Lived Experience, culture and cognition at two faith-based homeless shelters

• In Event: 3551 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 8. Culture Section Network: Networks, Culture, and Cognition

Abstract

This presentation is based on a chapter idea for a planned book on homelessness, religion, and nonprofits. We have conducted research on homelessness in two faith-based homeless shelters, one in a small city in the Midwest and one in the Northeast. In this presentation, we seek to find out how people can take advantage of the cultural resources the shelters offer, and to what extent this differs between people with various biographical backgrounds as well as between the shelters. To answer this question, we have conducted narrative biographical interviews as well as observations at these shelters (seventeen interviews at "Grace Ministries" and eleven interviews at "Family Shelter", including one to two staff persons in each shelter). These interviews were analyzed with a narrative interview technique, which allows us an in-depth view into guests’ lives up to the time of the interview. We are reporting the results with a focus on the clients’ religious journeys and biographies in general in connection to the specific aspects of the religious public culture of the two homeless shelters. While doing so, we discuss the ways the residents adapt to the religious aspects of specific shelters, how they make use of/adopt the religious language and connect it to their lives as well as how and to what extent the community aspects of the religious shelters relate to their own spiritual growth. In this process, we employ the cultural toolkit theory by Ann Swidler as well as research on religious conversion in faith-based communities. First, we find differences between people who can make use of the help they receive in shelters based on their life histories (past family and traumatic experiences, religious background). Second, we discover that while both of these shelters are faith-based, Grace Ministries incorporates religious symbols to a larger degree in its daily life and public culture than Family Shelter, and that this makes a difference in the ways residents view their time and progress at the shelter as well as how they consider their past and present lives and tackle their biographical trajectories.

Authors

• Ines Wenger Jindra, Gordon College

• Sarah Degnero, Gordon College