Jeff Ferrell draws on his own extensive field research to thoroughly examine the practices of graffiti artists. Focusing on the city of Denver, he takes a close look at the war against graffiti and the interplay between cultural innovation and institutionalized intolerance, arguing that coordinated corporate and political campaigns to suppress and criminalize graffiti writers further disenfranchises the young, the poor, and people of color.The groundbreaking study of graffiti artists and their complex system of stylistic meanings, status games, and specialized vocabulary.
“Crimes of Style is excellent sociology, fascinating ethnography, and compelling anarchist criminology.”—The Criminologist
“The reader is treated to a rich description of graffiti culture embedded in an analysis of social control. . . . [Ferrell] expands criminological theory by integrating conventional concepts with more recent developments in anarchist criminology and postmodernism.”—Justice Quarterly
JEFF FERRELL is Professor of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. He is coeditor (with Clinton R. Sanders) of Cultural Criminology and coauthor (with Mark S. Hamm) of Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research, also published by Northeastern University Press.
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