| Popis: |
This article examines tattooing as an ancient and contemporary form of body inscription and modification. It frames the popularity of tattooing in the Western World, in relation to other modern body modifications and within the landscape of consumer culture. Showing parallels between the motivations and meanings of contemporary tattoo practices, a historical overview of tattoos in premodern and non-Western cultures is presented. The divergent ways in which scholars have approached tattooing is examined, juxtaposing research in the behavioral sciences that links tattoos to deviant and antisocial behaviors with ethnographic and social–scientific studies that place tattoos within cultural, symbolic, esthetic, and prosocial frameworks. |
