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This article provides an integrated examination of the process of death among the homeless and the integral role that shelter staff and residents play in this process. Several brief case studies illustrate a variety of ways in which shelter staff and friends who provide support networks in the final stages of life often are excluded by families and others from the rites and rituals of death. The authors suggest that the reliance of homeless people on support networks composed of shelter staff and residents, combined with the lack of legitimacy accorded to these associates, produces excessive strain and blocks opportunity for normal grieving. The article emphasizes the fact that few communities or social service providers are ensuring that staff and residents are given training and counseling to prepare them to deal effectively with such strain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have long observed the tendency of the public to support individualistic explanations for poverty, and critiqued the role of academics in the victim blaming process. At the current time, as economic inequality increases and homelessness becomes a problem of growing public concern, the potential for sociology to facilitate victim blaming is of interest and concern. Some of the motivations and mechanisms of victim blaming that emerge in academic publications are examined, and their impact on mass media publications and in the classroom discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]