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In search of academic legitimacy: The current state

of scholarship on graffiti and street art

Jeffrey Ian Ross, Peter Bengtsen, John F. Lennon, Susan Phillips & Jacqueline
Z. Wilson

To cite this article: Jeffrey Ian Ross, Peter Bengtsen, John F. Lennon, Susan Phillips & Jacqueline
Z. Wilson (2017) In search of academic legitimacy: The current state of scholarship on graffiti and
street art, The Social Science Journal, 54:4, 411-419, DOI: 10.1016/j.soscij.2017.08.004

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 The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Social Science Journal

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soscij

In search of academic legitimacy: The current state of

scholarship on graffiti and street art夽
Jeffrey Ian Ross a,b,∗ , Peter Bengtsen c , John F. Lennon d , Susan Phillips e ,
Jacqueline Z. Wilson f
a
School of Criminal Justice, University of Baltimore, 1420 North Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
b
Visiting Professor, Kriminologie, Kriminalpolitik, Polizeiwissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
c
Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Division of Art History and Visual Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
d
Department of English, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
e
Environmental Analysis, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA, USA
f
Federation University Australia, Ballarat, Vic Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Much has changed since the 1960s when the first scholarship on contemporary graffiti
Received 28 February 2017 appeared. The current paper is an attempt to outline and contextualize a number of recur-
Received in revised form 28 July 2017 rent challenges facing researchers of graffiti and street art, as well as developments that
Accepted 11 August 2017
have taken place in this scholarly field. The aim of creating this outline is to assist in increas-
Available online 12 October 2017
ing the amount, and improving the quality, of future scholarship on graffiti and street art.
We recognize, however, that although many of the challenges have at one time seemed
Keywords:
insurmountable, over time they have lessened as graffiti and street art have grown as art
Graffiti
movements, and because a small cadre of tenacious scholars focusing on graffiti and street
Street art
Vandalism art has published and taught in this area. An increasing, though limited, number of aca-
Scholarly legitimacy demic venues focused on graffiti and street art scholarship has slowly emerged. We also
recognize that with increased scholarship that has laid the foundation, new avenues to
explore graffiti and street art have become apparent.
© 2017 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction ter loose collection of individuals (e.g., Austin, 2001;

In their contemporary forms, graffiti and street art
have received attention from the public, law enforce-
ment, the news media, the art market, cultural institutions,
and scholars from a wide range of disciplines.1 This lat-
夽 This paper has its origins in a roundtable panel at the American Society
of Criminology Meetings, November 2016.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jross@ubalt.edu (J.I. Ross).
1
Although there are numerous definitions of graffiti and street art,
the following ones are deemed sufficient for this article. Typically, graf-
fiti “refers to words, figures, and images that have been written, drawn
and/or painted on, and/or etched into or on surfaces where the owner of
Castleman, 1982; Carrington, 1989; Cresswell, 1996;
Ferrell, 1996; Halsey & Young, 2002; Macdonald, 2001;
the property has NOT given permission.” Street art refers to a wide range
of expressions, including sculptures, installations, wall paintings and
“[s]tencils, stickers, and artistic/noncommercial posters that are affixed
to surfaces where the owner of the property has NOT given permission
for the individual to place them on it. Can include words, figures, images
and/or a combination of these” (Ross, 2016b: 476–477). Note that while
the unsanctioned nature of graffiti and street art is often highlighted as a
central characteristic, there are also scholars who use these terms to refer
to sanctioned work (e.g., Kramer, 2016). This discrepancy in the use of the
terms “graffiti” and “street art” to describe sanctioned expressions is by
necessity also reflected in the present article.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2017.08.004
0362-3319/© 2017 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
412 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419
Phillips, 1999; Stewart, 1989; Wilson, 2008 for graffiti
research and Armstrong, 2005; Bengtsen, 2007; Dickens,
2009; Reinecke, 2007 for street art studies) has been con-
ducting research and publishing on these subjects in a
variety of venues and modalities (i.e., newspaper articles,
conference papers, academic articles, books, etc.). These
academics, as well as those who later joined the field, have
laid the foundation for understanding a qualitatively rich,
but also complicated, subject matter. The members of this
interdisciplinary group of researchers, with their distinct
approaches to the study of graffiti and street art, have faced
a number of challenges in their home departments, col-
leges, and universities, as well as in the wider academic
community. Despite these obstacles, contemporary schol-
ars have produced a substantial body of work, and the study
of graffiti and street art has gradually become established
as a research field (Bengtsen, 2016a).2 This article outlines
some of the challenges that have been – and to some extent
still are – faced by researchers of graffiti and street art.
It further discusses how conditions for graffiti and street
art scholarship are changing, and reviews trends that are
developing in the field. In short, this article is intended to
assist in the furtherance of rigorous research in the area
of graffiti and street art, both by acknowledging what has
gone before and by looking towards what is to come.
1.1. Experiences of early researchers
In 1935 Allen Walker Read, a linguist at Columbia Uni-
versity, analyzed 1920s’ and early 1930s’ graffiti in the U.S.
and Canada. The study specifically focused on illicit writ-
ing related to sexuality and other bodily activities. After
assembling this material into a book-length manuscript,
Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North Amer-
ica, he encountered a prudish resistance among U.S. presses
to publishing his book. Read, therefore, privately published
a small number of copies of his book in Paris, a place and
time when graffiti held the interest of artists like Henri
Brassaï and Pablo Picasso. These artists considered graf-
fiti to be an innocent and pure form of expression that
could inform new artistic movements like Cubism, Dada,
and Surrealism (Brassaï, 2002). Read’s work was eventu-
ally published in the United States in 1977, and his press
boasted that the newly re-titled Classic American Graffiti
had “been a much sought-after underground classic for
over fifty years” (Read, 1977/1988; Read, 1977).3 Read’s
experience is an early example of how graffiti research gen-
erated both resistance and attraction among academic and
other audiences.
In the 1960s, two graffiti researchers, Harvey Lomas,
a Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and Alan Dundes, a
Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, independently
described the challenges of seeking legitimacy for graffiti
as a topic of scholarly study (1966). Lomas was surprised by
2
Although many practitioners of graffiti and street art may privilege
one type of activity over the other, the authors of this article have not
encountered this reaction with respect to the receptivity to scholarship in
this area.
3
See the back jacket of Read’s Classic American Graffiti (1977/1988).
the lack of graffiti literature from a psychological perspec-
tive and he was confident that he and his co-researcher
Gershon Weltman had made a significant discovery in
their graffiti research. Their article, however, was rejected
by the scientific community (Lomas, 1973, p. 71). Lomas
found solace in the shared experience of Dundes. The lat-
ter scholar had, in a separate treatment, also lamented
the dearth of academic literature on graffiti and the spe-
cific “academic resistance” he encountered in his study of
bathroom wall graffiti (1966, p. 92). In both cases, these
scholars’ research on graffiti brought significant popular
media attention, but remained hampered by a lack of aca-
demic acceptance.
Longstanding resistance to graffiti scholarship seems
to in part be a legacy of graffiti’s pre-spray-can porno-
graphic or scatological content. Graffiti’s violation of
social taboos produced discomfort, even among academics.
Sexuality—“deviant,” queer, or otherwise—obscene lan-
guage, or scatological references tainted the acceptance of
graffiti scholarship because of its associations with dirt,
defecation, fringe concerns, and marginalized individuals
(Cresswell, 1996). Although ‘deviance’ as a subject of study
was popularized by The Chicago School of Sociology in the
1920s and 1930s, graffiti still was not a readily accepted
area of academic study (Browning, Cagney, & Morris, 2014).
By the 1970s, things had begun to shift. Psychologists
had already gained a foothold in analyzing bathroom wall
graffiti, and had tackled subjects such as gender (see, for
example, Kinsey et al., 1953). The availability of spray paint
beginning in the early sixties had created a florescence in
graffiti, which was being practiced by youth groups glob-
ally. This technological innovation, along with research on
previous graffiti genres, increased the visibility of the graf-
fiti medium and opened it further to researchers in the
1970s. A small number of publications about gang graf-
fiti emerged during this decade—in the USA most notably
Romotsky and Romotsky (1976) on the west coast and
Ley and Cybriwsky (1974) on the east coast. The publi-
cations from the west coast area competed for attention
with research focused on muralism—an ostensibly “higher”
form of art linked to ongoing political movements (see
Romotsky & Romotsky, 1976). On the east coast, schol-
arly attention quickly moved toward emerging spray-
and marker-based graffiti art traditions (Castleman, 1982),
which has remained the focus of the majority of graffiti
scholarship. By the 1990s, the plethora of different graffiti
genres was still often confused with the writing of gangs
and carried attendant assumptions about violence. Social
taboos, lack of political integration, emergent art forms,
and violent connotations hampered clear categorizations
of graffiti in the classroom among students and made it dif-
ficult for scholars studying graffiti to gain legitimacy with
their academic peers.
