Place-Based Elicitation: Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime

Narrative Disparity, Nonrepresentational Methods, and Extradiscursity

Narrative, storytelling, oral histories, and discourse are crucial sources of primary data for social scientists and other qualitative researchers (Polletta et al. 2011). Beginning with the “narrative turn” in the 1980s, a more skeptical and discerning view of previously taken-for-granted sources of data has led to provocative debates within the academy over the relevance and even veracity of the personal narrative and articulated reflection. As early as 1940, C. Wright Mills (1940, 329) asserted that the disparity between verbal accounts and behavior was the “central methodological problem of the social sciences,” which has long bemused sociologists who, as Becker (1956, 199) argues, have a penchant for the exposé and desire to “get the ‘real story.’”

Recently, Jerolmack and Khan (2014) stoked the debate over narrative veracity, potentially inspiring a retrenchment of advocates of ethnography on one side and champions of “in depth” interviewing on the other (see Kleinman, Stenross, and McMahon 1994). Jerolmack and Khan call into question the validity of interviews by measuring respondents’ words against their observed actions. When the two do not agree, resulting in a “saying/doing disparity,” they call this mismatch the “attitudinal fallacy.” For them, erroneously inferring situated behavior from verbal accounts possesses deleterious methodological implications (2014, 181). Absent rigorous ethnographic observation that can “account for discrepancies between doing and saying” (2014, 187), they argue that self-reporting of attitudes and behaviors, particularly in questionnaires, is of limited value given that self-reports do not reveal what people do but rather “what people say they think they do” (2014, 180).

While questionnaires may in fact allow for the easy regurgitation of old tropes and should not, as Jerolmack and Khan argue, be “taken as proxies for action without positive evidence” (2014, 180), other scholars have been hesitant if not outright resistant to what they perceive as a perpetuation of “methodological tribalism” over “methodological pluralism” in the interviewing versus ethnography debate (Lamont and Swidler 2014; see also Pugh 2013; Vaisey 2009, 2014).

But rather than question the veracity of an articulated perspective or usefulness of surveys and interviewing as methods altogether, I argue for an acknowledgment that how one frames and narrates their activity and larger role as a participant in a given community changes depending on the location where the story is told. It is therefore location, and not merely a variety of methods of extraction, that can elicit greater primary data from respondents. Further, researchers must be as aware that different places elicit different attitudes as they are aware that people hold different and even conflicting beliefs.

As an explicitly spatial method of qualitative investigation, P-BE also demands that researchers be physically present to discern and record effective, evocative, sensory, and what geographers call “non-representational” reflection (Pink 2009; Pugh 2013; Tope et al. 2005). Sociologists conducting participant observation of particularly masculine practices in the field have also pointed out that nonverbal content can shed as much, if not more, light on a phenomenon or perspective as that which is spoken (Bourdieu 1990; Green 2015; Wacquant 1995; see also Crang 2005; Dewsbury 2003; Lorimer 2005; Thrift 2008; Vannini 2015 for discussions of nonrepresentational theory and methods).

I argue for a place-based elicitation that provides respondents with the setting to verbally and extradiscursively share accounts of their illicit preoccupations and underrepresented perspectives. There must therefore be a concerted effort made by researchers to allow places to elicit unpracticed narrativity and extradiscursivity in interview settings, allowing for the transmission of inclusive, even if unpopular, reflection.

Taking from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Proudfoot (2010) calls instances of extradiscursivity “the Real,” or the moment during an in-person interview when “speech itself evaporates and we are left to interpret ellipses” (511). Proudfoot’s evocation of “the Real” is less about identifying the objective validity of statements, and more about the inclusion of enjoyment, pain, and other nonverbal data that are normally poorly represented in text and conveyed through parenthetical elaboration (see also Eyers 2012; Green 2011, 2015).

Proudfoot’s examination of the extradiscursive is not a new method in the social sciences, nor is it an attempt to simply probe and expose the respondent’s inner dialogue or thought process. Rather, his argument, taken from Thomas (2007, 543), that researchers should “provide a framework to conceptualize narratives rather than psychoanalyze the individuals who utter them” (italics in original) is part of a quest for greater nuance and a means to challenge the primacy of purely spoken reflection.

Inclusion of “the Real” became particularly important for me in the field when interviewing writers for whom verbal accounts were sometimes less descriptive than gesticulations and nonverbal utterances. Further, providing a broader reading of a respondent’s answers was necessary particularly when conducting research among members of traditionally disenfranchised, formally undereducated, and vulnerable subcultural communities who may be unable or unwilling to be reflexive, cogently explain their situated action, or articulate their motives and larger world-views.

