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Rebels, artists and the reimagined city: an ethnographic examination of graffiti culture in Philadelphia
Dissertation   Open access

Rebels, artists and the reimagined city: an ethnographic examination of graffiti culture in Philadelphia

Tyson John Mitman
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Aug 2015
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-7032
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Mitman_Tyson_201516.76 MBDownloadView
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Abstract

Communication and culture Aesthetics--Social aspects Ethnology
This work is an ethnographic examination of how graffiti writers in Philadelphia produce the work they produce and how, through the production of that work, they construct new subjective selves and build new social spaces. It begins by offering a historical account of the emergence and development of graffiti as a practice. It then describes how the practice of writing graffiti became a sub (or counter) culture within the city due to how it was reacted to by city authorities and how writers then reacted to this interpretation of what they were doing. It further describes how the aesthetic practices specific to Philadelphia's graffiti culture emerged and why, and how the way city officials publicly constructed the idea of graffiti caused differing city authorities (the police and the courts) to consider the crime of graffiti to carry differing forms of socially destructive severity. Additionally, it explains the complex internal systems of rules and politics that govern how graffiti writers think about and interact with the physical spaces that comprise the city, how they negotiate their position and status within the graffiti community and how they establish the rules for handling interpersonal conflicts when they arise. It then offers a theoretical account for how the work that graffiti writers do causes them to literally see and interact with the city differently than other citizens and how graffiti on the landscape of the city offers all citizens the opportunity to conceptually reconsider how city spaces can appear. It then addresses why city spaces appear the way they do. Further it offers the idea that graffiti engages with the concept of who has the authority to physically and visually decide how the city landscape appears and how the right to those decisions are debated between those with the legal and financial authority to decide them and those who alter them without (though sometimes with) permission. It concludes by discussing issues of gender within the graffiti community and how through the work graffiti writers' produce they offer a type of perpetual becoming to the urban landscape and to city life.

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