The graffiti of the ancient world and early modern
period had both been exceptions to this trend. Classi-
cal and early modern graffiti had long been valued in
academic disciplines like history, archaeology, and art
history. Historical distance and the need for untapped,
popular voices granted graffiti from those periods schol-
arly legitimacy—even when the work in question included
pornographic content. Scholarship on ancient graffiti was
 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419
often referenced in 1960s’ and 1970s’ graffiti publications,
but otherwise lacked integration with scholarly conver-
sations around contemporary graffiti forms. Research on
graffiti in classical and early modern contexts has recently
enjoyed a resurgence, and the field carries the potential for
informing broader discourses around the graffiti topic as a
whole.
1.2. Academic resistance in scholarly arenas today
In some academic fields, the legitimacy of the schol-
arly study of graffiti and street art is often questioned
and approached suspiciously by colleagues and students.
Though the shape of this resistance has changed through
time, the co-authors of this article have found that students
and colleagues have at times allowed personal opinions to
impact their view of graffiti and street art as a legitimate
subject of scholarly study.
Only now is this changing. Until recently, graffiti and
street art have lacked a strong “area studies” focus. This
has meant that academic work on these topics remained
atomized within disciplines. In one sense this is positive. It
has forced researchers to justify their work in the context of
theoretical questions and broader scholarly conversations.
Both potentially feed into the recognition of the importance
of this area of study. In another sense, the lack of a strong
area studies focus on graffiti and street art has meant that
scholars within the field have seldom known one another
personally and were unable to enjoy a supportive network
where continual justification of their research was unnec-
essary.
The need for ongoing “defense” of graffiti and street art
as topics for scholarly research now seems to be waning.
For the first time, conference and publication venues dedi-
cated to graffiti and street art are directly representing and
encouraging scholarship in this area. We are not suggesting
that a graffiti/street art-centric focus replace our important
work to situate the study of graffiti and street art within
disciplinary or theoretical conversations. We do assert that
the special challenges of recognizing graffiti and street art
as legitimate academic topics of inquiry can be mitigated
by a strong underpinning of research on the subjects that
approximates a multi- or interdisciplinary understanding.
2. Overcoming challenges that the field of graffiti
and street art studies faces
Major challenges related to the struggle between aca-
demic legitimacy and academic resistance continues to face
scholars who study graffiti and street art. These concerns
are typically prevalent in the traditional social sciences,
humanities and art, and less so in very specific subtopics
like subcultural studies (Snyder, 2009), and youth culture. It
should be noted that not all of the difficulties of acceptance
and publication are experienced evenly across the typical
dominant fields of study found at universities, and that the
difficulties also vary depending on geographical and cul-
tural context. This notwithstanding, the most dominant
challenges include finding academic venues for sharing
research (e.g., in the form of publications or presentations),
ethical issues regarding fieldwork, data collection, and
413
permission, and encountering students’ and colleagues’
misperceptions.
2.1. Increasing amount of scholarship and publication
outlets
An increasing number of outlets now publish results
derived from the study of graffiti and street art. These
include well-respected academic presses such as Chicago,
MIT, Northeastern, Routledge, and Yale. Recent scholars
have published articles in journals from a wide range of
fields including art history, criminology/criminal justice,
cultural studies, rhetoric, and political science. As a testi-
mony to the broader acceptance of scholarship on graffiti
and street art, there have occasionally been special issues
of journals that have delved into the subject matter. One
example is a feature on “Graffiti, Street Art and the City,”
in the Australian journal City (Vol. 14, Issue 1–2, 2010), as
well as in Rhizomes (Vol. 25, 2013). In addition to these spe-
cial issues, since 2015 the Lisbon-based Urban Creativity
collective has produced the Street Art and Urban Creativ-
ity Scientific Journal that has so far published four issues. In
addition to the Lisbon-based journal and associated confer-
ence (more on this below), which have been undertaken
primarily by junior researchers,4 edited collections (e.g.,
Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi, 2017; Lovata & Olton, 2015)
and one handbook on graffiti and street art (Ross, 2016b)
have recently been published. The interest in graffiti and
street art research from established publishers of scholarly
books speaks to the increasing legitimacy of the field, as
well as to an increased ability of scholars to cross-reference
one another’s work.