In my interviews with Yem, I found that including a reading of extradiscursive data helped me convey the greater meanings he was nonverbally articulating within the physical space where he performs illicit action.

For example, compare the two versions of the same responses given by Yem:

Or with the inclusion of nonverbal data:

For some, Yem’s transcribed responses without including the nonverbal would understandably pose a serious challenge in terms of his seeming inability or reluctance to answer questions in an easily discernable way. Neglecting coded language and spatially contextualized gestures used to explain subcultural performance has limited researchers’ understanding of graffiti and similar subversive acts of urban place-making and identity formation. Whereas advanced researchers and students alike already perfunctorily practice P-BE as part of conducting ethnographic fieldwork, lacking an unequivocal exhortation to be mindful of the power of place leaves too much up to chance. More so, a concern for P-BE has not in fact informed the majority of studies on graffiti or other illegal acts, illustrating the need to push the interview into the street, so to speak (see, e.g., Ferrell and Hamm 1998).

The Literature on Graffiti

P-BE as a method complements those theories that link readings of space and place to the placement, proliferation, and politics of graffiti. Just as Austin (2001), Brighenti (2010), Cresswell (1996), and Ferrell and Weide (2010) provide decidedly spatial readings of graffiti production, P-BE makes clear the methods needed to extract such perspectives from the very writers for whom places deeply matter when engaged in illicit and transgressive “spot” selection. Despite the primacy of space and place in actually doing graffiti, interviews often focus on identity and artistry above all else. ⁴

This may be because graffiti writers often possess a grounded view of graffiti that is rarely articulated to outsiders or discussed within “safe” interview spaces. When confronted by researchers and journalists, writers emphasize an interest in painting “legals” and in graffiti as primarily a form of “artistic expression” intended for “community” consumption. Perpetuating the definition of graffiti as, ideally, an artistic and sanctioned practice are those writers who are accessed, observed, and interviewed in places that are often removed from the street and other realms of illegal “bombing” (prolific tagging).

In the graffiti literature, accessing respondents in the field has ranged from “asking art dealers and collectors for the names of ‘graffiti artists’” (Lachmann 1988, 233) and making contact at art shows with “‘writers’ who were organized into a marketing agency” (Rahn 2002, 22), to “simply call(ing) the number” graffiti writers had written on the legal murals they had painted (Kramer 2010a, 241) and casually approaching graffiti writers at “legal writing events” sponsored by local municipalities (MacDiarmid and Downing 2012, 610).

In his ethnography of graffiti writers in New York City, Snyder (2009, 22) writes that he was able to gain access to “graffiti artists” in part by dressing and speaking in “the latest hip hop fashions” and by learning to “downplay nerdy concerns with sociological theory in mixed company.” Similarly, Brewer (1992, 189) went so far as to cherry pick “elite writers,” who would presumably “possess more maturity for systematic interviewing tasks, and have greater awareness of traditional and alternative strategies to control illegal graffiti.”

In Monto, Machalek, and Anderson (2012, 264), the authors conducted interviews and observations during “gatherings, parties, or periods of hanging out, and accompanied [writers] on ‘runs’ to the store for beer and cigarettes, caps (spray paint nozzles), and paint,” going to sites of graffiti production only later to photograph “completed pieces and tags.”

While each of these examples appears appropriate given the difficulty of making contact and gaining trust with writers, initiating and conducting interviews in “safe” locations, that is away from where illegal and risky graffiti is produced, further allows for the articulation of what Austin (2010) calls “predictable” narratives that prioritize the minority opinion of writers for whom graffiti is part of a “career path,” “art movement,” and act of “civic engagement.” As DiMaggio (2014, 233) suggests, conciliatory narratives articulated by respondents may be more the result of a desire to avoid social and legal judgment than reflective of deeply held beliefs, encouraging interviewees to “misrepresent their beliefs due to social desirability bias or a related desire for self-verification,” or to simply justify behavior, push agendas, and as Monto, Machalek, and Anderson (2012) put it, to “accomplish particular ends” (see also Jimerson and Oware 2006 and Crowley 2007).

