A Rough Aging out: Graffiti Writers and Subcultural Drift

Laura MacDiarmid, Steven Downing

University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada

Abstract:

Many studies have provided rich ethnographic accounts of graffiti writing subculture, highlighting the roles of masculinity, resistance, and other dynamics that help shape these subcultures. In the current inquiry we examine the lives of a group of graffiti writers in a mid-sized city in southern Ontario, Canada. Our inquiry draws attention to the aging-out process of graffiti writers as they enter adulthood, seek employment and form relationships with non-graffiti writers, while at the same time striving to remain members of what it at its core a deviant subculture. Our analysis draws on life course, subcultural and drifts theories, illustrating the potential for combining these perspectives in future research on deviance in general.

Keyword:

Graffiti, deviance, life course criminology, subcultural theory, drift.