-time, and tem-porary jobs, such as sweeping stores or stocking shelves. He sometimesreceives a general relief income from income maintenance centers, buthe hates having to comply with the work (usually on street-sweepingteams) that these centers assign him; in fact, he is frequently a no-showand has to negotiate to get his general relief case reopened.

When not sleeping on trains, Leo uses drop-in centers for hot meals,showers, and a place to obtain clean clothing. There is no warm rela-tionship between this client and the shelter system. Leo thinks thatshelters are too much about rules and resents their insistence on plan-ning for the future: “I take things as they come. What good is planning?


Nothing ever turns out right anyhow.” Leo’s cynical outlook is reinforceddaily by the difficulties he encounters living on the street: the delin-quents who pick on him for sport, the police who hassle him, and thepublic at large who react to him, if not with avoidance, then with visibledisgust. Unsurprisingly, Leo acts the part of the kicked dog. When in adrop-in center, he becomes easily annoyed with the staff and clientsalike. On good days he mumbles profanity and sarcastic comments, whileon the more volatile days he calls people out. Most fellow clients donot take up Leo’s invitations to fight, but his behavior does often resultin temporary suspensions from drop-in centers. His behavior also makeshim an unlikely candidate for referral to one of those relatively moreprivileged shelters that are steeped in the capital of order.

Implications for Research and Practice

This essay has now illustrated what a Bourdieu-inspired analysis of thefield of homeless services might look like. With this discussion in mind,it is possible to assess the implications of such an approach for socialwork research and practice. With respect to research, several substantive,theoretical, and methodological points are worth mention. To beginwith, this approach to research contributes a new way to analyze home-less shelters and those who consume shelter services. It moves beyondpreconstructed categories, however deeply ingrained they may be in theminds of shelter workers, clients, and other actors within the field, andsuggests an alternative understanding that captures more compellinglythe objective principles of division actually operative within and effectualacross that social universe. It understands the field of homeless servicesas a space of contestation in which heretofore little-recognized stakes(those of order and authenticity on the side of production and of staff-and client-sanctioned recognition on the side of consumption) all playa crucial role. In this way, it helps to underscore the importance of field-specific struggles over power within the world of social work. Much ofsubstantive value is also to be gained from exploring the interconnec-tions among the two constituent spaces of this object of study: the fieldsof homeless shelters and of homeless clients. Such a dual inquiry helpsto illuminate the structural homologies that obtain across these distinctsocial microcosms. It also enables researchers to recognize the “per-manent dialectic” (Bourdieu 1996a, 249) between the needs of differ-ently positioned clients and the services provided by homologously po-sitioned shelters. These substantive contributions can also be extendedto other regions and sectors of what has been called the broader “welfarefield” (Peillon 2001, 1).

No one doubts, of course, that the societal tensions prominent withinthe social space as a whole, including tensions based in class, race, orgender, remain salient within this field of homeless services. Such a view


is entirely consistent with Bourdieu’s own perspective. His later writingsinclude, in fact, many wide-ranging critiques of neoliberalism, amongthem an ethnography (Bourdieu et al. 1999) of the social sufferingcaused by the retrenchment of the modern welfare state. For Bourdieu,social universes at the mesolevel of analysis can never be understood inisolation from their broader historical context, which includes suchmacrolevel spaces as the economic field, the field of bureaucratic pow-ers, and (especially) the societal field of power. Yet one must also bearin mind that the impact of these larger societal configurations, oftendiscussed under the rubric of social control, is always refracted “throughthe specific mediation of the specific forms and forces” of more delim-ited fields (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 105). For example, the struc-tures and dynamics of the field of homeless services profoundly affecthow larger societal influences come to be expressed within it. Bourdieuconcedes that the “mechanical metaphor” (1996b, 220) of refraction,which appears frequently in his work, is only partially satisfactory, buthe adds that it has the merit at least of “banish[ing] from the mind theeven more inappropriate model of reflection” (220). If one denies toless encompassing spaces this capacity for refraction of broader influ-ences, then one runs the risk of committing the “short-circuit fallacy”of “passing directly from what is produced in the social world to whatis produced in the [more specific] field” (Bourdieu 1996a, 248).

