10.1177/1532708605274558Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies •May 2005Pascale • Discur ive Creation of Homelessness There’s No Place Like Home: The Discursive Creation of Homelessness

In this article, the author examines the cultural production of homelessness in the United States, with particular concern for the intimate connection between discursive practices and material conditions. Drawing from poststructural discourse analysis, the author traces the discursive develop-ment of homelessness and homeless people between 1982 and 1996 in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. The author explores changes in discursive practices and demonstrates how these changes produce, transform, and stabilize public knowledge about people who cannot afford housing. In conjunction, the author deconstructs current discursive practices in newspapers and examines the relationship of these practices to local political responses to homelessness. The author then discusses how discursive practices regarding poverty create particu-lar problems, deliberations, and interventions while precluding others. Finally, the author considers the implications of the findings for class politics and social change