Discussions of street culture exist in a variety of academic disciplines, yet a handbook that brings together the diversity of scholarship on this subject has yet to be produced. The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture integrates and reviews current scholarship regarding the history, types, and contexts of the concept of street culture. It is comprehensive and international in its treatment of the subject of street culture. Street culture includes many subtypes, situations, locations, and participants, and these are explored in the various chapters included in this book. Street culture varies based on numerous factors including capitalism, market societies, policing, ethnicity, and race but also advances in technology. The book is divided into four major sections: Actors and street culture, Activities connected to street culture, The centrality of crime to street culture, and Representations of street culture. Contributors are well respected and recognized international scholars in their fields. They draw upon contemporary scholarship produced in the social sciences, arts, and humanities in order to communicate their understanding of street culture. The book provides a comprehensive and accessible approach to the subject of street culture through the lens of an inter- and/or multidisciplinary perspective. It is also intersectional in its approach and consideration of the subject and phenomenon of street culture.
'At its most vibrant, the culture of the street is a remarkable human accomplishment - an eclectic, contested mélange of people, styles, and interactions. The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture captures just this vibrancy, documenting efflorescences of street culture across a range of global urban settings, and revealing the ways in which street culture seeps into media and digital worlds as well. I enthusiastically recommend this book - and I recommend that you read it on the front stoop, or maybe down on the corner.'
Jeff Ferrell, Professor, Texas Christian University, USA
'The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture offers a dedicated approach to the critical analysis of a series of social phenomena often considered in isolation, allowing a new and interesting reading of a culture that crosses borders, disciplinary and beyond. Ross recovers the value and complexity of cultural productions that are considered marginal, to demonstrate their pervasiveness and importance in shaping our way of seeing the world. Authors from different disciplines and fields of social knowledge find for the first time a common language to promote a field of investigation that is currently unexplored. The 'field effect' that is thus produced forge new conceptualizations that cannot be isolated from their empirical application, nor from their ethical implications.'
Francesca Vianello, Professor, University of Padua, Italy
'With this Handbook, Jeffrey Ian Ross and contributors from a wide variety of countries and academic disciplines, bring together a range of important perspectives to understand life on city streets and in the urban margins. With topics that traverse issues of crime and policing; culture, media and everyday life; and structure, spatiality and identity, the chapters offer much to curious students and scholars. Imbued with character, imagination and originality, this book serves as a milestone in the development of a Street Cultural Studies.'
Jonathan Ilan, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, City, University of London, UK
'Jeffrey Ian Ross has produced an important new book. The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture is a unique contribution to many inter-related literatures. These include the many representations, actors, activities, and crime associated with street culture. The book offers fresh perspectives from leading scholars of "cultural criminology" who demonstrate the central role that street culture plays in the daily lives of mainstream and marginalized individuals. The book will be important to the future of criminology.'
Scott H. Decker, Foundation Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, USA
'The Handbook deals with distinct realities - most obvious in the subject matter it covers, but also in its epistemologies, ontologies, and methods.'
Ronald Kramer, Journal of Urban Design
'the Handbook of Street Culture brings disciplines into conversation with each other around a few central themes surrounding the street in a way only possible in such a wide volume. As a primer and discussion starter, it is a successful collection - the entry point towards much further exploration, which no doubt readers will value.'
Jason Luger, Human Geography
'The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture not only keeps a watchful eye on the street but, through its large looking glass, creates an amorphous infrastructure to organize and reveal what it sees.'
John Lennon, Journal of Urban Affairs
'All said, the social relations and cultural transmissions that produce the social space of street culture, constantly grows in counterpoint with influences from outside. The Handbook, therefore, avoids presupposing that the members and activities of the streets are cultural deficits as defined by policing and regu-lation. Instead, Ross and the authors present street culture as a much more essential array of assets of that produce a convivial, networked and vital ethos.'
Clayton Funk, Visual Inquiry
Jeff Ferrell, Professor, Texas Christian University, USA
'The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture offers a dedicated approach to the critical analysis of a series of social phenomena often considered in isolation, allowing a new and interesting reading of a culture that crosses borders, disciplinary and beyond. Ross recovers the value and complexity of cultural productions that are considered marginal, to demonstrate their pervasiveness and importance in shaping our way of seeing the world. Authors from different disciplines and fields of social knowledge find for the first time a common language to promote a field of investigation that is currently unexplored. The 'field effect' that is thus produced forge new conceptualizations that cannot be isolated from their empirical application, nor from their ethical implications.'
Francesca Vianello, Professor, University of Padua, Italy
'With this Handbook, Jeffrey Ian Ross and contributors from a wide variety of countries and academic disciplines, bring together a range of important perspectives to understand life on city streets and in the urban margins. With topics that traverse issues of crime and policing; culture, media and everyday life; and structure, spatiality and identity, the chapters offer much to curious students and scholars. Imbued with character, imagination and originality, this book serves as a milestone in the development of a Street Cultural Studies.'
Jonathan Ilan, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, City, University of London, UK
'Jeffrey Ian Ross has produced an important new book. The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture is a unique contribution to many inter-related literatures. These include the many representations, actors, activities, and crime associated with street culture. The book offers fresh perspectives from leading scholars of "cultural criminology" who demonstrate the central role that street culture plays in the daily lives of mainstream and marginalized individuals. The book will be important to the future of criminology.'
Scott H. Decker, Foundation Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, USA
'The Handbook deals with distinct realities - most obvious in the subject matter it covers, but also in its epistemologies, ontologies, and methods.'
Ronald Kramer, Journal of Urban Design
'the Handbook of Street Culture brings disciplines into conversation with each other around a few central themes surrounding the street in a way only possible in such a wide volume. As a primer and discussion starter, it is a successful collection - the entry point towards much further exploration, which no doubt readers will value.'
Jason Luger, Human Geography
'The Routledge Handbook of Street Culture not only keeps a watchful eye on the street but, through its large looking glass, creates an amorphous infrastructure to organize and reveal what it sees.'
John Lennon, Journal of Urban Affairs
'All said, the social relations and cultural transmissions that produce the social space of street culture, constantly grows in counterpoint with influences from outside. The Handbook, therefore, avoids presupposing that the members and activities of the streets are cultural deficits as defined by policing and regu-lation. Instead, Ross and the authors present street culture as a much more essential array of assets of that produce a convivial, networked and vital ethos.'
Clayton Funk, Visual Inquiry