The substantive strengths of Bourdieu’s approach are owed in con-siderable part to its highly distinctive way of addressing social scienceproblems. In particular, it pays close attention to the structural prop-erties of fields or spaces as distributions of capital. Empirical researchin social work has much to gain from field analyses that take seriouslythe task of mapping relational configurations, such as the spaces thatare at the core of all Bourdieuian inquiry. Random sampling and re-gression analysis, by contrast, nearly always have difficulty grasping whatis of greatest concern here, namely, the relational structures of thoseobjects. (The authors thus concur with William Borden’s assessmentthat the “critical issues facing social work at present involve not onlyconfirmation or disconfirmation . . . but exploration of basic questionsas to how and in what ways differing models, metaphors, and narrativesfoster the helping process” [Borden 1992, 469].) Fields and capital mayindeed be studied formally, as Bourdieu demonstrates by deploying thetechniques of correspondence analysis in many of his writings (e.g.,1984, 1996b).36 Other formal approaches at the dominated pole of thespace of methodologies, approaches not used by Bourdieu himself butbelonging to the same family, might also be used; these include socialnetwork analysis, Galois lattice analysis, and sequence analysis (for asurvey, see Mohr and Franzosi 1997). But even if not formalized, as isthe case with the authors’ own analyses above, relational inquiry canstill prove helpful for the attention it directs toward analytic themes


such as structural positionality, objective divisions between dominantand dominated sectors of a space, and the structural homologies amongfields. Such inquiry promises to generate new, substantive, and usefulinsights into the structures of power that are of fundamental concernto social workers.

Analyses of the spaces or relational configurations that are yielded bythis type of inquiry have the further benefit of not being purely staticin nature. The dichotomy between statics and dynamics is a false one,and the fields discussed in this article are hardly the inert structuresthat such a dichotomization would lead one to assume. Field analysis iscertainly synchronic in the sense that it maps out an array of positions,the occupants of those positions, and the pattern of their relations withone another, a pattern shaped, in turn, by the overall distribution ofcapitals within that space. Yet field analysis is also diachronic in thesense that it helps one to gauge the strategies of action that actors withina field are likely to pursue, depending upon their respective positionswithin that space. It makes possible specification of a number of actionsequences likely to be prominent in field dynamics, not only the con-servation and subversion strategies likely to recur in most fields but alsosubsidiary ones specific only to certain kinds of fields. For example, inthe field of homeless services, it directs attention to shelters’ selectiveinvocation of the right of refusal and to their imposition of organiza-tional rules and procedures. Such processes are all causal mechanismsthat help researchers better to understand how power operates, bothwithin fields in general and within the kinds of spaces of concern tosocial work in particular.

Relevant to the analysis of processes and sequences of general scopeis the habitus, that system of dispositions that serves as the generativesource of so many of these action strategies (rational calculation playinga lesser role). In the preceding analysis of the space of homeless clients,the discussion touched briefly upon the role of the habitus in orientingthese clients toward one or another of the field’s major regions; theirhabitus makes them more or less likely to (seek to) accumulate thespecific capitals around which that field is structured.37 Bourdieu pro-vides some useful insights into how best to study the habitus and strat-egies of action of differently situated actors, stressing that analysis shouldbe conducted “on the basis of a construction that determines the choiceof objects and of pertinent characteristics” (Bourdieu 1990b, 160). Inparticular, he advises ethnographic researchers to focus upon cases sit-uated in regions that are located far away from one another but withinthe space at hand; he recommends, in other words, that they focusselectively upon cases located in key positions such as the dominant,dominated, and intermediate sectors of the space. He also recommendsdividing the dominant sector into subregions, as an internal field ofpower (this is the approach pursued above). Alternatively, Bourdieu


suggests comparing a small number of cases all within the same subspaceor sector. Both lines of inquiry promise to shed light on the innerdynamics of fields, perhaps also illuminating the processes whereby suchhomologous spaces as those of production and consumption (e.g., ofhomeless services) manage, in “a coincidence so miraculous” (Bourdieu1996a, 162), to adjust themselves to one another.

