Sonic Street Culture in the Crumbling Welfare State

• In Event: Roundtable: New Research on the Role of Street Culture and Crime

Abstract

This paper explores Swedish gangster rap as a multimodal street culture emerging from the cracks of a partly eroding welfare state. Situated within the tradition of cultural criminology, it interrogates how aesthetic practices from the urban margins negotiate visibility, voice, and violence. I trace how this brutally melancholic genre performs both resistance and self-destruction—resonating as affect, representation, and critique. These soundscapes unsettle the narrative of Nordic modernity, revealing a street culture that is at once hyper-mediated, structurally surpressed and autodestructive. What takes shape is a criminology attuned to rhythm, rupture, and the spectral remains of welfare utopias.

Author

• Sofia Ulver, Lund University