Routledge Handbook of Street Culture

Jeffrey Ross, Jeffrey Ian Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000195057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Discussions of street culture exist in a variety of academic disciplines, yet a handbook that brings together the diversity of scholarship on this subject has yet to be produced. The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture integrates and reviews current scholarship regarding the history, types, and contexts of the concept of street culture. It is comprehensive and international in its treatment of the subject of street culture. Street culture includes many subtypes, situations, locations, and participants, and these are explored in the various chapters included in this book. Street culture varies based on numerous factors including capitalism, market societies, policing, ethnicity, and race but also advances in technology. The book is divided into four major sections: Actors and street culture, Activities connected to street culture, The centrality of crime to street culture, and Representations of street culture. Contributors are well respected and recognized international scholars in their fields. They draw upon contemporary scholarship produced in the social sciences, arts, and humanities in order to communicate their understanding of street culture. The book provides a comprehensive and accessible approach to the subject of street culture through the lens of an inter- and/or multidisciplinary perspective. It is also intersectional in its approach and consideration of the subject and phenomenon of street culture.

Part I

Actors and street culture

Jeffrey Ian Ross

Introduction

At the core of street culture are the people and the professions that participate in and/or are affected by this activity. Some of them have considerable involvement with street culture, whereas for others, their contact is minimal. The five contributions in this section highlight some of the major players and participants in the street cultures of several highly populated, advanced industrialized cities.¹ The streets frequently draw some people (e.g., homeless) who out of economic hardship and necessity have nowhere else to turn as places to live, beg, or sell their wares. Others (e.g., police) use the street as locations to enforce public order and social control. This latter category are often referred to as street-level bureaucrats (e.g., Lipskey, 1980). After briefly reviewing the content of this section of the book, I identify a handful of important omissions in the context of this category and draw conclusions about the additional research that is needed on the people who work, visit and/or live in the midst of street culture.

Overview of chapters

In Chapter 1, “A street culture of homelessness,” Tyler J. Frederick explores how the issue of homelessness is simultaneously highly visible and hidden in most urban areas. As a “cultural” phenomenon, homelessness can be both chronic and very transitory, with varying levels of identification and affiliation with both the experience and the status. These features make the street culture surrounding the experience of homelessness complex and varied. The aim of this chapter is to examine the research on the street culture of homelessness, and to discuss the different ways of making sense of the beliefs, practices, styles, and values that are a part of it. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the unique qualities of the street culture associated with homelessness and the implications of those qualities for theorizing in this area.

In “Currando las margenes: Roma street culture” (Chapter 2), Daniel Briggs examines how the role of ethnicity and the wider culture are impacted by local street culture among the gitanos, who are alternately known as gypsies or the Roma. Historically, this group has experienced racism, discrimination, and persecution, and have always lived at the margins of society. This is as much reflected in social opinion about who they are and what they do, as it is in social policy which, over the last forty years, has added a spatial dimension to their exclusion. For this reason, in Spanish cities today, it is rare for gitanos to be seen selling goods or scrap metal, businesses traditionally associated with their cultural way of life. This activity has now been criminalized. The gitanos’ economic marginalization and spatial separation from the commercial life in Spanish cities has meant that increasingly they survive by selling drugs in suburban wastelands, places with no real infrastructure. The group is also subject to tokenistic social support and heavy policing. This social and spatial division is important because it is causing a mutation of their cultural way of life. This chapter reports on the socio-spatial “mutation” of the Roma culture as it is increasingly forced to survive in these segregated neighborhoods.

Chapter 3, “Street performers and street culture,” by Paul Watt, reviews the historical and contemporary conditions under which street performers earn a living. Much scholarly literature focuses on the ways that street performers are represented in books, newspapers, and the visual arts. But what do these narratives tell us about the sonic environments of street performances? Are the sounds pleasant and musical, or are they merely noise? Historically, studies of urban street music have analyzed decades, if not centuries, of public appeals and legislation to regulate and silence street performers. More recently, however, research has focused on the ways that street sound has been represented in various media, such as portraiture and musical transcriptions. Scholars have also undertaken ethnographies to study what instruments are played in which particular kinds of public spaces and the reactions of audiences. Because busking is highly regulated in most cities, there is also literature on the legal frameworks for busking and the tensions laws can bring to the practice of street performance. Finally, the use of the internet and digital technology has raised public awareness of the plight of street performers, and has helped to extend and strengthen the work of advocacy groups, which play leading roles in the amelioration of sanctions on street performers.

Jeffrey Ian Ross and Michael Rowe, in “How municipal police interact with street culture” (Chapter 4), examine the multifaceted relationship between municipal police and the street culture that operates in advanced industrialized countries, such as the United States and Great Britain. In the process of doing so, the chapter asks and answers three principle questions: Why is understanding the relationship between police and street culture important? What are the factors that affect police–citizen encounters? And how do police officers learn the skills of the street? This analysis also examines when and how police become detached from the communities they serve and protect, and then reviews potential solutions to deal with this detachment. Finally, the chapter provides and analyzes possible methods that officers can use to improve how they deal with street culture. The author accomplishes this through a review of scholarly research on police activities, such as police behavior, patrol, and discretion.

