Poverty and Culture

This is a service-learning course offering direct participant-observation with homelessness in Hawai`i. The seminar will meet both on and off campus with social service organizations. Students examine the discursive role social science, social work, and political economy play in the identification and enactment of public policies and ideology regarding impoverished people. Students will work with social work practitioners and their clients while analyzing the consequences of economic transformations in the United States and in particular Hawai`i and Micronesia. The course offers students training in ethnographic methods, community education, political activism and globalization.