Tattooed

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This book sets out to discover why so “many Canadians are now turning to tattooing as a form of self-expression” (13). Atkinson frames his answer in the work of Norbert Elias (1897-1990) and a theory of “figurational sociology” and on data from 65 tattoo enthusiasts and 27 tattoo artists in Calgary and Toronto, data collected in the ethnographic method of participant observation (here called ethnosociology). A figuration is defined as “a collection of social actors bound together by chains or webs of interdependency” and is a substitute for the concept of society (4). The term sociogenesis refers to the long-term, indeed historical, processes that are the „genesis‟ of today‟s society. Since the self is constructed through the controlling agencies or „civilizing processes‟ of the web of social relations (9), psychogenesis is understood as the “development of personality structures within specific figurations” (8). These personalities are our “second nature,” those “seemingly taken-for-granted ways (i.e. habits) of experiencing, utilizing and interpreting” our bodies (8). As Atkinson interprets Elias, the body is a site of social control, a “text of civilization,” and what constitutes appropriate or inappropriate bodily display has much to say about current cultural values and meanings pertaining to bodies. Therefore, an enquiry into tattooing as body modification should provide insight into changing figurations (dependencies among individuals) and changing meanings about bodies, their presentation and representation, in culture and society. Atkinson reviews social scientific theories, especially from psychology and anthropology, which are found wanting, thus setting up the theory of sociogenesis as the means for understanding h... ... middle of paper ... ...attoos to parents because they are afraid of parental anger and rejection), deviance, group membership, self-identity and more. There is little attention given to why many Canadians who are not tattoo enthusiasts find the practice more acceptable than in the past. Thus, figurations are Durkheimian social facts: external, general and coercive. The individual is caught up in but on occasion resists society, sometimes unconsciously (by altering the body) and sometimes consciously (by altering the body). Yet, we are not given insights into the current cultural values and meanings pertaining to bodies‟ that this study promised. Despite many interesting forays into the topic, Atkinson never really answers the question about why more Canadians are tattooing their bodies beyond exploring this phenomenon in functionalist terms as a form of deviance (decivilizing process).

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