In this article I discuss how the experience of boredom becomes a vital part of the narratives and practices of a group of young greasers in a peri-urban community in Sweden. The ethnographic material originates from fieldwork carried out among the local Volvo greasers, aged between 15 and 19 years, at the local youth centre and the car park in a peri-urban community in Sweden in 2010. The aim of the article is to understand how place, personhood and social relations are intertwined in the greaser culture by introducing the concept of spatial boredom, which strives to illuminate the greasers active engagement and negotiation with the experience of boredom. In light of this, the semantics of spatial boredom - the communitys geographical placement as boring, reactive rather than active, static rather than dynamic - a symbolic link to femininity, domesticity, safety, routine and hence immanence is established. The orientation towards a dangerous, masculine-coded public space is reinforcing a split between both the feminine and the masculine and the public and the private.
Funding Agencies|Vinnova