Bourdieu summarizes his approach as “a method whose aim is to setup a dialectic between the general and the particular, which alone mayenable one to reconcile the general and synoptic view demanded bythe construction of the overall structure with the close-up, finely detailedview” (Bourdieu 1990b, 160). Field analysis, as he envisions it, seeks toundercut altogether the false opposition between particularizing andgeneralizing modes of social inquiry. Single-case studies can add to theproject of developing a more comprehensive account of the invariantproperties of all fields, facilitating the construction of a general theoryof fields. Such a general theory, perhaps the ultimate goal of all ofBourdieu’s work, would offer an account not only of what makes dif-ferent kinds of spaces distinctive but also of the fundamental featuresthat all of these spaces share. Its implications for social work would beconsiderable. By the extension of Bourdieu’s approach to other socialservice systems, it would be possible to develop a theoretical frameworkthat would unify the whole literature of social work. Whether studyingyoung people or old, family structures or the criminal justice system,one would always be working to elaborate a unitary theory that spansthe entire discipline.

This ambitious research enterprise has implications, however, notonly for the theory but also for the practice of social work. As socialworkers intervene in private homes, prisons, work settings, and thebroader community, a relational and field-analytic perspective can helpthem better to understand the external forces assigning, as it were, totheir particular case some of its pertinent properties. It can also givethem comparative purchase on the sometimes bewildering complex-ities, challenges, and difficulties, seemingly so very idiosyncratic, ofthe cases that they seek to tackle: “Nothing is more universal and moreuniversalizable than difficulties” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 218).Finally, knowing what mechanisms of domination and legitimation areencountered in their practice can empower social workers in theirpractical efforts to target or nullify those mechanisms. Power operatesthrough field-specific processes and dynamics; recognizing those pro-cesses and dynamics can advance practical efforts aimed at social trans-formation. This is especially the case when power dynamics reach intothe innermost tendencies and dispositions of clients’ habitus. As Bour-dieu often observes, the reshaping of the habitus can require arduousand lengthy labor, like an athlete’s training. Nevertheless, social workpractitioners can at least benefit from the insight that the potentialities


residing within the habitus spring into action only when awakened ortriggered by structures of domination somehow reminiscent of the onesthat originally produced that habitus. “Just as one should not say thata window broke because a stone hit it, but that it broke, when the stonehit it, because it was breakable, similarly, as can been seen with particularclarity when an insignificant, apparently fortuitous event unleashes enor-mous consequences that are bound to appear disproportionate to allthose who have different habitus, one should not say that a historicalevent determined a behavior but that it had this determining effectbecause a habitus capable of being affected by that event conferred thatpower upon it” (Bourdieu 2000, 148–49; emphasis in original). Suchan insight promises to benefit social work practitioners by renderingmore comprehensible to them certain behaviors that would otherwisegive the appearance of being thoroughly random, unpredictable, oreven self-defeating.

Conclusion

This generative reading of Bourdieu has attempted creatively to trans-pose his ideas, developed in relation to the discipline of sociology, ontoa new intellectual and professional terrain. Such a reading will succeedonly if the effort adds a fresh voice to ongoing debates over how bestto do social work, both as a science and as a practical endeavor. Theperspective elucidated here does not promise to lead to research find-ings or practical orientations that are in every instance new to socialwork. It does, however, offer a unique way of drawing together insightsthat have already been explored by others and of setting those insightswithin a more comprehensive and unitary framework. This approachalso identifies potentially fruitful alternative avenues both for empiricalresearch and for practical intervention.

ReferencesAmerican Psychiatric Association. 1994. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

(DSM-IV). 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Borden, William. 1992. “Comments on ‘Theories of Kernberg and Kohut: Issues of Sci-

entific Validation.’” Social Service Review 66 (3): 467–70.Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. Algeria 1960, translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.———. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, translated by Richard

Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.———. 1990a. “‘Fieldwork in Philosophy.’” 3–33 in In Other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive

Sociology, translated by Matthew Adamson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.———. 1990b. “Programme for a Sociology of Sport.” 156–67 in In Other Words: Essays

towards a Reflexive Sociology, translated by Matthew Adamson. Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

———. 1993. “Some Properties of Fields.” 72–77 in Sociology in Question, translated byRichard Nice. London: Sage.

