Introduction
Dr. Waldner is a John Ireland Professor (2015) and recipient of the Undergraduate Research and Collaborative Scholarship award (2006) for her work with undergraduate students. Prior to joining the faculty at St. Thomas, she received several teaching awards from the University of Houston-Downtown and Iowa State University. Her published research appears in several journals on a variety of topics including graffiti, right-wing extremism, gay skinheads, anti-gay hate crimes, domestic violence, sexual coercion, AIDS education, identity issues of lesbian and gay adolescents, and political participation. She has authored or co-authored book chapters published by Lexington Books, Springer, Sage, Berghahn, Routledge, Pearson, Elsevier, Oxford University Press, and Temple University Press including the 2nd edition of her co-authored textbook, Power, Politics, and Society: An Introduction to Political Sociology. From 2012-2016 she co-edited The Sociological Quarterly. She is currently working on projects involving political graffiti. From 2021-23 she is served as the Minnesota Director for the Midwest Sociological Society.
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Journal article
Graffiti as a Form of Contentious Political Participation
by Lisa K. Waldner and Betty A. Dobratz
Published 2013
Sociology Compass, 7, 5, 377 - 389
Graffiti is a popular topic in the sociological, criminological, and linguistic literature with several book length treatments of various types of graffiti including tagging, gang graffiti, murals, and “bombings”. Yet, political sociologists have paid little attention to the role of graffiti as a form of contentious politics despite the often political nature of graffiti messages. As a result, most of the political research on graffiti is by non-sociologists. We believe this is an oversight and that both political sociologists and social movement scholars need to seriously consider this form of micro-level political participation. In this review we (1) demonstrate why some forms of graffiti should be considered a serious form of political participation; (2) compare and contrast graffiti to other forms of resistance including squatting and culture jamming; (3) review research findings on graffiti; and (4) discuss some of the conceptual and methodological challenges for doing graffiti research.