Mechanism of Homelessness 3———“Edgework”(Individual and Society)

What is “Edgework”

Edgework refers to actions of volunteering risk taking, for example: ‘the boundary between sanity and insanity, consciousness and unconsciousness, and the most consequential one, the line separating life and death’ (Lyng, 2005)

How “edgework” taken place?

In this globalised world, accelerating time of knowledge and technology, edgework may also be required so that people can test out what the ‘frontiers’ of normal behaviour are. Also, people are aware of the ‘dreadful repetition’ of day-to-day life. Routine and regulation are necessary for society to function, but it is also despised. Since people feel stucked in the “Fortress Besieged” and construct escape attempts such as impulse luxury purchase, constantly changing jobs, houses, partner, extreme sports, voluntarily.

Voluntary risk taking, as Lyng defined, encapsulates actions that people voluntarily take in, that carry inherent ‘risk’ and, crucially, involve negotiating at the ‘edge’ of normality. Lyng argues that engaging in such actions, that carry clear risk can be understood as ways to actualise individuality and freedom within an increasingly rationalised, disenchanted society.

Why “edgework” can lead to homelessness?

Highly traumatic incidents and abuse having occurred in the life histories of people who experience homelessness are also prevalent factors. These traumatic incidents include sexual abuse, violence, or witnessing fatal or near fatal incidents. Once people become homeless they also face extreme vulnerability and trauma, and they are more likely to be the victims of crime and violence. According to Mcnaughton(2008), there are high rates of suicide among homeless people and high levels of loneliness. But why?

Without doubt, experiencing ‘satisfaction’ or ‘escape’ are the key motivations for edgework. Negotiating at the borders of ‘normality’ allows the repetitive, routine, and normal life to be challenged, and transcended (Jenks, 2003). People lose sense of time and space when they engage in these activities. They find self-actualisation, but risk losing themselves within the “late modernity”.

These actions only actually draw them further into an process of individually risk taking. At the same time as they attempt to transcend the “mundane” conditions, they also are reproducing their need to rationally negotiate their lives and actions as individuals. They are drawn further into what they are attempting to escape.

If they can go to edge, negotiate it, and come back, then they must be aware of where the edge is. There is often a need to transgress, but with this comes the risk of falling into the cracks that this transgression take place.

The key difference is their ability to do so is due to the resources they have. It is about the resources that enable them to it is about going to edge, and coming back. It is about the forms of edgework people can engage in, and how safely they can engage in it, are affected by the resources they have. For example, for some of those with few economic resources, and poor social status, criminal activity can be a way of not only accessing resources, but also of asserting “control”, and to transcend or escape the reality they are in. Are they capable enough to manage the risk? Can they manage not to go over the edge?

Reference:

Carol McNaughton – Transitions Through Homelessness_ Lives on the Edge (2008), Palgrave.

Lyng, S. (2005b) ‘Sociology at the Edge: Social Theory and Voluntary Risk Taking’, Lyng, S. (ed.) Edgework: The Sociology of Risk Taking (London: Routledge)

Jenks, C. (2003) Transgression (London: Routledge).

Lyng, S. (1990) ‘Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking’, American Journal of Sociology

Lyng, S. (2005a) ‘Edgework and the Risk-Taking Experience’, Lyng, S. (ed.) Edgework: The Sociology of Risk Taking (London: Routledge)