———. 1994. “Description and Prescription.” 127–36 in Language and Symbolic Power, edited


by John B. Thompson and translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

———. 1996a. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, translated by SusanEmanuel. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

———. 1996b. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, translated by Lauretta C.Clough. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

———. 1998. On Television, translated by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson. New York: NewPress.

———. 2000. Pascalian Meditations, translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre, Alain Accardo, Gabrielle Balazs, Stephane Beaud, Francois Bonvin, Em-manuel Bourdieu, Philippe Bourgois, et al. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social Sufferingin Contemporary Society, translated by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Susan Emanuel, JoeJohnson, and Shoggy T. Waryn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loıc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Campbell, Gordon J., and Elizabeth McCarthy. 2000. “Conveying Mission through Out-come Measurement: Services to the Homeless in New York City.” Policy Studies Journal28 (2): 338–52.

Coalition for the Homeless. 2003. “A History of Modern Homelessness in New York City.”Report. Coalition for the Homeless, New York. http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/downloads/NYCHomelessnessHistory.pdf.

Desjarlais, Robert. 1997. Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood among the Homeless. Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press.

Dordick, Gwendolyn A. 1996. “More than Refuge: The Social World of a Homeless Shelter.”Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24 (4): 373–404.

Dworsky, Amy Lynn, and Irving Piliavin. 2000. “Homeless Spell Exits and Returns: Sub-stantive and Methodological Elaborations on Recent Studies.” Social Service Review 74(2): 193–213.

Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” American Journal of So-ciology 103 (2): 281–317.

Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Jeff Goodwin. 1994. “Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problemof Agency.” American Journal of Sociology 99 (6): 1411–54.

Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Victoria S. Johnson. 2004. “Bourdieu and Organizational Anal-ysis.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association,San Francisco, August 17.

Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Ann Mische. 1998. “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology103 (4): 962–1023.

Fram, Maryah Stella. 2004. “Research for Progressive Change: Bourdieu and Social Work.”Social Service Review 78 (4): 553–76.

Hopper, Kim. 1998. “Housing the Homeless.” Social Policy 28 (3): 64–68.———. 2003. Reckoning with Homelessness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Mohr, John W., and Roberto Franzosi, eds. 1997. “Special Double Issue on New Directions

in Formalization and Historical Analysis.” Special issue, Theory and Society 26 (2–3).New York City, Department of Homeless Services. n.d. “Emerging Trends in Client Dem-

ographics Policy and Planning.” Report. New York Department of Homeless Services,New York. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dhs/downloads/pdf/demographic.pdf (ac-cessed June 9, 2005).

Passaro, Joanne. 1996. The Unequal Homeless: Men on the Streets, Women in Their Place. NewYork: Routledge.

Peillon, Michel. 2001. Welfare in Ireland: Actors, Resources, and Strategies. Westport, CT:Praeger.

Piliavin, Irving, Michael R. Sosin, Alex H. Westerfelt, and Ross L. Matsueda. 1993. “TheDuration of Homeless Careers: An Exploratory Study.” Social Service Review 67 (4):576–98.

Savas, E. S. 2002. “Competition and Choice in New York City Social Services.” PublicAdministration Review 62 (1): 82–91.

Schutt, Russell K., and Gerald R. Garrett. 1992. Responding to the Homeless: Policy and Practice.New York: Plenum.


Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1978. Theoretical Methods in Social History. New York: AcademicPress.

Tilly, Charles. 1998. Durable Inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press.Weber, Max. 1946. “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions.” 323–59 in

From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. WrightMills. New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, Jean Calterone. 2003. “A Roof over My Head”: Homeless Women and the ShelterIndustry. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Notes

This essay is equally coauthored. Mentions in the text of “the second author of thisarticle” refer to alphabetical order only.

1. These are two constituent components of the field of homeless services, in much thesame way that heads and tails are two constituent components of a coin. In a slightlydifferent context (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 105), Bourdieu speaks of “two transla-tions of the same sentence” to convey a similar idea. More will be said about the relationbetween these fields of production and of consumption later in the article.

