Following the economic crisis in 2008, the United States, and Denver in particular, saw a considerable rise in the number of people considered homeless. Despite an increase in the population, little anthropological research has been done to understand the experiences of street-embodied individuals and the services available to them. Through participant-observation, life-history interviews, and photovoice, I closely studied the lives of two women experiencing homelessness and used interpretive phenomenological analysis to analyze the data. Analyzed through Foucault's biopolitics, technologies of the self, and panopticism, as well as Goffman's presentation of the self, I make the case that the homeless experience is marked by social exclusion, which I found to be internalized and resisted in the lives of two women in a variety of ways. These findings are relevant to service providers in the homeless industry, in the way they approach their interactions with people experiencing homelessness.
","abstract_html":"<p>Following the economic crisis in 2008, the United States, and Denver in particular, saw a considerable rise in the number of people considered homeless. Despite an increase in the population, little anthropological research has been done to understand the experiences of street-embodied individuals and the services available to them. Through participant-observation, life-history interviews, and photovoice, I closely studied the lives of two women experiencing homelessness and used interpretive phenomenological analysis to analyze the data. Analyzed through Foucault's biopolitics, technologies of the self, and panopticism, as well as Goffman's presentation of the self, I make the case that the homeless experience is marked by social exclusion, which I found to be internalized and resisted in the lives of two women in a variety of ways. These findings are relevant to service providers in the homeless industry, in the way they approach their interactions with people experiencing homelessness.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Morrison, Taylor L."],"institution":null,"degree_name":"M.A.","degree_level":"Masters Thesis","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Alejandro Cerón, Ph.D.","Dean J. Saitta","Roddy MacInnes"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2017,"date_issued":"2017-01-01T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2017-01-01T08:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:03:12Z","subjects":["Denver","Homelessness","Identity","Internalization","Resistance","Women","Anthropology","Social and Cultural Anthropology"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
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"],"dc:subject":["Denver","Homelessness","Identity","Internalization","Resistance","Women","Anthropology","Social and Cultural Anthropology"],"dc:title":["Can You See Me? Ethnography of Women's Experiences with Homelessness in Denver, Colorado"],"thesis:degree_level":["Masters Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["M.A."]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:03:12Z"}