This dissertation research project will support a cultural anthropologist who will study a trans-national movement ("Habitat") that builds homes for low-income people in the USA and in India. The student (a native of India) will conduct ethnographic research in the organization's headquarters in Georgia as well as in a housing site in Massachusetts and one in India. The questions to be dealt with include the nature of the identification of individuals with the movement, the variation in the ideology and practice of the movement as expressed in its activities in the US and the Indian site, and the dynamic of the grass-roots nature of the movement as expressed in its day-to-day administration. This research is important because trans-national movements are of growing significance in the contemporary world. The analysis of how this movement deals with homelessness, another issue of great contemporary concern, can produce information that can help us understand similar behavior in other countries.
