Experiencing Poverty: Voices from the Bottom (2nd Edition) - Softcover

Poverty continues to be a social problem of epidemic proportions in America.

Experiencing Poverty, Second Edition, reveals the realities of the lives of the impoverished.

D. Stanley Eitzen and Kelly Eitzen Smith have brought together a timely collection of readings that examine those who have lived in poverty, those who continue to live in poverty, and successful efforts by the poor to change social arrangements that impact them negatively.

Topics covered include:

• How people become poor
• Why the poor stay poor
• How the poor cope with acquiring the daily necessities of food, shelter, water, clothing, and medical care
• How the poor are treated by individuals and organizations in the community
• What consequences arise from the welfare-to-work federal legislation
• How human agency can create changes from the bottom up

A new section in this edition, “Poverty and Vulnerability,” focuses on how people living in poverty are extremely vulnerable in such situations as war, natural disasters, job loss, family disruption, and health problems.

D. Stanley Eitzen is professor emeritus in sociology from Colorado State University, where previously he was the John N. Stern Distinguished Professor.  He recieved his Ph.D. from the Unitsity of Kansas.  Among his books are: Social Problems, which was awarded the McGuffey Longevity Award for excellence over multiple editions in 2000 by the Text and Academic Authors Association, and Diversity in Families (both co-authored with Maxine Baca Zinn), Solutions to Social Problems: Lessons from Other Societies (with Graig S. Leeham) ,  Paths to Homelessness: Extreme Poverty and the Urban Housing Crisis (with Doug A. Timmer and Kathryn Talley), Sociology of North American Sport (with George H. Sage,) and Fair and Foul: Rethinking the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport.  He has served as the president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and as editor of The Social Science Journal.

Kelly Eitzen Smith received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Arizona in 1999.  She is currently the director of the Center for Applied Sociology and a lecturer at the University of Arizona.  At the Center for Applied Sociology she has conducted research in the areas of day labor, homelessness, poverty, urban housing and neighborhood development. Her sociological interests include gender, family, sexuality, stratification, and social problems.  She is the co-author of Experiencing Poverty, 1/e, Social Problems 11/e, and In Conflict and Order 12/e (forthcoming).