2. The term “node” is used here (and conceptualized by Bourdieu) much as it commonlyappears in social network analysis, as a point within a relational configuration.

3. One of the few studies in social work that focuses squarely upon Bourdieu, that byMaryah Fram (2004), devotes especially close attention to his concept of social capital,exploring its applicability to poverty research.

4. “What is sure,” Bourdieu writes, “is that, within certain limits, symbolic structureshave an altogether extraordinary power” (Bourdieu 1990a, 18). Bourdieu is not alwaysconsistent, however, in his statements regarding the relation between the symbolic andthe social. He sometimes seems to privilege the latter over the former. We leave thisimportant conceptual difficulty to the side in what follows.

5. Bourdieu uses such terms as “temporal” and “spiritual” because they allow him todraw a deep analogy, as Arthur Stinchcombe (1978) would have it, between economicand cultural capital holders in the present day (the major antagonistic powers of contem-porary society) and the bellators and oratores (warriors and priests) of medieval Europe(and hence to gesture at a possible transhistorical invariance among all fields of power).

6. Bourdieu takes pains not to blame the victim: “If it is fitting to recall,” he notes, “thatthe dominated always contribute to their own domination, it is at once necessary to recallthat the dispositions that incline them toward this complicity are themselves the effect,embodied, of domination” (Bourdieu 1996b, 4).

7. The limitations of such an approach are numerous and include the unreliability ofhuman memory. Further empirical study is thus needed both of the field of homelessservices in New York City and of similar fields in other locales.

8. The process of constructing the object that is described below relies more upon aprogressive questioning and refining of initial intuitions than upon an amassing of freshempirical evidence. In the vast majority of cases, however, such a process involves bothtypes of operations to some degree.

9. Of course, social service providers working with children enjoy possibilities for ac-cumulating capital not available to those working exclusively with adults, since childrenare considered more vulnerable. But while this might support the claim that there is aclear advantage to being part of the family system as opposed to the adult system, theauthors reject this claim because of the range of reputations of shelters within both thefamily and the single-adult shelter system. In other words, some family shelters have rep-utations clearly inferior to others that similarly provide services to families.

10. The expression “poisoned-well effect” refers to the effect of some persons’ negativestatements upon the opinions of others.

11. The second author’s experience in the field fully supports this claim. This articlewill refrain, however, from naming specific private shelters with negative reputations. Suchshelters may well have improved their programs since the late 1990s, when the secondauthor worked in the city’s shelter system. A variety of sources (e.g., Callahan inspectionreports put out by the Coalition for the Homeless, case records and activity logs of par-


ticular shelters, and incident reports that shelters are required to file with the DHS) arereadily available for investigating this question in greater depth.

12. It should be pointed out that, as a white administrator, the second author may nothave been privy to conversations about race that occurred between nonwhite individualsat her shelter or between individuals located below her in the shelter’s managementstructure. Opportunities thus clearly remain for the issue of race to be explored morefully.

13. Homeless shelters are always competing with one another to make housing place-ments. Race would be the major principle of division among them only if those shelterswith a predominantly white clientele derived symbolic capital from having a much easiertime of placing their clients in housing. Paradoxically, however, nothing could be furtherfrom the truth. The easiest clients to place in housing are those who qualify for some sortof specialized housing, such as housing for families, housing for older adults, housing forpeople with disabilities, and so forth. That specialized housing often is located in nonwhiteor economically deprived areas deemed undesirable by many clients. Indeed, clients ofcolor frequently seem to be the most willing to accept available housing in such areas,moving, e.g., to the South Bronx or Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods.

