A sociedade secreta de pichadores/as e grafiteiros/as em Campina Grande-PB

Abstract

This thesis is the result of an investigation about the secret‟ society of taggers and graffiti artists, in Campina Grande, State of Paraíba, Brazil. Trying to find the secret kept by the young people involved, our aim was to identify, describe, and analyze its organizational structure, its functioning, its relations, its rules and characteristics. In order to do so, we intercrossed three theoretical and methodological fields: Ethnography; Oral History, and Social Theory of Discourse (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001). The analytical corpus was built upon two verbs: to observe and to listen participative observation and life histories. We observed individuals. We listened to five of them three boys and two girls. We also observed texts and real and virtual contexts. Regarding their discourse about the secret‟ society, we observed linguistic extracts (written and oral texts from taggers and others from graffiti artists, and five narratives of their life histories), so that we could develop the analytical process. We sometimes inquired into texts available on online social networks such as Orkut, written by taggers and graffiti artists, as well as other linguistic events available on group or crew blogs and notes taken on field diary. Within the hierarchically divided and structurally organized space, in which the group plays the main role, individuals live symbolic and material experiences of sociability. They organize themselves, exercise control, set rules, lead, and fund a closed society, whose existence lies on the secrecy. From this society, they play, dispute, protest, negotiate, and claim the inclusion of their cultural practices in the urban contemporary cultural scene. The concept of experience (THOMPSON, 1981) was fundamental to our analysis. The results suggest that the taggers and graffiti artists see the secret‟ society as an identity locus which allows them to have a paradoxical anonymous visibility, once they do not have social projection in peripheries.