In an effort to navigate the many threats, pressures, demands, and expectations put upon them, graffiti writers, like members of similar rhizomatic urban social formations (Daskalaki and Mould 2013), also engage in “code-shifting.” Anderson (1999) uses the term “code shifting” to describe the ways in which people alter articulated perspectives, speech patterns, language, and mannerisms as they navigate between “decent” and “street” audiences and adapt to disparate social situations, particularly those present in black-and-white spaces (see also Anderson 2015). The reliance on different codes reflects people’s necessarily adaptive construction and understanding of situated identity and is contingent upon both audience as well as one’s physical surroundings (Ewick and Silbey 1995). Code shifting can then be understood as part of social, and perhaps even existential, survival.

In their reading of code-shifting from an ethnomethodological perspective, Jimerson and Oware (2006, 26) contend that codes act strategically as prescriptive accounts used to “rationalize actions.” But more to the point of my argument here, they argue that codes must be interpreted in situ (2006, 26). In their case study of black male basketball players north of Chicago, they observed how expressed adherence to aggressively masculinist codes often did not concur with actual situated behavior (see also Copes and Hochstetler 2003). Observed and interviewed in public settings, these same male players “behaved peacefully, fatherly, and husbandly” (2006, 47), leading Jimerson and Oware to contend that codes should not so easily be confused with reality, thereby supporting Becker’s (1956) observation that a group’s self-perception and set of articulated ideals may be approximated in action but are seldom fully embodied. Therefore, mistaking “talk” for action can lead to social scientists “(re)producing biased accounts” (ibid.) that perpetuate negative and often internalized stereotypes of their respondents.

But like Brookman, Copes, and Hochstetler’s (2011) study of “formula stories,” it was the setting of the interview and corresponding place-based observation that allowed researchers to interpret and question the otherwise decontextualized account being articulated. “Formula stories,” which respondents use to describe previous acts of street violence, are articulated to researchers as rehearsed narratives used to explain, soften, and justify “untoward” and illicit activities to outsiders “in a way that bridges the gap between their behavior and the social audiences’ presumed moral expectations” (2011, 398–99; also see White 1980).

Likewise, Loseke (2012) has argued that such formulated narratives are also used not only to justify actions or rationalize personal histories but to a greater extent to effect social change. Added to this, Polletta et al. (2011, 122) assert that stories and “narrative ambiguity” may work from the inside of a social formation to “forge agreement and identity across political differences” as well as help vulnerable social groups build collective identity, maintain solidarity, and deflect opposition (Jacobs 2002; Polletta 2006). Such sociopolitical motivations are certainly at play and can help explain why writers construct idealistic narratives about where and why they do graffiti.

Conducting interviews in disparate spaces as part of a consciously employed method of P-BE can produce a more nuanced and representative view of graffiti as a transgressive urban phenomenon and inherently spatial practice. Yem’s safe narrative at the café should not be taken as a singular view of graffiti or as his primary reason for producing it. Rather, his answer is one that has been previously transmitted, is well-rehearsed for public consumption, and is reflective of the fact that, as McAuliffe and Iveson (2011, 137) state, writers often change their story as they “negotiate their multiple subjectivities . . . as ‘artists’ and ‘vandals,’ as legitimate and illegitimate actors among their different social networks and audiences.”

Yem’s curation of his narrative in such spaces is reflective of marginal communities’ need to frame their practices in ways that are more easily transmittable to lay audiences and academics, as well as more likely to be received and potentially accepted by hostile audiences. This is especially true for subcultural practices that are not just transgressive but outright illegal. In the following section, I address the issue of illegality and briefly discuss how graffiti writers think about the potential pitfalls of permission and mass appeal.

Graffiti and (Il)Legality

The debate on the streets and within academia over whether graffiti need be produced without permission—that is illegally—to be considered “real graffiti” has been waged since the first generation of writers began to systematically and stylistically produce name-based writing on walls and other surfaces across US cities in the early 1970s (Austin 2001; Castleman 1982; Cresswell 1996; Docuyanan 2000; Ferrell 1996; Ferrell and Weide 2010; Lachmann 1988; Ley and Cybriwsky 1974; Macdonald 2001; McAuliffe and Iveson 2011; Phillips 1999). Heightening the debate, and since the rise of graffiti to a globally recognized subcultural practice, aesthetic, and community, the pressures of both criminalization and romanticization have influenced how writers talk about graffiti and how that narrative changes depending on the spatial and social context (Bloch 2012).

