The spectacle of the poor. Or: 'Wow!! Awesome. Nice to know that people care!'

Lancione, Michele ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9018-3562 2014. The spectacle of the poor. Or: 'Wow!! Awesome. Nice to know that people care!'. Social & Cultural Geography 15 (7) , pp. 693-713. 10.1080/14649365.2014.916742

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

On the night of 14 November 2012, a police officer of the New York Police Department encountered a homeless person while performing his duties around Times Square. He gave him a pair of boots and while doing so, he was photographed by a tourist. The photo was posted on Facebook, receiving in a few days more than 1.6 million visits. The paper unfolds the reasons why this particular image and story have gone, as the media has put it, ‘viral’. The paper investigates the spaces that have emerged in the media elongation of DePrimo's practice of care and, introducing the notion of ‘spectacle of the poor’, it argues that this specific case simplifies the dominant western framings around matter of ‘caring for the poor’. The political and cultural consequences of these framings are investigated, and reflections on how to tackle them provided.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis
ISSN:	1464-9365
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2022 11:23
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/94773

Citation Data

Cited 10 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item