Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

Preface to the First Edition
xxii Preface
bers of the social world surrounding body piercing-a move that I
decided was fraught with significant personal and professional
drawbacks.
As I aVidly consumed subsequent issues of PFIQ I noticed that
most of the piercing devotees whose bodies were pictured and who
professed their interest in meeting with like-minded individuals
in the "personals" section (aptly called "Pin Pals") commonly bore
extensive and exotic tattoos. Here. it seemed. was an eminently
viable research alternative; a body alteration subculture that was
both more accessible and (though I am somewhat chagrined to
admit it) less personally off-putting.
And so. through this rather unlikely and serendipitous introduction.
I came to partake in an experience that has resulted in
the following account and has also indelibly altered my own body.
In keeping with the symbolic interactionist perspective that provides
the basic analytic context of this discussion. the concepts of
process and meaning are consistently emphasized. I stress the
typical stages actors spoke of moving through as they became tattooed.
developed requisite tattooing skill. negotiated interactions
and relationships. learned to cope with or avoid untoward consequences
of their decisions. and so forth. Similarly. the basic typological
categories employed-for example. kinds of tattooists.
types of tattoo customers. defined tattoo functions-are founded
on the meaning categories actors routinely presented and overtly
used to make sense of their ongoing experience and to devise viable
courses of action. As is conventional in "neo-Chicago school"
ethnographies such as this. I make extensive use of specific descriptions
recorded in my fieldnotes and extracts from actors'
verbatim accounts to illustrate key points.
Chapter 1 opens with a general overview of body alteration and
a brief historical and cross-cultural description of tattooing as a
mode of symbolic communication. This material is followed by a
discussion of the development of tattooing in western society from
the eighteenth century to the present. The chapter concludes with
a presentation of the "production of culture" perspective and a
discussion of the basic social process by which produced objects
come to be defined as "art" and undergo stylistic change. The follOWing
substantive chapters are grounded on this historical and