Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data

Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data © 2021 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods Datasets. SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2021 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data Student Guide Introduction This dataset explores how the photographs used for the development of the article ‘Graffiti and Football: The Code of the Ultras in Contemporary Italy’ that will be published later in 2021 were created, selected, and incorporated into a wider interpretative matrix. The dataset reveals a double hermeneutic: The significance of the photographs can only be understood both within the broader cultural milieu within which they are situated and also simultaneously through a detailed analysis of their content. Hermeneutics classically involved the interpretation of written texts and signs (see Skinner, 1975). As a method, it focuses on the empirical nature of such texts. However, it can be extended to incorporate visual data. The overall interpretation was generated as the result of deploying visual analysis in combination with a wide range of other sociological research techniques which included observations, interviews, and the examination of pertinent substantive sociological and historical secondary literature. This represents a classic form of intertextuality whereby the primary text (the photographs) are illuminated further by other texts (in this case books, interview data, and observations). The main dataset consisted of 12 photographs of graffiti situated on the outer walls of the Atalanta football stadium in Bergamo, Italy, taken in June 2014 by the author himself. These photographs represent a subset of the 20 photographs deployed in the finished article. These were selected from a wider set of 49 photographs taken Page 2 of 17 Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2021 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 at the time. The data are visual, and the dataset form the empirical cornerstone for the two aspects of the interpretive examination of their meaning and significance. These are probed through a double hermeneutic involving the combination of detailed descriptions of each of the images with a wider analysis of their broader cultural significance. The photographs represent and express the wider code of the Italian Ultras. Context and Precursors All research takes place at a certain time and place. My interest in graffiti on Italian football stadia began in 2002. I was asked by Professor Minardi – an economic sociologist at the University of Bologna – to present a paper on ‘Sport and Local Economic Development’. In particular, he asked me to analyse the situation in contemporary English Premier League football. I chose to focus on three clubs in the north west of England – Manchester United, Bolton Wanderers, and Blackburn Rovers. These three Premier League clubs were well known to me as a football supporter living in the region. I had also worked previously as a consultant with Blackburn Rovers on several football-related pieces of research. As this initial research progressed, it became clear that an Italian audience required visual evidence to comprehend the empirical claims made. As a consequence, I photographed the three stadia – Ewood Park, Old Trafford, and the Reebok Stadium – in order to provide visual data to support my argument. These were incorporated into my first paper titled ‘Cathedrals of Sport’. However, this contained 44 photographs in colour and led to the discovery that journal and book publishers baulked at such numbers, and they entirely rejected photographs in colour. This prompted a decision to embed the coloured photographs within a publication hosted by Lancaster University on the internet (see Penn, 2005,). A series of more conventional publications followed that examined the original question of sport and local economic development (Penn, 2002, 2004) but also Page 3 of 17 Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2021 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 explored the metaphor of English football stadia as ‘Cathedrals of Sport’ (Penn, 2005, 2006). However, given the Anglo-Italian audiences for much of this research, I also began to include photographs of Italian stadia as a point of comparison. This led to a dramatic finding. Italian Serie A stadia were covered in graffiti, whereas no English Premier League stadia had any graffiti on the exteriors (or interiors either) of their stadia. Initially, I framed such photographs in general terms simply as undifferentiated images of graffiti, but increasingly I became interested in their specific content (see Penn, 2019a). In this focus, I followed the methodological precepts of Garfinkel (2007) in his admonition to sociologists that they should examine the detailed field properties of social phenomena under scrutiny rather than “rush to abstraction.” Such an approach explicitly challenged the moralistic, external view of graffiti adopted by writers such as Sampson and Raudenbasch (2004) who saw graffiti as an indicator or marker of something they termed ‘disorder’ (see Vanderveen & van Eijk, 2016). Their approach was based upon a ‘broken windows’ view of the world (see Wilson & Kelling, 1982), which classified graffiti as an unambiguous sign of disorder and of wider criminal activities. Such a viewpoint was explicitly rejected in the research that formed the underpinning for this dataset. Rather, graffiti was conceptualized as part of the ordering of the urban landscape in modern cities, and the ensuing analysis was committed to exploring this in its finer details. Writers like Sampson and Raudenbasch simply ‘see’ one undifferentiated phenomenon – graffiti. It is very easy to label such phenomena as ‘mindless’ or ‘antisocial’. However, the approach adopted in the research suggested that graffiti were complex in their meanings and were multi-faceted, multi-layered, and sociologically interesting in their details. Indeed, they constitute a central element in the street codes of contemporary urban environments (see Anderson, 1999). The analysis was also inductive in that generalizations about the phenomenological field properties (see Garfinkel & Livingston, 2003; Ten Have, 2004) of such graffiti have been derived from a detailed examination of the Page 4 of 17 Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2021 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 photographs of the phenomena themselves. Analysis Interpreting the Photographs: Detailed Descriptive Analysis The first stage of the analysis involved the creation of detailed descriptions of the graffiti in each of the 12 photographs. These are provided below. Each photograph was numbered sequentially with the original number of the photograph provided in brackets. 1. [310] CARLO VIVE [anarchist symbol] …prima durante dopo… L’ATALANTA E MAFIA, CURVA 1907 NORD, ULTRAS LIBERI + tags These are a set of interconnected messages. ‘Carlo Vive’ means ‘Carlo lives’ and refers to Carlo Giuliani, an anarchist killed by the police during the G8 anti- globalisation protests in Genoa on 20 July 2001. The anarchist symbol (Figure 1) is handwritten in medium blue as is ‘prima durante dopo’. This is a shortened version of the original title to Giandomenico Giagni’s 1972 TV film ‘Prima, durante e dopo la partita’ (‘Before, during and after the game’). This expression has popular currency in Italian football and refers to intense levels of feeling and of support for the team. It can be understood as ‘Atalanta Forever’. The use of blue reproduces one the colours of the club’s shirt, albeit in a lighter tone. The message ‘Ultras Liberi’ is written in black as are the graffiti below the earlier blue messages. This is a traditional colour for anarchist-inspired messages (see Penn, 2019a) and reinforces the earlier messages. It is also the other colour of the team’s shirt. To suggest, ‘L’Atalanta é Mafia’ (‘Atalanta is the mafia’) represents both a powerful insult and an attack on those who control the club. The message ‘Curva 1907 Nord’ signifies the name of the Ultra group which is named after the date of the foundation of the club and the place within the stadium (the ‘curva’ or end] where the group traditionally stands at matches. The Curva Nord was Page 5 of 17 Detailed Hermeneutics: How to Interpret Contemporary Graffiti Using Visual Data SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2021 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 renamed by the club the ‘Curva Pisani’ after a player who had been killed in a car accident but the Ultras insisted on retaining the traditional name as part of their wider opposition to the commodification and branding of Atalanta. This is part of a pervasive hostility to those who control the club amongst Atalanta’s Ultras (see blog.sportswhereiam.com and www.facebook.com>pages>curva-nord1907). Figure 1. Anarchist symbol. The anarchist symbol is an international symbol used originally by squatters in Amsterdam in the late 1970s and now has international significance. Clearly, these images have multiple meanings. At one level, they relate to the specific contestational culture of the local Ultras, but simultaneously, they are suffused with some

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