Street Kids and Streetscapes: Panhandling, Politics, and Prophecies explores the experience of kids living on the street. It is an original, insightful, and provocative hermeneutic examination of street kids’ participation in panhandling and the complexities that emerge as various economic, political, and social values converge and conflict in the urban landscape. This book illuminates how panhandling acts as the embodiment of the experiences of street life for kids as well as how the streetscape functions as the interface between street kids and the mainstream. Investigating the geographies where various meanings are connected to living in the margins, on the brink, as the «other,» this book also explores kids’ visions for the future and invites us to re-imagine how our lives are connected to each other, to them, and to the place we call «the street.»

The Author: Marjorie Mayers received her Ph.D. in counseling/educational psychology from the University of Calgary. Her work focuses on disenfranchised and dislocated youth in and beyond the school and the street. She has written and presented a number of papers related to kids at-risk, hermeneutic research, and the political economy of youth and youth culture. Her interests lie in integrating a critical/political approach to counseling and educational theory and practice.