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Performing Punk is a rich exploration of subcultural contrasts and similarities among punks. By investigating how punk is made, for whom, and in opposition to what, this book takes the reader on a journey through the lesser-known aspects of the punk subculture

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.

In the evening of March 8th 2014 – the International Women's Day – a group of young men and women were attacked in the middle of Malmö after having had participated in a demonstration earlier that day. Four of them were severely beaten and stabbed by knives, and one of them was treated in intensive care for his injuries. His name was Showan Shattak, known to the local community for his commitment against racism and homophobia on the streets as well as on the football terraces. Short after the incident the police stated that the attackers had links to a Swedish neo-nazi group which was also confirmed on the following day by the neo-nazi group itself. The news of the attack spread and people gathered on the streets of Malmö on the 9th of March 2014 to express their support with those injured and the fight against racism. A week later a broad movement of organizations and actors including football supporters, autonomous groups, labour unions, political parties as well as people in general participated in the demonstration that consisted of 10000 people making it one of biggest demonstrations in Malmö's history. In direct relation to the demonstration, the most visible part of one the city's two open graffiti walls was painted with the message "Kämpa Showan" [Keep fighting Showan] in bold straight letters and the colors of the local football team. The graffiti-piece was updated a couple of months later, on Showan's request, to a piece that stated "Kämpa Malmö" [Keep fighting Malmö]. The colors were the same, except that a rainbow colored banner was added through the letters as well as the anti-fascist slogan "No Pasaran". The piece quickly became an unofficial landmark that brought different groups of interests together. People were photographed in front of it and the local neighborhood restored the piece when tags and slogans appeared on it. It became a visual representation of the city's fight for a tolerant and open Malmö as opposed to racism, and calls were even made to turn it into a monument and officially protect it from damage. Altogether the two versions of the piece lasted for more than a year on a wall that otherwise is repainted by graffiti writers at least once a week. In this chapter we take the example of the "Kämpa Showan/Malmö"-pieces to define and discuss the notion of open graffiti walls (hereafter referred to as open walls) in a Scandinavian context. In so doing we also want to point to a number of important aspects of open walls in relation to urban studies as well as the research on graffiti and street art: What role does an open wall play in the negotiation of public place? What interests does it represent and what are the consequences for different groups? How does open walls differ from other types of (legal) graffiti, and other types of visual artistic expressions in the public spaces? We will draw from ethnographic work conducted on graffiti writers in Malmö – gathered by one of the authors as part of a larger investigation of how graffiti writers perceive and make use of urban space – so as to clarify how the openness of the open wall is first and foremost negotiated and realized through subcultural activity and place making. The endurance of the Kämpa Malmö-piece and its status as an iconic representation for a broader variety of groups is here used as a deviant case so as elucidate the subcultural boundary work through which Open walls are defined, used and controlled. We will also use mass-mediated and archived material regarding the debate on (legal) graffiti in Sweden from the late 1960s and onwards, gathered by the other author in his PhD-project, as well as a visual study of the open wall in Tantolunden in Stockholm (opened as late as September 2016), as well as other legal graffiti spaces in Sweden and elsewhere. This combination of analyzing contemporary ethnographic material in relation to discursive statements from the 1960s and onwards enables us to frame the phenomena of contemporary legal graffiti in a diachronic historical perspective.

Much of today's public discourse on crime cases take place on online platforms, as long chains of high-speed posts: speculations, analyses, and laments, as well as ironic, sarcastic, and derogatory comments. These give excellent (and yet risky) possibilities to engage in homemade investigation, with other posters as instant reviewers and audiences. In this article, we explore the interactional origin of case-related familiarity, evidence and authority in crime discussions on the Swedish platform Flashback. Through Internet data and interviews, we show how online sleuths interact digitally with one another so that familiarity with the case is performed, leads and evidence suggested, and investigative authority recognized. We argue that an interactionist and ethnographic approach is needed to uncover such recurring processes in online crime case discussions. The accomplishment of sleuthing is highly dependent on others' shifting responses, and is, therefore, a "bumpy" path.

Drawing from interviews with posters and an analysis of a dozen discussion threads on the Swedish online discussion forum Flashback, this article sets out to investigate the dramatization of crime news from the point of view of the participants themselves. Analyzing both the online discussions and the articulated motivations and activities of the posters, this article focuses on how participants in these crime discussion threads come together around an epistemic quest for the truth, but also how discussions are ritualized so as to give rise to a collective effervescence and unity when the epistemic drama is perceived to have been resolved, and the truth is revealed to the wider public. Accordingly, this article seeks to remedy a gap in the previous research on online crime discussions by focusing less on the investigative aspects of such work – for example, how participants collaborate to solve crimes – and more on the symbolic and affective aspects of the dramatization of these discussions of crime. What is at the forefront is thus how participants make sense of their engagement and experience of these online discussions, rather than the actual criminal case. To refer to this as an epistemic drama is to highlight how activities, ideals and identities are ordered and sequenced through a ritualization of collective online participation, but also how it involves the establishment of (1) a particular predicament, (2) a collective objective, and (3) ultimately some sort of perceived emotional climax related to solving this predicament through the collective objective.