Serving the Street: Volunteering as Charity, Racial Justice, and Poverty Tourism
Author(s): Matthew Jerome Schneider (Author)
- Publisher: University of Georgia Press
- Publication Date: 1 Mar. 2026
- Language: English
- Print length: 150 pages
- ISBN-10: 0820375373
- ISBN-13: 9780820375373
Book Description
Volunteering is typically thought of as an act of altruism, yet there are power dynamics embedded in volunteer-service recipient relationships, especially when volunteers operate from privileged positions. Following six grassroots homeless service organizations in St. Louis, Missouri, Matthew Schneider unpacks the tensions between race, class, urban space, and volunteerism. Volunteers are well intentioned and provide vital, life-saving services. However, Serving the Street explores how many of these same volunteer groups helped to reproduce racialized stigma and stereotypes about poverty, homelessness, and marginal urban space through volunteer practices that bordered on “poverty tourism.” If our goal is to make communities more inclusive and equitable, this book suggests a need for greater self-reflection, even among well-intentioned, social-justice-oriented volunteers.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Serving the Street is a richly researched ethnography that adds to the burgeoning studies that focus on how well-intentioned whiteness reproduces durable inequalities. The lessons learned here are valuable for social justice oriented individuals and groups in that it implicitly questions the degree to which white allies can participate in antiracist social movements or day-to-day action where whiteness is simultaneously invisible and omnipresent.
— Daina Cheyenne Harvey ― professor of sociology and anthropology, College of the Holy Cross
Deeply researched and richly informed by the literature, Schneider takes us somewhere new―the hearts and minds of class-privileged white volunteers assisting the unhoused in St. Louis. Serving the Street powerfully exposes the tension between volunteers’ good intentions and their lack of racial and class reflexivity, revealing how a helping hand isn’t always as helpful as we imagine.
— Megan R. Underhill ― associate professor of sociology, University of North Carolina Asheville
Book Description
A close observation of the relationship between race, class, urban space, and volunteers
About the Author
MATTHEW JEROME SCHNEIDER is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, a collaborating professor with the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center, and the codirector of the Sustainability, Equity, and Action Laboratory. Situated in the areas of race and racism, environmental sociology, urban sociology, and community and civic engagement, his work has appeared in numerous outlets including Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Forum, Radical Teacher, Environmental Justice, and Inside Higher Ed.
View on Amazon
{“@context”:”:”https://schema.org”,”@type”:”Book”,”name”:”Serving the Street: Volunteering as Charity, Racial Justice, and Poverty Tourism”,”image”:”https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31n3FHdmkAL._SY445_SX342_ML2_.jpg”,”author”:{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”Matthew Jerome Schneider (Author)”},”publisher”:{“@type”:”Organization”,”name”:”University of Georgia Press”},”datePublished”:”1 Mar. 2026″,”isbn”:”9780820375373″,”numberOfPages”:150,”inLanguage”:”English”,”description”:”Volunteering is typically thought of as an act of altruism, yet there are power dynamics embedded in volunteer-service recipient relationships, especially when volunteers operate from privileged positions. Following six grassroots homeless service organizations in St. Louis, Missouri, Matthew Schneider unpacks the tensions between race, class, urban space, and volunteerism. Volunteers are well intentioned and provide vital, life-saving services. However, Serving the Street explores how many of these same volunteer groups helped to reproduce racialized stigma and stereotypes about poverty, homelessness, and marginal urban space through volunteer practices that bordered on “poverty tourism.” If our goal is to make communities more inclusive and equitable, this book suggests a need for greater self-reflection, even among well-intentioned, social-justice-oriented volunteers.”,”url”:”https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0820375373/”,”bookFormat”:”http://schema.org/EBook”,”additionalType”:”http://schema.org/PDF”,”fileSize”:”73 MB”,”accessibilityFeature”:[“login required”,”member access only”],”accessibilitySummary”:”PDF version available to authenticated members only. File size: 73 MB.”}
Wow! eBook