14. It is important here to consider both workers’ perceptions and shelters’ rates ofplacement success. Difficult clients, those whom no one else wants, often wind up at theless capital-rich shelters, and those shelters are often forced to accept them, in large partbecause of the comparative brevity of their waiting lists. Dominant shelters, with theirgood reputations among workers at other shelters, are able to handpick their clients, whohave to join a waiting list to get in. But shelters without a positive reputation are unlikelyto have clients waiting to get in from the assessment shelters and are consequently requiredby the DHS to accept the less desirable clients. (“Keep the beds full at all times” was, inthe second author’s experience of New York City shelters, an injunction taken seriouslyby all shelters interested in maintaining a right of refusal.) Thus, the less capital-richshelters end up with clients difficult to place in housing. This, in turn, results in problemswith the DHS, whose staff are always pushing for quick housing placements.

15. Campbell and McCarthy (2000, 347) describe New York City drop-in centers as “24-hour centers offering showers, meals, and some social service programs, [which] deal witha more transient, less stable population who are not suitable for, or do not want to livein, a shelter setting.” The DHS distinguishes these drop-in centers from shelters on thegrounds that the former do not provide beds, while the latter do. However, a morecomprehensive use of the term “shelter” to describe a location where the homeless canescape the elements and receive services seems appropriate for the purposes of this article.The authors’ use of the term “shelters” (as well as “field of shelters”) should thus beunderstood to include drop-in centers.

16. New York City’s DHS does not make the kind of distinction between transitionaland overnight shelters that one sometimes finds in other cities. All assessed clients areassigned a homeless assistance number that is used to track them throughout the system.Once assessed, a client is assigned a bed at a general or specialized (transitional) shelterprogram. This eliminates the need for clients to line up each afternoon outside of shelters,as is the practice in other cities. Only clients who have failed to arrive at their assignedshelter by curfew (9:00 p.m.) face the possibility of losing their bed, and even then theyremain the responsibility of their assigned shelter until an official shelter transfer hasbeen completed.

17. These were GDH’s policies circa 1999. They may have changed since that time.18. Shelters are required by the DHS to assist in the formation of internal client advisory

boards. The Coalition for the Homeless is a not-for-profit external shelter advocacy groupin New York City. It seeks to monitor shelters and the activities of city government onbehalf of homeless people.

19. It is not the case that the client population is simply too large for assessments tobe undertaken right away, nor do the staff try to deflect less desirable clients by postponingassessments. The reason that staff assess clients only after two–four visits is that staff seetheir time as better spent on time-consuming assessment interviews only if it seems likelythat the client will continue to return to the drop-in center for assistance.

20. What is significant here is the collective opinion of others in the field, in this caseworkers at other shelters, homeless advocates, and DHS administrators. It is through the


perceptions of others that the capital of authenticity can be understood to be gained orlost.

21. By the true mission of social work is meant the ideal of serving as an altruistic helperwhose clients deeply appreciate the assistance provided. The authors hypothesize that bothsocial workers and lay social service workers subscribe to this ideal and take pride in theirwork. When the work falls short of this ideal, they feel cheated at having a thankless job.

22. Order-rich shelters are typically in a good position to earn their right of refusal incontract negotiations with the DHS precisely because of the positive relations they alreadymaintain with that organization. Notice, however, that this raises the question of how theseshelters gain their favorable attributes in the first place. Although this is a topic that fallsoutside the purview of the present study, the authors speculate that at least part of theanswer lies in the habitus of the individuals responsible for those shelters’ creation andenduring culture. For example, in the case of GDH, the core group of individuals re-sponsible for the creation of its parent organization, New York Foundation for SeniorCitizens, were women and men with a particular set of dispositions and orientations towardoperating a nonprofit social service organization that proved highly conducive to theaccumulation of symbolic capital. Imposing a top-down management style and a dresscode to rival those of any bank or corporate law office, they set the tone early on of aformal organization capable of delivering services in a businesslike, orderly fashion. Com-parative analyses of the founders of social service agencies and of their habitus (with aspecial focus on members of their initial boards of directors) would lead to a clearerunderstanding of those agencies’ later trajectories. So, too, would studies of how theinternal cultures of these agencies are perpetuated over time.

23. For a discussion of this practice of image or reputation protection through exerciseof the right of refusal, known within the New York City shelter system as creaming, seeCampbell and McCarthy (2000).

