The Rise of Legal Graffiti Writing in New York and Beyond

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 1-8

3. The Extraction of Subway Graffiti: The Late 1960s to 1989

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 9-34

4. The “Clean Train” Era: Creating a Space for the Legal Production of Graffiti

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 35-60

5. Responding to the New Graffiti Writing Culture: Broader Publics, Art Worlds, and the Sphere of Commodity Exchange

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 61-81

6. The Moral Panic over Graffiti in New York City: Political Elites and the Mass Print Media

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 83-102

7. Engendering Desire for Neoliberal Penality and the Logic of Growth Machines

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 103-125

8. Conclusion

   • Ronald Kramer

   Pages 127-131

9. Back Matter

   Pages 133-160

   PDF

This pivot analyzes the historical emergence of legal graffiti and how it has led to a new ethos among writers. Examining how contemporary graffiti writing has been brought into new relationships with major social institutions, it explores the contemporary dynamics between graffiti, society, the art world and social media, paying particular attention to how New York City’s political elite has reacted to graffiti. Despite its major structural transformation, officials in New York continue to construe graffiti writing culture as a monolithic, criminal enterprise, a harbinger of economic and civic collapse. This basic paradox – persistent state opposition to legal forms of graffiti that continue to gain social acceptance – is found in many other major cities throughout the globe, especially those that have embraced neoliberal forms of governance. The author accounts for the cultural conflicts that graffiti consistently engenders by theorizing the political and economic advantages that elites secure by endorsing strong 'anti-graffiti' positions.

• graffiti, politics, art and social media
• legal griffiti and social acceptance
• criminology and urban graffiti
• urban subcultures
• graffiti and social conflict
• elites and urban graffiti

• Sociology and Criminology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

  Ronald Kramer

Dr Ronald Kramer is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

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