Chapter 5, “Youth street cultures: between online and offline circuits” by Ricardo M.O. Campos, argues that digital circuits and media have increasingly and greatly altered the way we live. These technologies have a direct impact on different spheres of life and are crucial for how we communicate. Consequently, the physical and virtual worlds are becoming increasingly embedded, hybridizing our individual and collective experiences. With regard to street cultures, particularly in the field of youth cultures, we have found an increasingly strong link between online and offline environments. In this chapter, the author reflects on these changes and on the impacts that they have on twenty-first century street youth cultures.

Omissions

A number of other important potential actors and professions could have been included in this section.² To begin with although a chapter on the plight of the Roma and how they negotiated street culture (i.e., Briggs, this volume) was included in this section, clearly a more in-depth treatment of different ethnicities, racial and religious groups, their intersectionality, and how they respond to and interact with street culture could have been included. This discussion could also expand to people of color, minorities, and immigrants.

Additionally, a consideration of pedestrians and how they negotiate the city is not discussed. In some major cities, it is increasingly difficult for people to walk along sidewalks because of congestion produced by razors, scooters, and construction projects that may require scaffolding that eats up more public space. Added to this mix are caregivers with baby strollers and people who are distracted while texting or surfing on their smart phones. Other challenges for pedestrians include crossing busy streets with a myriad of different vehicles from cars, to trucks, to taxis, rideshare vehicles competing for the roads and impatient and increasingly distracted drivers (e.g., Demerath & Levinger, 2003; Brown & Shortell, 2016).

Also lacking from this section is a discussion of senior citizens. Any consideration of this large segment of the population and how it interacts with street culture would need take into account their relationships with the urban environment. Some live on their own and others with their children, while others are incapacitated in some manner and reside in assisted living situations. They may be cooped up in their apartments day after day, depending on others to bring in groceries or meals, or they may be very active in their community or apartment block. In big cities such as New York, they can be found walking to the grocery store, in parks, and interacting with other seniors (e.g., sitting on park benches, elderly Chinese community doing Tai Chi in parkettes).

Another omission is tattoo artists who cater to people, some of whom spend a lot of time in the streets of our big cities. The tattooists’ activities are not just limited to the application of ink, but may include other kinds of legally permissible forms of body modification, like the subcutaneous implanting of jewelry. Many tattoo artists work in storefront retail spaces, whereas others ply their trade as itinerant workers (Roberts, 2012).

A further subject missing from this part of the book is a discussion about social workers. Admittedly not everyone who works in this profession has equal contact with people on the street. There is considerable diversity in this profession in terms of the focal populations they serve, including youth, alcohol and drug dependent, families, seniors, and homeless persons. Some social workers are paid by the state and others work for nonprofit organizations. In addition, some of them, especially those referred to as street workers, have considerable contact with people who are down and out, homeless, or alcohol and drug dependent. Social workers who interact with these individuals or entire families tend to be comparatively young because the burnout factor is quite high in this profession (Trevithick, 2012).

Finally, and most importantly, a chapter on sex workers is missing. That being said, with the advent of the internet, in particular social media, street prostitution is declining in many advanced industrialized countries. Although street prostitution still exists in cities in the United Kingdom and the United States, in continental Europe, the situation is different. In fact, in places like Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria, where indoor prostitution is legal, street prostitution is tiny. There has been a decline in the number of street prostitutes since the dawn of the internet, but this form of prostitution will continue to exist to some degree because those who work on the street differ from indoor workers. Additionally, many street workers want to migrate indoors (e.g., engaging in escort, brothel, and massage work). What social media, direct messaging, and online advertisements offer to those who work indoors is a convenient way to connect with clients and to screen them ahead of time. The termination of internet sites such as SESTA and the forced closure of Backpage makes this communication more difficult. Brothels and red-light districts continue to exist in advanced industrialized democracies, but they are increasingly anomalous in this day and age (Weitzer, 2009).

Conclusion

This section has attempted to provide information on and an analysis of the actors who spend a disproportionate time on the street, exploring how these individuals contribute to, shape, interact with, and are affected by street culture. Most of the types of people who have been reviewed in this section interact with each other to greater or lesser degrees on the street. These individuals often function in different roles and must negotiate their identities as they move among their varied cultures, subcultures, and their educational or work environments. Future scholarly research on street culture should examine the relationship among pedestrians, seniors, tattoo artists, social workers, sex workers and street culture

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Rachel Reynolds for comments on this section.

Notes

1 Although this section might be shorter than the rest, readers should keep in mind that there is some conceptual blending between people (Part I) and the activities that they engage in (Part II) on the street. For example, I could have included a chapter on graffiti writers in this section of the book, and chosen to forgo a chapter on graffiti writing in the section on “Activities connected to street culture.”

2 As a reminder to the reader, as stated in the introduction, the reasons for not including discussions on these topics is not an oversight by the editor, but a reflection of either an inability to find someone appropriate to write the chapter in the given time period or a dissatisfaction with the chapter produced.

References

Brown, E., & Shortell, T. (Eds.). (2016). Walking in cities: Quotidian mobility as urban theory, method, and practice. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Demerath, L., & Levinger, D. (2003). The social qualities of being on foot: A theoretical analysis of pedestrian activity, community, and culture. City & Community, 2(3), 217–237.

Lipskey, M. (1980). Street level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in the public sector. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Roberts, D. J. (2012). Secret ink: Tattoo’s place in contemporary American culture. The Journal of American Cultu...