24. Here the authors do not mean to suggest that capital is accumulated solely on thebasis of the opinions of the DHS and of the Coalition for the Homeless. However, it wasthe second author’s experience that shelter administrators feared the opinion makerswithin both these organizations because a shelter that was not in their good graces couldexpect more frequent inspections as well as greater difficulties during contract renewalnegotiations.

25. For an example of the use of this distinction, see New York City, Department ofHomeless Services (n.d.).

26. The limitations of this data again include the unreliability of memory. They includeas well possible biases stemming from the second author’s position of relative authoritywithin the shelter where she worked. It is hoped that readers will recall that the empiricalevidence presented here is intended to stimulate a theoretical reconceptualization of socialwork research rather than to generate definitive findings.

27. The authors refer here to the distinction that New York City’s DHS makes betweenchronic and episodic clients. This distinction stresses the difference between long-termstayers and frequent returners. Some researchers (e.g., Piliavin et al. 1993) have failed tofind significant differences between these two categories of homeless.

28. Addressing client needs for social support, while clearly important, is thus no sub-stitute for community work designed to address the broader issues of improving access toaffordable housing, employment security, and comprehensive health care. For a discussionof such issues faced by advocates of housing for the homeless, see Hopper (1998).

29. Dworsky and Piliavin (2000, 212) define personal disabilities as physical healthproblems, serious mental illness, and dependency on alcohol or other drugs and humancapital deficiencies as low educational attainment, lack of vocational skills, and a marginalemployment history.

30. It was the second author’s experience that time limits varied according to sheltertype and the DHS contract agreement. For example, some transitional shelter programswere expected to move clients into housing within a 6-month time frame.

31. When homeless clients are in a shelter longer than 6 months, they face the possibilityof a transfer to a less desirable shelter. This potential of a shelter transfer is used by shelterstaff to get clients to accept less desirable transitional housing placement options, suchas an SRO room.

32. In the New York City homeless services system, housing appointments are providedto clients after a multistage process. Caseworkers first complete a housing packet to rec-


ommend the client for housing. This packet is sent to a central office where it is processed,and the information is then forwarded to housing providers, often nonprofit agenciesproviding various types of transitional housing. These agencies then call on the sheltercaseworker or housing specialist to set up interview appointments for the client. Housingspecialists also try to develop relationships with independent landlords and may be ableto obtain additional appointments for clients.

33. These forms of housing more often mean an apartment than an SRO space andare considered more permanent. However, the public housing projects known as NewYork New York (NYNY) have long waiting lists, while Section 8 vouchers, which providea rent subsidy for privately owned rental units, are made available only at select times ofthe year. Tensions arise between clients and shelter staff because, in accepting availableSRO housing, a client risks losing priority status on the waiting list for placement in aNYNY housing project or may not be in a shelter when the Section 8 vouchers are awarded.

34. The Callahan consent decree is a legally binding agreement signed in 1981 betweenthe State of New York and homeless plaintiffs represented by the Coalition for the Home-less. The decree specifies the standards for minimum shelter provisions set by the landmarkcase of Callahan v. Carey, N.Y.L.J. (December 11, 1979) at 10, col. 4 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., December5, 1979). It specifies the shelter provisions and services that must be provided to personsseeking shelter in New York City. For example, the Callahan decree makes it illegal for ahomeless shelter in the city to have clients sleeping on mattresses with holes, on bedspushed too closely together, or in spaces lacking adequate ventilation.

35. New York City’s DHS considers clients homeless when they reside in any of theshelter facilities and domiciled when they have a nonshelter address, such as an SRO unit.

36. Correspondence analysis is a method that permits the plotting of a two-dimensionalrepresentation of the interrelationships among multiple sets of elements. Its advantage isthat it allows one to grasp intuitively, in terms of spatial distribution upon a map, formalpatterns of relationships among elements of a particular order, while simultaneously seeinghow these are arrayed relative to similar patternings on the other order of socialphenomena.

37. When discussing the space of production of homeless services, too, the authorscould have spoken of the organizational habitus of different shelters within that space,although they refrained from extending the concept in that fashion so as to avoid thepitfalls of reification; on this point, see Emirbayer and Johnson (2004).

Documents

Bourdieu and Social Work