Homeless Women, Special Possessions, and the Meaning of "Home": An Ethnographic Case Study

Abstract

This article investigates homelessness among adult women, an important and grow-ing subpopulation among the homeless. To examine their situation within a consumer-behavior context, an ethnographic case study of a shelter for homeless women run by an order of Roman Catholic sisters was performed. The study focused on how these women became homeless, the effects of early life experiences on their home-less ness, available emotional and financial support, possessions that were lost, maintained, or became available during their homeless period(s), their perspectives on their lives at the shelter and its ability to act as a "home, " and their fantasies about home life. Public policy implications and contributions of these findings to the developing literature in consumer behavior regarding the meaning of possessions are discussed. Since the industrial revolution, our society's con-ception of the home has changed. Today home is much less a place where living and work are intercon-nected and much more a symbol of our relative afflu-