Despite the rhetoric of legality and appeals for permission articulated in much of the academic literature and in popular media, most writers still agree that graffiti must be produced illegally in an effort to maintain its subversive appeal, exclusivity as a practice, and ultimately its allure (Bloch 2016). ⁵ More broadly, critically engaged and spatially conscious scholars also acknowledge that “legal graffiti projects reinscribe a respect for private property relations, and the consequent control by owners over the appearance of public space in which they are located” (Iveson 2007, 135).

However, the gallerization of graffiti and growing glamorization of “street art” in recent years has challenged writers to rethink their adherence to the adage of “keepin’ it real” and not “selling out” (Dickens 2008). Increased legitimacy and tacit tolerance for what was previously read as aimless scribbling at best and malicious vandalism at worst has encouraged a reformist view of the practice (Campos 2013; Dickens 2008; Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012; Droney 2010; Halsey and Pederick 2010; Halsey and Young 2006; McAuliffe 2012; Snyder 2006; Young 2013). Consequently, those writers who refuse to adapt in terms of the legal placement and accessible aesthetic of their graffiti, or are not willing to soften their rebellious rhetoric about why they write, have become even more marginalized. As MacDiarmid and Downing (2012, 614) put it, graffiti writers’ “full commitment to resistance often erects a barrier to full involvement in non-deviant careers and lifestyles,” thereby preventing them from accessing potential career opportunities and subjecting themselves to continued criminalization.

Since the early 2000s, many of the “graffiti artists” who paint legal spaces and take part in sanctioned “street art” events are even sponsored by any one of the dozen internationally produced and distributed specialty spray paint brands such as Belton, Montana, and Molotow. As with any corporate sponsorship and branding—which in this case includes “celebrity” graffiti artists pushing specialty spray nozzles, broad-tipped markers, coffee table books, and graffiti-emblazoned apparel—acknowledgment of illegal activity is discouraged. As a result, conducting interviews with “professional” graffiti artists and muralists at legal “paint-outs” and at gallery shows is akin to asking professional skateboarders who are sponsored by helmet and wrist guard brands questions about safety while at skate parks and formal tournaments. Some of the same skaters who otherwise perform, and even innovated, risky tricks without the use of protective equipment or permission in public settings will articulate a need for protective gear and municipal consent at sanctioned gatherings (Encheva, Driessens, and Verstraeten 2013; Lombard 2010; Snyder 2012).

In recent years the graffiti “scene,” in the sense of physical settings where members of subcultures develop identities, beliefs, styles, practices, and artifacts (Glass 2012), has been replaced by the amorphous demands of market and mainstream culture. Increasingly taking the place of crew “heads and other respected peers transmitting information at “yards,” “writers benches,” and other gathering spots, gallery owners, corporate sponsors, and even nonprofit arts organizations have become important gate keepers and enforcers of appropriate behavior within much of the graffiti and “street art” community. As a result, and following what Encheva, Driessens, and Verstraeten (2013; see also Lombard 2013) identify as the global mediatization and commercialization of this otherwise deviant criminal subculture, many writers strive to maintain their professionalism by renouncing illegality for the sake of personal marketability.

Added to the incentives for mainstreaming the practice and narrative of graffiti are the zero-tolerance policies that have sought to, and have often been successful at, creating moral panics over the scourge of urban wall writing (Kramer 2010b). In fact, perhaps more than a widespread co-optation of the graffiti aesthetic by corporations and professionalization, it has been the widespread negative stigma wrought by adherents to the broken windows theory of policing that has resulted in graffiti writers attempting to win over the general public through the transmission of formula stories and strategic code-shifting (Wilson and Kelling 1982).

Navigating the tension between commercialization at one end of the spectrum and criminalization at the other has not been a preoccupation for me either as a producer of illegal graffiti or as a scholar conducting research on graffiti as a spatial practice. Rather, as I discuss in the next section, it is issues of positionality, identity, and “status” that are key concerns within the discussion and practice of place-based elicitation as a method.

Methods

Between 2006 and 2015, I conducted structured, semistructured, and unstructured interviews with 108 well-known graffiti writers as part of a project to document the history of Los Angeles graffiti. ⁶ My insider status and recognition as a “bomber” afforded me uncommon access to this typically guarded community of reluctant respondents (Adler and Adler 1987, 2003). In an effort to assemble as many writers at once as possible—a complicated task given many of the older writers’ work schedules and child care responsibilities—I organized large backyard get-togethers (known as “kick backs”) at various writers’ homes. ⁷

During these kick backs, respondents were invited one by one to sit down in quiet areas of the yard or inside the home and were asked a series of questions including “how did you get into graffiti” and “why do you write.” The recorded conversations, which were later transcribed and ranged from fifteen minutes to more than an hour in length, each exhibited a narrative arc that moved from formula stories and a marked tendency to articulate limited and precise reasons for doing graffiti to an opening up and final inclusion of raw and multifaceted reflection.

