Amman. Issue of the homeless.
In Amman: a social taboo.
In NY: Dean MacCannell says it well:
"That the poor, the insane or the criminal could simply be turned onto the streets, that the 'legitimate' members of society could retreat into gated and guarded communities, that the poorest of the poor could simply be excluded from 'society' and asked to 'keep moving along', these exclusionary societal 'solutions' were (and continue to be - even as they emerge as historical reality) theoretically unthinkable. The victory of capitalism over other economic forms has been accompanied by a new attitude, a casual indifference toward the socially excluded. Now that capitalism no longer has an audience, the homeless do not necessarily constitute an embarrassment."
Why? Simple: because Amman is still a newcomer to capitalism when compared to the older receptors, and incubators of it.
Capitalism is old news. And according to academic circles, news of primitive ideological times.
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4 comments:
but you can't ignore the effects it still has in our day to day lives... individualism is still the plague of our time...
Individualism has always been there. It may have developed within capitalism, but not because of it.
I think that unfortunately homelessness is not an accident, nor is it the result of bad planning by the homeless. Homelessness, like unemployment from which it takes its routes, is a "necessary" product of capitalist society....and more in general of modern society.
While the wealthiest people accumulate still more wealth, their corporations are chucking people out of a job and in many cases into the streets.
Big corporation vs small family enterprises do not care about their employee but only about profits.
Today, the majority of homeless people are people with jobs, but not enough income to be able to cover housing payments.
The capitalists all use fancy words like "restructure," "cost effective." What they intend is to throw more people out into the street.
Fancy is the word for so. Everything under capitalism seems to be wrapped by it, here in the
"3rd world" it strikes us through malls (the new public places), corporates which offer alot of "free" stuff, etc.
Honestly, the situation I see in Amman is alleviated by what's going on in Dubai. Where the most brutal capitalist manifestations are taking place.
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