Official Graffiti of the Everyday

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4746262
AutoresJoe Hermer, Alan Hunt (0000-0003-2087-4445)
Ano1996
Volume30
Fascículo3
Páginas455-480
Data de publicação1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3054125
OpenAlexW1966405580
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas38
Referências citadas27

This article focuses attention on "official graffiti" or regulatory signs typified by highway signs and the most invasive and emblematic piece of official graffiti, the prohibition circle with its diagonal red slash used in the iconic representation No Smoking. Establishing the range and pervasiveness of official graffiti in everyday life (as prohibitions, warnings, advisories, instructions, etc.), the authors approach these visual manifestations from the standpoint of the sociology of governance and analyze them as important instances of government at a distance. They explore the varieties and forms of such regulation and trace their expansion from public space to quasi-public space and to the private realm. Locating the texts and icons of official graffiti within implied or express discursive frameworks, the authors point to the construction of objects and subjects of regulation and to regulatory agents as "absent experts" and address the key role of the construction of danger and the link to insurance principles in a "risk society." They also examine resistance through actions of defacement and avoidance that result in the complex order and disorder of surfaces and spaces. Official graffiti manifests a distinctive form of hegemony that is exercised through the small, daily acts of everyday governance

Art · Everyday life · Graffiti · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Law · Public Spaces through Art