Eliciting Embodied Responses and “Real” Reflection

Some of my primary respondents were those who were active writers during the time of my fieldwork; therefore, I was able to make regular contact with them at different times and in many different spaces. While I note the profound affect of place as an elicitor of reflection, particular writers who were highly assertive and steadfast in their views on graffiti never wavered in their narratives regardless of the location of our discussion. For example, 125 (one of a few writers whose moniker is numeric), who I was able to interview in several locations over more than a year, held the position that “if you aren’t a bomber, you aren’t a graffiti writer” among peers as well as potentially hostile audiences.

During an interview conducted outside of a “street art” gallery show in the bohemian and predominantly Chicano/a district of Echo Park, which included early work from the now internationally known street artist Banky, Mear One told me he did graffiti because it made him “feel alive” compared to “these fools here who just consume framed art and sleepwalk through life.” Although one of his legal graffiti-murals adorned the side of the building that housed the galley, and despite having a piece in the show himself, he was critical of legal graffiti. He saw his own illegal graffiti as “art for the people” and did not employ the term “art” to distinguish what he did from illicit “tagging” or other presumably lesser forms of vandalism.

Later that same night I accompanied Mear as he painted his moniker in bold letters along the Interstate-5 freeway in Downtown. Although my interview took place during the commission of a crime, we were able to speak due to the fact that the building on which he was writing was condemned and we were virtually undetectable at such a late hour and so far above traffic. Again he articulated his position that being out painting and risking his freedom and personal safety made him feel alive, especially compared to most other people who were at home, “gettin’ their beauty sleep.”

At no time did he evoke the theme of aesthetics or legality, and his biting narrative was accented with yelps and verbalizations of “hell ya” and “whoa.” He only made eye contact with me when he would turn around to select and shake a new can of paint or when pausing for a moment to let a police helicopter on its nightly patrol of the expansive city pass. At one point while sitting against an adjoining wall on the roof top where he was painting I asked him if all this stress and expense of energy, in addition to the bloodied knees we both received while scaling the building, was worth it. He simply responded “this is who I am, this is what I am about [pounding his chest with his fist to indicate ‘heart,’ a metaphor for bravery and pride].”

The next morning, we met up again at a juice bar where Mear got his daily drinks of yerba matte and a shot of wheatgrass. Hoping that he would not detect or be put off by my redundant questions, I again asked why he wrote and why he had hit that particular spot the night before. This time, sitting at one of the tables in the small patio, with no display of his characteristic exuberance, he answered, “I did that because graffiti helps us ensure our democracy. I want to make sure my art stays visible for all and without having to charge anyone an ‘entrance fee’ to see it.” Judging by the severe tone and cadence of his voice, he was looking to validate, contextualize, and put into words what had in reality been a night of unarticulable adventure and personal excitement and fulfillment. While his political perspective is unquestionably genuine and fully felt, it helps him situate what he does within a larger social, political, and economic framework that others can understand when there is distance between them and the site of production in question.

We drove back to the abandoned building after breakfast to get some pictures of his “spot” in broad daylight. Standing on the sidewalk adjacent to the freeway and looking up, he began to pump his fist in the air, bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, and yell “whoa.” I asked him to explain how he felt or what he saw, to which he answered, “bam, there it is [smiling and spreading his arms like a presenter unveiling a new car].”

In interviews that I conducted with several other writers before and after my multi-site and extended discussion with Mear, I noted the explicit and oft-repeated narratives about a need for “arts funding and education,” which were themes never once mentioned during interviews conducted where graffiti was illegally painted or while in the process of doing unsanctioned graffiti. In a candid moment recorded while illegally painting one of his iconic graffiti-murals on a public wall, Cache, a long-time writer who also regularly paints commissioned pieces, quipped “I don’t do graffiti because I couldn’t go to art school. I didn’t go to art school because I do graffiti.”

