The modern form of political and social graffiti we see today was born out of the hip hop counter culture movement and was, during the 60’s and 70’s, a revolutionary form of public expression. These forms of deviant art, hip hop and graffiti, were a function of society, they fulfilled a desired niche among the youth. Furthermore, since these forms of expression were not a dysfunction to a society (The United States) that upholds the illusion of freedom of speech, it was necessary to incorporate certain acceptable forms of graffiti in order to appear as if it was not the graffiti which was a problem but rather the nature of message.

No-one would deny that hip hop artists, today, no longer represent the counter-culture from which they spawned, this is because this form of representation has been institutionalized.This is not to say that underground political hip-hop does not exist and is not a separate entity from mainstream hip hop, but rather that the institutionalization has become a means of diffusion by the super-structure. Thus once a hip-hop artist gets popular enough they are offered record deals in exchange for a change in content (aka-Selling out). The same has occurred with graffiti, some cities have institutionalized it by creating government subsidized murals, and community paint outs (http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/streets/graffiti/). Robert Merton, student of Talcott Parsons, theorized that forms of deviation create for themselves new social norms within the deviant category (Kingsbury and Scanzoni 1993:198). This is ironic since Rafferty (1991:83) himself notes that, “The work of the street artist has become …an attempt to contest the dominant culture of institutions”. The super-structure essentially harnesses the power of devient movements and reform them to the standards of the culture.

250 words is lame…. FIGHT THE POWER!!!!!! WRITE 251 words!!!!

Kingsbury, Nancy and Scanzoni, John

1993   Chapter 9: Structural-Functionalism. In Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach. Eds Paulina Boss. Pps195-221. New York: Plenum Press.