2.2. Growing number of conferences where scholarship
on graffiti and street art are included and featured
Until recently, papers on the topics of graffiti and
street art were sporadically included at conferences in our
respective disciplines, while entire sessions, roundtables
and panels dedicated to these topics were virtually non-
existent. This is now changing. In addition to the occasional
panel on graffiti and street art at discipline-specific aca-
demic conferences (e.g., the session “Street Art, the City
and the Public: Changing the Urban Vision” at the Interna-
tional Visual Sociology Association Annual Conference in
2013, the stream “Artistic and cultural praxes in the tran-
sitional and contested territory of urban public space” at
the Critical Legal Conference in 2013, and a Roundtable on
Graffiti and Street Art at The American Society of Crim-
inology Annual Meeting in 2016), a handful of scholarly
conferences entirely devoted to these subject matters have
also been held in recent years. These include the Lisbon
Street Art and Urban Creativity International Conference
(held annually in Lisbon, Portugal since 2014), the Nice
4
At least in a European context, graffiti and street art research has
largely been driven by junior scholars (Postdocs, PhD candidates, MA/BA
students). This may have made it more difficult to establish a field of graf-
fiti and street art studies than if proponents had higher positions within
the academic hierarchy.
414 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419
Street Art Project conference (held annually in Nice, France
since 2015), The Graffiti Sessions event (held in London,
England 2014), the Creating the Urban with Art confer-
ence (held in Berlin, 2016), and the TAG: Name Writing in
Public Space conference (held in Berlin, 2017). The impor-
tance of these conferences cannot be overstated as they
afford scholars from disparate academic fields and geo-
graphical locations the opportunity to meet and exchange
ideas about a common empirical material based on their
heterogeneous disciplinary insights.
2.3. Teaching classes on graffiti and street art
(overcoming student misperceptions)
Some of us have taught classes where we have intro-
duced the subjects of graffiti and street art and/or offered
an entire class devoted to the study of these topics. This
situation produces its own set of challenges. To begin with,
since there is no widely used textbook on the subject,5 one
must assemble a set of readings that students will hopefully
find intellectually accessible, interesting and engaging. This
may be solved in part by using one of the recently pub-
lished edited books or handbook on graffiti and street
art (Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi, 2017; Ross, 2016b). Also,
although fields like art history and visual studies have come
to frame graffiti and street art as creative expressions, it
is difficult to convince students in other fields, particu-
larly those enrolled in practitioner-friendly criminal justice
programs, that graffiti is anything other than territorial
marks produced by gangs. Since some graffiti has its ori-
gins in gangs (Phillips, 1999), and because students may
initially be limited in their understanding due to percep-
tual blinders related to this connection, educating against
misperceptions can be challenging. One way of confronting
misperceptions is to bring into the teaching environment
graffiti writers and street artists, as well as other practi-
tioners who might be responsible for monitoring this kind
of activity; experts on graffiti and street art are in some
cases part of the industry (or the vigilante/shadow buffer
community) that engages in the abatement of these expres-
sions. Sometimes these individuals are well informed about
the effort that goes into the creation of a piece and are able
to deconstruct it to a curious audience.
When teaching courses centered on graffiti and street
art, we feel it is important that students go out into com-
munities to explore their surroundings. On the one hand,
this affords exciting possibilities as the students gain first-
hand knowledge about the expressions and cultures they
are studying. On the other hand, students also face poten-
tial hazards when taking pictures of this subject matter or
conducting interviews with graffiti writers/street artists.
Some students feel comfortable within their surroundings
while others, for a variety of reasons, may not. Working
through students’ discomfort is a challenge for professors
wishing their students to conduct field-based projects. One
way to accommodate the fear that students may experi-
5
One of the authors has used Wacławek (2011) as a course text, sup-
plemented by articles and chapters appearing in different journals and
books.
ence is to have them start with a study of the streets and
back alleys close to the college or university where they
are taking classes. Another approach to studying graffiti
and street art is related to the emerging field of Digi-
tal Humanities (DH), which has increasingly been gaining
institutional and financial support. Since graffiti and street
art are visual expressions and student projects on these
topics often include photographs and videos, professors
may see more acceptance and interest from students to
conduct these types of projects in a Digital Humanities con-
text. One example of this is a graffiti-based video project in
a Cultural Studies course that was offered by John Lennon
at the University of South Florida. This group-based project
allowed students to conduct field-based research, inter-
view various members of the community, and learn digital
tools. Since the result of this project was published on the
web, it received local newspaper coverage (Welch, 2013)
that allowed students to see that their work had real-world
application.6
Tangential to the formal teaching of graffiti qua graffiti
is its largely untapped potential as a resource in other disci-
plines. It has, for instance, been utilized as primary-source
textual material in the training of future history teachers,
involving supervised excursions to a former prison as a way
of providing insight into the personal experiences, sen-
sibilities and narratives of incarcerated men and women
(Wilson, 2015).
The growing number of avenues for publication, schol-
arly presentations, and introduction of this material into
our pedagogy speaks to the increased rigor and frequency
with which scholars are taking graffiti and street art as seri-
ous topics of study, and the increased interest in graffiti and
street art among journal editors, book publishers, and stu-
dents. These three constituents have prompted significant
issues in connection with fieldwork and publication, which
we review below.
