Soup kitchens: The stigma of being poor and the construction of social identity

Abstract

This project involved an ethnographic study that documented how homeless individuals who frequent local soup kitchens view themselves and how they manage the stigma that can be associated with this population. Qualitative techniques of observation and brief conversations over a 3-year period with more than 100 soup kitchen participants constituted the data. Findings of this project confirm the earlier work of Goffman and more recent work where clear stigma responses and identities were observed in homeless and low-income adults.