*This description is a summary of Daniel Terrolle's critique of the 1993 edition of "Clochard".*

"Clochard" is an analysis of the social systems of homeless people, presented in a sequence of 75 paragraphs that allow the reader to better understand the social worlds and trajectories of individuals classed as "SDF" (sans domicile fixe) --a term that has gained popularity in France since the 1980s. The book is based on fieldwork carried out between October 1990 and May 1993 by the author, in his interactions with five homeless individuals (four men and one woman) living in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris.

The goals of the work are: 1) a first-hand observation and familiarization with the values and lifestyle of the homeless person, 2) a semantic and discursive analysis of the homeless person's ideological universe in order to arrive at some moral and emotive assumptions, and 3) an understanding of the homeless person in the context of their life and phenomenological universe (as opposed to through the lens of institutions and social service agencies).

Gaboriau is able to demonstrate that the social system of a homeless person has defined its own values of exchange, work, symbols, economy, and family. He puts forward the hypothesis that "homeless culture" is a result of three main influences: 1) the individual's experience with the proletarian (unskilled worker/factory worker) class in childhood, 2) the street culture in which he/she lives, and 3) the relationship of domination experienced in his/her "dominated" status. Ergo, the author progresses from simple (material) to complex (representation) analyses in order to show the complementarity of Marcel Mauss' triumvirate of physiologic/psychologic/social.

A concise and methodologically strong ethnologic work stemming from a long tradition of writing about the poor and homelessness (Richard Hoggart, Bronislaw Geremek, and Colette Pétonnet).