Becoming Raggare: Materiality Through the Car : A Sensory Exploration of Car Phenomenology Within the Raggar Subculture

Raggare is a unique and rather understudied subculture within Scandinavia that emerged in the 1950s and has been vibrant since. They are noted for their affection towards 1950s American aesthetics and, most importantly, American vintage cars. In Sweden, these cars are known as raggarbilar, and I contend these vehicles are central to how social interactions occur between raggare. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how cars create social bonds by looking at raggarbilar through the lens of raggare and in this way investigating how and why the cars fascinate people. I use sensory methodology to examine how cars are approached and embraced by raggare, arguing that sensuous experiences are fundamental to the perception of the materiality of cars. Theoretically, I use materiality and material culture as guidelines for how objects enforce cultural and social significance. More specifically, Alfred Gell’s notion of the technology of enchantment is utilized to understand the effects and social agency of artefacts and I develop this notion further with what I call the sensory enchantment of materiality. During ten weeks of ethnographic fieldwork that took place in different garages in Västernorrland county, along with semi-structured interviews and the usage of visual instruments, I explored the interconnectedness between cars, people, and environment to investigate how cars are objects capable of enchantment and persuasion to raggare. Overall, raggarbilar are multi-sensory objects that are perceived as different from other cars and create certain phenomenological experiences that are shared between raggare, and thus, bring the subculture together.