Center, periphery: theory

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Between Choice and Stigma:Identifications of Economically Successful Migrants

In this contribution, we draw on the unusual but interesting comparison between ‘immigrants’ and ‘expats’, with the aim of scrutinizing identity construction and the tensions between stigma and identity of choice against the background of the (reluctant) superdiverse city of Rotterdam. We focus on two types of socioeconomically successful migrants which, despite their similarities in class position, are generally regarded as rather different. First, middle-class migrants and members of the second generation from ‘classic’ migration groups in the Netherlands (with roots in Surinam, Turkey and Morocco, including descendants of former guest workers). Second, expatriates or knowledge workers of various national backgrounds (including American, English, Indian, Chinese) who came to the Netherlands on a temporary basis because of their highly-skilled jobs (or the jobs of their partners, as we also included trailing spouses). We address the questions of how these migrants perceive themselves, how they think that others perceive them, and how discrepancies between these two affect their feelings of belonging in the city of Rotterdam and the Netherlands. Our findings suggest that while both ‘immigrants’ and ‘expatriates’ combine various identities, immigrants have more difficulty to adopt alternative identities (such as ‘cosmopolitan’) than expatriates because of their dominant label as ‘allochtoon’ (non-native Dutch).</p

Bodies, doings, and gendered ideals in Swedish graffiti

Drawing from extensive fieldwork among graffiti writers in Sweden this article investigates gendered identity work and its consequences. It points to how potentially inclusive aspects of disembodied subcultural performances—that identities are negotiated through the material representation of the writer rather than on basis of the physical body—nevertheless work excludingly, especially so in terms of gender. This is so because identity work in graffiti revolves around a re-embodiment of identities through normative notions of the able, male and invisible body.Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv</p

Playing in the yard : The representation of control in train-graffiti videos

During the last 10 years, the mobile phone and the emergence of websites, such as Youtube, which facilitate user-generated content, have enabled an explosion of pictures and video clips posted on the internet by civilians documenting the activities of authority figures. This “sousveillance” is a kind of inverse surveillance, reciprocal to surveillance, where members of the grassroots monitor those in power. Initially, sousveillance was primarily seen as an inverse form of surveillance in which citizens monitor their surveillors in order to challenge the surveillance state. The individuals filmed were originally thought to be aware of being sousveilled by others, and it was assumed that every watcher would voluntarily give free access to all information recorded. This article, drawing from an analysis of selfdocumented graffiti videos, aims to further the understanding of sousveillance through showing how graffiti writers—the supposed target of surveillance—use documentation of surveillance in order to present themselves as superior in terms of control and knowledge. Through analyzing the narrative structure and composition of these videos, I will demonstrate that sousveillance, for the graffiti writer, becomes less a matter of resistance and more a means for the symbolic representation of subcultural emotions, activities, and identities. The documentation and dissemination of the movements and activities of anti-graffiti officers, as well as the graffiti writers’ successful attempts to outsmart them, are analyzed as a part of a subcultural play, centered on the establishment of an equilibrium or a dance where key roles and rules are assigned

Redefining the subcultural : The sub and the cultural

Arguing against the previous research’s presumption that the subculturalconstitutes a single set of meaning, this article addresses the simplequestion of what constitutes the subcultural? What does it mean when weaddress an object, practice, identity, or meaning structure as subcultural?Through outlining three dominant strands in regards to how subculturaldifference has been defined, the author argues that the previousresearch on subcultural theory has been preoccupied with a definitionof subcultures as being a response to external structural problems, withthe result that both the “sub” and the “cultural” become dependentvariables. Drawing from his work on punks in Sweden and Indonesia theauthor argues that although differing, the different strands in regards tosubcultural difference can nevertheless be combined into a refinementof subcultural theory that moves beyond style to how objects, actions,and identities are communicated, interpreted, and acted upon. Such arefinement, the author argues, provides for an analysis of plurality withinthe subcultural in relation to multiple structures of meaning. An increasedfocus on the prefix sub and its relation to the root cultural allows for adiscussion of how the subcultural is symbolically extended and more so,how this involves both conflict and alternative interpretations