2.4. Concerns with ethics, legality and ephemerality
Special ethical concerns face graffiti and street art
researchers due to the studied phenomena’s unsanctioned
(and often illegal) nature, the often-marginalized and
anonymous status of practitioners, as well as the loca-
tions where they work. These factors mean that field-based
graffiti and street art scholars are faced with studying
ephemeral expressions, difficulties in gaining rapport with
practitioners, and the need to routinely trespass in order
to collect data. In addition, some researchers, in their roles
as participant-observers, have also engaged in other illegal
activities. Whether research involves actual graffiti writing
or street art production, doing research without the formal
permission of authorities governing built environments or
other places has been a core part of work for scholars like
Phillips (1999) and Ferrell (1996). Still others work from
6
The video was created in a general education course where
students had no prior knowledge of graffiti and street art
and had never made a video before. To see the video go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc0apfy0tLI (retrieved 2 June
2017).
 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419 415

their own past histories as graffiti writers and bombers identity. The fault in revealing personal details about a
(e.g., Bloch, 2016a, 2016b; Kimvall, 2015; Kramer, 2016; research subject lies not only with the authors, but also
Weide, 2016). Because graffiti and street art are not always with the editor of the journal, who has a responsibility
produced in legal contexts, even simple documentation can to assess from an ethical perspective the contents of the
become ethically complex. article before publishing it. Bengtsen (2016b) argues that
Graffiti’s and street art’s ephemerality presents related revealing sensitive information not only creates risk for
challenges. Documentation of this body of work has been artists who might be engaged in illegal work, but also cre-
especially difficult and sometimes questioned by fellow ates problems for future researchers. This is something all
scholars. Rapid whitewashing, writing over, association academics writing about graffiti and street art need to be
with zones of war, protest, or conflict, and the position- aware of.7
ing of work in locations such as urban ruins, bridges or
storm drain tunnels means that the material is chang- 3. Emerging research issues
ing rapidly, may be physically difficult or dangerous to
get to, and technically illegal to access. The sited nature In terms of new areas that graffiti and street art
of graffiti/street art, and its political immediacy, is a researchers are examining we have identified a number of
main strength of these expressions that present even strengths. These include: reexamining the past and iden-
greater challenges for documentation. Over the years the tifying new contexts open for exploration; the elasticity
means and ability to document graffiti and street art have of terms; and the development of scholarship by former
improved. Researchers no longer need expensive high- graffiti practitioners.
quality cameras to capture images of a publishable quality.
The proliferation of relatively low-cost smart phones with
3.1. Reexamining the past and identifying new contexts
built-in cameras has certainly made things easier. At the
open for exploration
same time, the technical/legal violations that accompany
the study of graffiti and street art can be seen as moral
Several scholars have attempted to go beyond examin-
imperatives that should drive research rather than as eth-
ing what happened during the so-called heyday of graffiti
ical problems that should halt it. Studying graffiti allows
(the 1970s and 1980s), and look back into its pre-1960s
scholars to create more inclusive cultural narratives, and to
popular emergence. This has included examining ancient
expand social histories to include the expressions of deeply
and early modern graffiti (e.g., Baird & Taylor, 2010, 2016;
marginalized people. Navigating the ongoing methodolog-
Fleming, 2001; MacKinnon, 2014), more intense studies
ical challenges associated with the study of graffiti and
of graffiti produced by hobos in the later 19th and early
street art should be considered an essential part of graffiti
20th centuries (Lennon, 2016; Phillips, 2009), and produc-
and street art’s field method.
ing more comprehensive histories of graffiti in particular
Related to the above, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)
cities (e.g., Chastanet, 2007).
have been slow to recognize the unique ethical and
A further avenue of historical conceptualization of graf-
methodological challenges that accompany research on
fiti is to view it in the context of the historical narratives
graffiti and street art. Applications to these bodies may
of the structures and surfaces to which it is applied, and
require several attempts by scholars wishing to do field
to characterize it as an essentially performative process
research and interviews. This is in large part due to the
of “narrative disruption” – an overlay, as it were, of coun-
unauthorized, and sometimes illegal, nature of graffiti and
tering, elaborating, competing and/or satirizing narrative.
street art being stressed by IRBs, who are trying to minimize
The little-known graffiti tradition of Hollywood workers,
any legal proceedings the university could potentially be
for example, dates back to the 1920s or earlier, counters
drawn into. In relation to these issues, the emerging com-
workplace hierarchy, subordination, and the pain of physi-
munities of graffiti and street art researchers may prove
cal labor, and provides an alternate written history of filmic
instrumental, as it will often be useful to connect with
productions from a blue-collar perspective.
scholars who have encountered similar challenges to seek
Although graffiti and street art have mostly been
advice on how to negotiate matters like protecting research
explored as rooted, place-based practices and expressions
subjects and anonymizing responses.
(i.e., marks on a specific surface in a particular geographic
Anonymizing the identities of writers/artists brings up
location at a certain time), there are attempts to examine
additional ethical concerns related to the field of graffiti and
the expanding number of avenues used by contemporary
street art studies. For example, in a recent article published
graffiti writers and street artists to spread their work. For
in the Journal of Spatial Science, four researchers (Hauge,
example, in the past a main means of graffiti writers to
Stevenson, Rossmo, & Le Comber, 2016) – three of them
access the work of their peers were so-called blackbooks.
from the field of biology and one from the field of crim-
These are books containing sketches that are physically
inology/criminal justice – use the method of geographic
passed around among graffiti writers and other people
profiling to ostensibly identify the artist known as Banksy
related to the graffiti subculture (including researchers).
(one of the world’s most well-known street artists). As
Bengtsen (2016b) points out, one of several major problems
with the article, as well as the study it is based on, is that 7
The Lisbon-based Urban Creativity collective is currently considering
the researchers reveal by name their candidate for being the establishment of an ethics board that solely focuses on the study of
Banksy, despite openly acknowledging that they have no graffiti and street art to mitigate potential instances of unethical behavior
evidence to make a conclusive statement about the artist’s related to the Lisbon conference and associated journal.
416 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419
When looking in a blackbook, one can see who has pre-
viously left their mark on its pages and one is free to add
one’s own work to the collection. Blackbooks thus serve
both an artistic and social purpose. With the emergence of
the Internet and relatively inexpensive digital image pro-
duction equipment like smart phones and digital cameras,
the function of blackbooks has to some extent been taken
over by digital media.
Although graffiti and street art blogs, as well as inter-
net forums dedicated to these topics, played an important
role in disseminating images and knowledge during the
first decade of the 21st century (Bengtsen, 2014), this func-
tion has today largely been taken over by feeds on social
media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) that docu-
ment and promote graffiti street art. In addition, numerous
YouTube videos are devoted to writing graffiti and giv-
ing advice on how to improve one’s mastery of certain
techniques. Fame, which loosely translates to the respect
afforded a graffiti writer (previously by his or her peers),
is today partially recorded in the number of clicks and
likes received on social media. With a potential global
online audience, fame is no longer necessarily rooted in
physical graffiti that is witnessed by groups of people in
a certain local context at a particular time. The ability to
gain so-called Internet fame has thus had dramatic ram-
ifications in the worlds of graffiti and street art, where
fame previously had to be earned locally through the vig-
ilant and continuous painting of physical locations. As
a consequence of graffiti and street art being dissem-
inated online, we are now seeing an emerging set of
scholars (e.g., Avramidis & Drakopoulou, 2015; Hannerz,
2016; MacDowall, 2017) who are examining the connec-
tion between graffiti/street art, the Internet, and social
media.
There are also attempts to look at new contexts where
graffiti/street art exists and how practitioners (street
artists/graffiti writers) go about doing their work. As men-
tioned, images of graffiti and street art proliferate on the
Internet, and the effects of this transition certainly needs
critical attention. Graffiti and street art has also gone
global in a different sense. In part due to the infusion of
money into professionalized graffiti or street art practi-
tioners (e.g. through sponsorships, institutional interest,
art market involvement), and in part due to the ease
with which connections can be made online, an increas-
ing number of graffiti writers and street artists travel and
conduct their practices all over the world. As a conse-
quence of this increasing mobility, scholars should theorize
and explore the unintended consequences of national and
international traveling of graffiti/street art practitioners.
One pertinent question is how these routes of graffiti
writers/street artists enter into national and international
conversations and conflicts. For example, how do we read
a tag by a famous New York graffiti writer on an illegal
Israeli settlement in the West Bank? How do we under-
stand global and international street artists like Banksy
conducting an unauthorized month-long self-appointed
artist residency in New York (see Mock, 2014), and the
street art tour operations that follow (e.g., Bengtsen, 2014;
Coscarelli, 2013)?
