Homelessness and TB: A Study in Failure

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 360-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Brudney
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Context ◽  
York City ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social

Homelessness has existed in America since colonial times, and the attitudes, analyses and solutions offered through the succeeding centuries have evolved far less radically than recent media attention might suggest. From the building of the first poorhouse in Boston in 1664, to the conversion of massive armories into latter day poorhouses in New York City in the 1980s, our society has had ambivalent feelings towards the poor and the homeless. The outbreak and progression of tuberculosis in such settings—a seeming mystery at best, a reality denied at worst—reflects both society’s ambivalence towards this population, as well as a misguided belief that modern medicine can be viewed in the abstract as curative and divorced from the social context to which all disease is inextricably bound. Unless and until these beliefs are addressed and altered, TB among the homeless will continue unabated.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce D. Goodfriend
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social

This book examines the dynamics of power relations in eighteenth-century New York City by focusing on sites where the elite's cultural authority came under siege. Drawing on multiple strands of evidence and taking into account the perspectives of actors outside polite circles, the book looks at the efforts of gentlemen to set and enforce cultural norms and the responses they encountered from persons of lesser rank such as religiously inspired artisans, wives, servants, the poor, and the enslaved. It shows how gentlemen at the top of the social hierarchy sought to certify their status as persons of distinction qualified to dictate cultural norms. New York's pan-ethnic elite, it suggests, inhabited an exclusive universe where their families put into practice the precepts of politeness delineated by the English gentry.

scholarly journals A long way from New York City: Socially stratified contact-induced phonological convergence in Ganluo Ersu (Sichuan, China)

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katia Chirkova ◽  
James N. Stanford ◽  
Dehe Wang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
York City ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Endangered Language ◽  
World Languages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Phonological Change

AbstractLabov's classic study,The Social Stratification of English in New York City(1966), paved the way for generations of researchers to examine sociolinguistic patterns in many different communities (Bell, Sharma, & Britain, 2016). This research paradigm has traditionally tended to focus on Western industrialized communities and large world languages and dialects, leaving many unanswered questions about lesser-studied indigenous minority communities. In this study, we examine whether Labovian models for age, sex, and social stratification (Labov, 1966, 2001; Trudgill, 1972, 1974) may be effectively applied to a small, endangered Tibeto-Burman language in southwestern China: Ganluo Ersu. Using new field recordings with 97 speakers, we find evidence of phonological change in progress as Ganluo Ersu consonants are converging toward Chinese phonology. The results suggest that when an endangered language undergoes convergence toward a majority language due to intense contact, this convergence is manifested in a socially stratified way that is consistent with many of the predictions of the classic Labovian sociolinguistic principles.

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