Cambridge Socio-Legal Group Seminar: 'Begging laws, morality and exclusion – Forgetting 'the beggar' through immaterial sharing in East London'

A lunchtime seminar by Johannes Lenhard.

Date/time: Wed 7 May 2014, 12.45-2pm
Location: G11, Faculty of Law

Organised by the Socio-Legal Group. Buffet lunch will be provided. For further information please contact Amy Ludlow – acl46@cam.ac.uk

Begging laws, ASBOs and social exclusion – A counter-narrative of immaterial gifts to people who beg in East London

Many laws have effects on people who beg on the streets. In this paper, I will pick a nexus of bills and laws, analyse their moral underpinning – what is their implied perception of people who beg? – and describe parallels of this often essentialising, moral economy of homelessness to parts of the charitable sector. Both law and charity makes the public remember ‘the beggar’ while 'forgetting' might lead to less stigma and exclusion of people who beg. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in London, I will in the main part of the paper present the perspective of people who beg themselves mirroring this 'call for forgetting'. How do people who beg deal with stigma and the resulting (legal, economic and social) exclusion? Being materially and socially dependent on overcoming exclusion, begging people rely on the public. I will come to portray strategies of overcoming the legal (and mental) 'zoning' of space with a counter-movement based on individual and immaterial 'sharing' of time, thoughts and experiences.

A draft paper is available to download.