As municipalities begin to see the advantage of giving
wall space to murals by well-known national and interna-
tional artists, often within the context of so-called “street
art festivals,”8 local artists may come to feel increasingly
left out and marginalized. The resultant antagonisms can
lead to wall disputes. This was the case when Detroit graffiti
artist Sintex, annoyed at the out-of-town so-called “culture
vultures” being paid to come to his city to paint, buffed (i.e.,
painted over or white-washed) street artist Gaia’s mural. In
this case, the decision to fly in an artist to paint in Detroit
was perceived as a slight towards local artists (DeVito,
2015). A related paradox is that municipalities in some
cases celebrate the work of well-known graffiti writers and
street artists, while simultaneously cracking down on local
writers/artists (Lennon, 2009).
3.2. The elasticity of terms
Many scholarly fields struggle with the challenges of
defining the subject matter they study. Although there is
a need for scholars to be clear in their writing about what
they are examining, there is a potential danger in divid-
ing these subgenres into minute and isolated definitions.
One of the benefits of the emerging field of graffiti and
street art studies is the rich dialogues taking place between
and among scholars from different fields (Ross, 2016a);
too much focus on definitions could lead to, for example,
art historians studying “good” street art and criminologists
studying “bad” graffiti. How these different subgenres of
graffiti and street art interact with each other must con-
tinue to be a focus of study regardless of how we define the
terms.
The confusion regarding terms is in part evidence that
the field is discovering its way as it goes, and is attempt-
ing to find ground for empirically driven debate regarding
taxonomies and typologies, theoretical constructs, and
ethnographic evidence. As this scholarship morphs and
changes due to technological advances, new methodolo-
gies need to be invented and used to understand the
changing dynamics of graffiti/street art.
Although the elastic use of terms allows for individual
scholars to define phenomena in different ways, the nar-
rowing of definitions can separate and/or obfuscate the
field. Some of the co-authors of this article desire a scien-
tific approach with stricter boundaries that designate what
kinds of practices fit into what boxes. Others want to dis-
pense with such characterizations and to get down to the
business of linking whatever we want to call this medium
to the lives of people in context. Still others are more inter-
ested in connecting their materials to theoretical issues and
debates. This diversity is healthy. We anticipate it will long
8
Well-known street art festivals include Fame Festival in Grottaglie,
Italy, Nuart Festival in Stavanger, Norway, and Upfest in Bristol, England.
In addition, Wynwood Walls in Miami, Florida and Coney Art Walls in Coney
Island, New York City are examples of events that provide walls for artists
from around the world. While street art festivals are, at least initially, often
organized by grass-roots movements with (or without) support from local
municipalities, Wynwood Walls and Coney Art Walls are run by real-estate
developers. This fact ties into another prevalent current discussion about
graffiti and (especially) street art as vehicles for gentrification.
 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419
be part of our field and that each different facet of study
will continue to strengthen our collective work.
3.3. The emergence of former graffiti practitioners as
graffiti scholars
As previously mentioned, another development is that
former or current graffiti writers or street artists have
emerged as scholars within our field.9 In a field where
rapport with practitioners is incredibly valuable, insider
status can give emerging or established scholars unique
insights into the world of graffiti/street art. Some practi-
tioners of graffiti/street art (e.g., Bloch, Kimvall, Kramer,
Weide) have obtained doctorate degrees in fields such as
sociology, geography, and art history, and are writing for
scholarly audiences about this subject matter. This devel-
opment mirrors the emergence of “insider” scholarship in
many of the social sciences and humanities. While such
scholarship is often based on the positionality (race, class,
gender) of scholars, in our case, the study of graffiti and
street art by former practitioners is based in communities
of practice that cross boundaries of race, class, and ethnic-
ity.
In some cases, practitioners-turned-scholars came to
the initial realization that they could pursue graffiti or
street art as scholarly topics by reading published works
from the 1990s. We recognize that tensions are bound to
arise, in a similar fashion to those existing in working-
class literature studies between academics who are from
working-class backgrounds and those who are not (e.g.,
Muzzatti & Samarco, 2006; Nillson & Lennon, 2016). Insider
researchers may initially face additional challenges in
terms of seeking legitimacy for their scholarship. But
because of the fluidity with which scholar-practitioners are
entering the academy, graffiti and street art studies may be
particularly well suited to disrupt outsider–insider bina-
ries. Either way, we hope that our unique positioning will
allow scholars to embrace the intellectual tension between
scholars of different backgrounds, so that it can lead toward
productive discussion and furtherance of the literature on
graffiti and street art.
4. Further perspectives on graffiti and street art
studies
The field of graffiti and street art studies was born out
of the transgressive and transitory nature of the object
of study. Over time, significant social stigma surround-
ing graffiti and street art expressions has extended from
the locations in which they appear, and to the individuals
who conduct these activities, to scholarly perceptions of
those who study this phenomena (see, e.g., Austin, 2001;
Lachmann, 1988). The aversion of some members of the
academy to the subject matter and its purveyors often
seems to be related to people’s lay opinions rather than
their professional or scholarly views, as well as to graffiti’s
9
We also see this in the areas of education, nursing, and criminal justice
where former practitioners have become instructors and/or scholars. This
may give added credibility to the instructor/scholar.
