The Social Semiotics of Tattoos: Skin and Self

Description

Why do people put indelible marks on their bodies in an era characterized by constant cultural change? How do tattoos as semiotic resources convey meaning? What goes on behind the scenes in a tattoo studio? How do people negotiate the informal career of tattoo artist? The Social Semiotics of Tattoos is a study of tattoos and tattooing at a time when the practice is more artistic, culturally relevant, and common than ever before. By discussing shifts within the practices of tattooing over the past several decades, Martin chronicles the cultural turn in which tattooists have become known as tattoo artists, the tattoo gun turns into the tattoo machine, and standardized tattoo designs are replaced by highly expressive and unique forms of communication with a language of its own. Revealing the full range of meaning-making involved in the visual, written and spoken elements of the act, this volume frames tattoos and tattooing as powerful cultural expressions, symbols, and indexes and by doing so sheds the last hints of tattooing as a deviant practice. Based on a year of full-time ethnographic study of a tattoo studio/art gallery as well as in-depth interviews with tattoo artists and enthusiasts, The Social Semiotics of Tattoos will be of interest to academic researchers of semiotics as well as tattoo industry professional and artists.

Chris William Martin is Professor of Social Sciences at Algonquin College, Canada.

Well written and very engaging ... A very strong ethnographic text which fuses together social semiotics and ethnography in a very accessible form. * LINGUIST * I thought I knew everything about the semiotics of tattoos, given that I have been teaching the discipline for over four decades. But this book has opened my eyes to new ways of grasping the meanings of tattoos in the world today. While it takes a historical foray into the meanings of tattoos, the book projects us into the current system of coding that tattoos evoke. It is a brilliant and refreshing new treatment of a topic that I thought had been laid to rest. * Marcel Danesi, Professor of Semiotics and Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada * Chris William Martin's new book, The Social Semiotics of Tattoos: Skin and Self, is a welcome new addition to the literature on tattooing. After almost 30 years worth of scholarship on the subject, much of which has been focused on deviance (or the shift away from it), the time is right for a new analysis of tattooing as an art and profession, within a context of rapid cultural change. The Social Semiotics of Tattoos is a must for anyone interested in tattoos, bodies, or art. * Margo DeMello, Adjunct Professor of Anthrozoology, Canisius College, USA * As a tattooed sociologist and a tattoo enthusiast, I found this book to be highly engaging from a number of different perspectives. In addition to its specific contribution to tattoo scholarship, the work also contributes to theory, specifically to social semiotics, and methodology, specifically to ethnographic research. * Deborah Davidson, Associate Professor of Sociology, York University, Canada and author of The Tattoo Project: Commemorative Tattoos, Visual Culture, and the Digital Archive * Chris Martin has written an absorbing study on the sociological and semiotic facets of tattooing. This book is based not only on his semiotic training and scholarship but also on the author's own immersion and fieldwork within the tattooing and body art sub-culture. He makes a persuasive case for tattoos as anchors of meaning and identity construction in a dizzying and mercurial Liquid Modern world. He does so with great passion but roots this in close and critical reading of diverse examples. This book will help you appreciate the profundity of both the art and craft of tattooing. As someone who has overlooked tattoos as semiotic entity, his book has opened my eyes to the power of the ink! * Chris Arning, Founder-Director, Creative Semiotics, UK * Accomplish[es] a movement of tattoo studies beyond the reductive, reactionary stereotypes that keep lingering on and in doing so help[s] to pave the way for more respectful and rigorous analysis of this complex and significant art form. * Fashion Theory *