Work In Progress
presenting
Productive Encounters: Bureaucracy, Dispossession, and Discourse of Unhoused LA
with
Maggie Woodruff, Ph.D. candidate
Department of Anthropology
Thursday, May 16, 2024
12:00-1:00pm
Join Us Virtually
Los Angeles homelessness is a growing crisis. Many efforts to respond to this crisis involve interacting with unhoused people in public. Much of the data produced from these public encounters – including medical and legal notes, civil citations, pictures and videos, and agency reports – are required by law and in turn influential in the shaping of law and policy. Using legal analysis and ethnographic methods, this project asks: how are these data practices, and the public places of these practices, informing housing advocacy? What identities, narratives, and knowledge are made possible and foreclosed through these data practices? This talk specifically discusses the annual Point in Time count, LA Sanitation and Environment’s Comprehensive Cleaning and Rapid Engagement (CARE) program, and Public Record Act requests.
Maggie Woodruff (they/them) is a UCI Anthropology PhD candidate and an eviction defense attorney with the Public Law Center in Santa Ana. Maggie began the JD/PhD program in 2017, and after completing their JD in 2021 Maggie returned to the School of Social Sciences to continue their dissertation work. Their project focuses on the intersections of housing advocacy, data practices, and identity formation in Los Angeles public space. In their free time Maggie enjoys making music and exploring outdoors.