417
and street art’s violations of everything from social taboos
to private property rights.
In the past, students and emerging researchers might
have been dissuaded from writing about graffiti and street
art because of a preconception among established schol-
ars that people who write about graffiti and street art are
by necessity fans of these forms of visual expression and
therefore unable to write in a critical manner. Today, there
seems to be a clearer understanding that, on the one hand,
not all those who write about graffiti and street art are fans
of these expressions, and, on the other hand, that being
enthusiastic about the topic one writes about does not pre-
clude being able to write critically. Indeed, being a fan, or
even a practitioner, may motivate someone to look at a
phenomenon in greater depth.
Despite the abovementioned bumps in the road, there
has been a steady proliferation of scholarship on graffiti and
street art. A “state-of-the-field” overview of the scholarship
that weaves a narrative among multiple disciplines and dis-
courses might be helpful to setting a baseline for future
scholarship. While edited collections such as the Routledge
Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art (2016b) are a promising
beginning, texts that specifically focus on, and capture, the
major questions and challenges that have faced researchers
of graffiti and street art over the past four decades might
allow newer scholars a more direct way into this multi-
faceted discourse.
The increasing legitimacy of both the practices of graf-
fiti and street art and the related scholarship has brought
new considerations. The role of graffiti and street art in gen-
trifying neighborhoods needs critical examination, as does
graffiti and street art scholarship’s link to the art market.
Both have resulted from graffiti and street art’s increasing
popular legitimacy and its monetary value. Both of these
topics now have global impact and signal that scholars of
this subject matter need to turn their gaze inward to criti-
cally analyze these and other issues.
A related transition that graffiti and street art schol-
arship should consciously embrace is to move from a
myopic view of the local to an understanding of graffiti
and street art as a global phenomenon that needs to be
explored and contextualized as such (e.g., Ferrell, 1995).
While specific geographic analysis of local graffiti/street
art scenes will always be important to graffiti and street
art studies, comparative research that explores this work
from a global perspective is also essential. Although there
is a niche market for glossy coffee table books show-
casing graffiti and street art from around the globe, few
scholarly texts have examined graffiti and street art from
a comparative global view. Additionally, scholars should
acknowledge their own biases and idolization of certain
nostalgic periods in the history of graffiti and street art
(e.g., New York in the 1970s for graffiti and London/New
York during the first decade of the 2000s for street art)
that may draw attention away from the numerous other
graffiti and street art scenes that have proliferated around
the globe. At the very least, scholars of graffiti and street
art can bring their different perspectives to understand-
ing these phenomena so that the history that is written
about these movements will be as multifaceted as possi-
ble.
418 J.I. Ross et al. / The Social Science Journal 54 (2017) 411–419
This comparative view is not to suggest that schol-
ars should avoid or minimize examining local processes
in order to create uniform methodologies and terms for
graffiti and street art. Local and national “scenes” may
be influenced by “foreign” practices and practitioners. We
have witnessed a graffiti-centric revolution in Syria with
global impact, have seen the development of protest art
created and produced in Tahrir Square (Cairo) in 2011 and
then copied and remixed by activists in Zuccotti Park (New
York City). These issues of translation, transference, and co-
option need critical examination through local and global
study. Scholars need to follow the vectors of influence and
transformations of graffiti and street art and how these
phenomena interact with global and local markets, capital
and politics.
The informal network of researchers who focus on graf-
fiti and street art studies has been helpful in identifying and
negotiating the challenges we have encountered as indi-
vidual scholars. Being able to engage in a wider network
of researchers with similar interests has also sensitized
us to new and emerging aspects of graffiti and street art
and the study of these phenomena. Although we do not
believe that it would at this point in time be opportune to
attempt to further legitimize the work we do by creating
official sections or organizations inside the existing disci-
plinary organizations we belong to, we acknowledge that
this might be useful at some later point in time.
Although the field of graffiti and street art has produced
a significant amount of scholarship and disseminated this
to relevant audiences, we recognize that there is additional
and considerable work to be done. Just as graffiti writ-
ers and street artists must continuously adapt and change
in order to stay relevant, scholars must mirror these fluid
practices in our own methodologies and research. It is on
this hopeful note that we encourage others with an interest
in this field to get involved, produce good work and subject
it to critical peer review.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the anonymous reviewers of this arti-
cle for providing helpful comments.
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