The Art of Collective Identity: How an Art from the Streets Program Fosters a Sense of Community Among the Homeless

Autores/as

  • Kristen Paige McCollum Southwestern University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15273/jue.v3i1.8204

Resumen

The current paper explores the role that identities play in creating and maintaining a sense of community in an organization supporting homeless artists in the South. Couched in the social movements literature on collective identity, this study examines the ways individual identities contribute to an overall collective identity of artists and volunteers within the organization Art from the Streets (AFTS). Relying on organizational materials, face-to-face interviews, and participant observation conducted from August to December 2011, the current research finds that AFTS creates a space where homeless individuals can negotiate the stigmatized identities they experience on the streets and adopt a more empowering identity. In the process, the organization fosters a collective identity among all members. This paper adds to the existing social movements scholarship by examining how an empowering collective identity is formed among members with individual identities that are traditionally considered stigmatized in larger society.

Descargas

Número

Vol. 3 Núm. 1 (2013)

Sección

Articles

Licencia

By sending potential submissions to the editors, you grant The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography a royalty-free, perpetual, license to: use, reproduce, store, adapt, translate, and publicly display such submissions for any purpose.  In addition to the grant of the above license, you hereby consent to your name appearing as the contributor of any submission where applicable, and to the disclosure and/or display of such information and any other information which appears in or is associated with a submission. Further, you acknowledge and agree that The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography is not responsible for any loss, damage, or corruption that may occur to your submissions, and acknowledge and agree that any submissions you provide for display on the website will be considered non-confidential. If your manuscript is rejected, the above license is revoked, and your submission (manuscript, name, and associated documentation) will be stored only in the correspondence records of The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. You may submit your manuscript to other publications, but must withdraw if selected for publication in The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. Your paper itself is published using a strict Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License that allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can‘t change them in any way or use them commercially. You retain the right to grant other permissions.