Another one of my most candid respondents who is regularly an invited panelist representing public art and mural nonprofits and has been quoted at length in academic texts as a defender of sanctioned graffiti (Latorre 2008; Lombard 2013) once turned toward me after catching a tag on a trash can in Hollywood and said “this is real barrio art [repeatedly pointing to the tag with an exaggerated motion as he triumphantly walked away].” But when I nonconfrontationally asked him to elaborate on his views and advocacy for legal “graffiti art” and murals over what he has in print referred to as “vandalism,” he seemed embarrassed and simply answered “chale . . . what ever [a dismissive Chicano-vernacular expression, which was accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders].” Later, at a crowded Downtown LA art gallery on the night of the district’s sponsored “art walk,” the same writer boldly and eloquently explained to me that “graffiti is a true urban art form and means of communication for the oppressed.” ¹⁰

What is crucial to note here is not that my respondents’ various sentiments should be called into question, nor the veracity of their competing opinions or contradictory perspectives; rather, it is how interview data generated in disparate spaces provides a more nuanced and often irreconcilable assessment of how members of risk-taking and stigmatized subcultures account for and describe what they do. Conversely, what should be met with greater scrutiny by researchers and students is what Polletta et al. (2011) call “narrative competence,” or properly and apparently unproblematically articulated stories told in “safe” spaces, as well as questionably consistent positions used to explain participation in otherwise inherently complex subcultures. Often narrative competence and consistent positions reveal the “official” or “party” line more than they expose reflections that is contingent and multicausal, even if not “objectively real” (ibid., 113).

Conclusion

Motivations for why graffiti writers do graffiti range from inarticulable and deeply personal needs to “get up,” to verbalized desires to engage with and challenge the sociopolitical and moral geographies manifested in the normative built landscape. Regardless of the motivation, the outcome is the same: graffiti appears as the name-based and often cryptic marking of surfaces that, while often indecipherable to outsiders, is completely legible and meaningful to insiders.

What makes doing graffiti difficult to explain and justify in an interview setting is what helps make it a distinguishable style that possesses meaning and coherence for those who do it (Ferrell 1995; Hebdige 1979). Even when a desire for social change and artistry does in fact motivate a writer to write, it is never the only reason why he or she writes; rather, such worthy reasons for producing graffiti are only one part of a larger and more complex story that writers often choose not to tell.

Outsiders should not take the inability or refusal of writers to reflect on and explain why they write as evidence of “thoughtlessness” or as an apolitical or abstractly personal motivation for doing graffiti. As Ferrell (1996) argues, the very fact that one does actively flout laws and disregard spatial mores as they write on walls is evidence enough that contestation, and therefore political action, has taken place regardless of articulable justification or expressed motivations for doing so. In his evocation of the “shoplifters of the world unite” credo, he argues that contestative actions speak louder than words and successfully provide evidence that potentially transformative social and political movements can in fact remain unspoken.

In my own practice as a writer during the 1990s I reveled in being iconoclastic, but my political consciousness and ability to situate my actions within a larger social context from an informed perspective was certainly superficial. Doing graffiti provided me with a degree of subcultural distinction and distance from dominant society. But when asked why I wrote on walls, light poles, curbs, and other surfaces, and took such risks when bombing freeways and painting “burners” (extremely large letters in West Coast parlance) on roof tops, I often found no words to describe the impulse, and I certainly did not possess the confidence needed to situate my actions in political or artistic terms. Rather, I often said I wrote because I loved moving across and interacting with the city, as well as the feeling of walking into a room and knowing that I mattered to, and was respected by, my peers who paid attention to the writing on the walls. In fact, and notwithstanding my deep commitment to social and spatial justice, I am not sure I could or would want to articulate my reasons for why I wrote on walls any differently today.

The inarticulability of contestative action should not be seen as a weakness. As DiMaggio (2014, 233) writes, even well-articulated narratives about why people do what they do may not adequately reflect the complexity of one’s aims or goals as “people may not tell what they know” or even “know what they know.” Likewise, inarticulability and one’s reliance on extradiscursivity is not a limitation of affective human reflexivity or effective narrativity, but rather is revealing of the complexity of particular situated action.

While I make the case that interviews must be conducted at the “scene of the crime,” or “at the edge” as Ferrell and Hamm (1998) put it, when conducting research on members of deviant and distinctly human subcultures, I also contend that interviews conducted at multiple sites can help elicit a more comprehensive perspective on, and articulation of, multiple codes. In any case, there must be an acknowledgment by ethnographers and other qualitative researchers that place matters in terms of its effect on a respondent’s narrative and degree of social and self-reflection.