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

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Sessions

Abstract/Description

This panel examines how street culture operates as a dynamic force within contexts of social marginalization, weakened state authority, and contested urban space. Drawing on global case studies—from Sweden to Germany to Latin America—these contributions explore how street culture emerges as both a response to structural exclusion and a platform for resistance, identity-making, and social critique. In some contexts, such as Sweden, sonic expressions like gangster rap convey melancholic resistance to the erosion of welfare ideals. Elsewhere, extremist movements strategically inhabit a hybrid space that merges physical neighborhoods with digital platforms, appropriating street aesthetics to mobilize and recruit. In Latin America, street culture has, in some cases, supplanted the state, structuring alternative systems of meaning, power, and survival. Across these varied landscapes, street culture manifests through protests, fashion, body modification, graffiti, and music—simultaneously challenging and coexisting with formal institutions of control. Collectively, these studies offer new insights into the global criminology of the street.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Individual Presentations

• Sonic Street Culture in the Crumbling Welfare State - Sofia Ulver, Lund University

• Street culture and extremism in the hybrid space - Sebastian Kurtenbach, FH Münster

• Continuing to Make Sense of the Relationship Between Street Culture and Resistance to the State - Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore

• Street Culture in Latin America - Sveinung Sandberg, University of Oslo

• Exploring the Decline and Transformation of Street Cultures in Post-1990s Japan - Yoshie Udagawa, Nippon Institute for Research Advancement Tokyo, Japan

Chair

• Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore