The local and the global interface of tattooing in Malta : a qualitative study

Abstract

The main task of this dissertation is to capture the dynamics of the local tattoo industry, by mainly locating the involvement of tattoo artists in the global tattoo network and secondary by locating the tattooed body within the local context. As envisaged by Featherstone (2005) today you have a category of people who are design specialists or cultural entrepreneurs. Being part of a 'third culture', these design specialists attend to the cultural flows from one border to another. Tattoo artists as cultural entrepreneurs do claim that they have the necessary knowledge and skills, which most probably lay people do not have, to represent and pack the exotica to wider audiences. As a matter of fact, by the 1980s and 90s, in the tattoo industry there has been an unprecedented rise in the demand for tribal tattooing. People started getting tribal tattoos on their bodies. This necessitates a critical sociological reading. In my thesis, the request for tribal tattooing merges to a strong need posed by individuals to search for meaning in a widest sense. While tribal tattooing started by the earliest encounters by European seaman in places like Samoa and Polynesia, today one can simply go to a local tattoo studio and get this ethnic tattoo done on his or her body. So the question that rises in my research is that which have to do with the authenticity of tattoos. As with any another type of cultural symbols, tattoos are meaningful symbols since they are embodied. They are inalienably done on bodies which are organized and experienced within a local. The tattooed body in my dissertation has nothing to do with any consumerist appropriation. But, people are getting tattooed in attempt to construct a self-identity. The personal nature of tattoos on bodies in this research is seized by focusing on the personal narratives disclosed by my informants. Authenticity is no longer a question of place but it is manifested in people's involvement in this type of body project. An authentic tattoo design is captured by the sense of identity it bestows on the individual. The body therefore is a significant social field or what Csordas (1994b) hold to be the ground for self and culture. The flow of tattoo insignia made possible by magazines (mediascape) and contemporary exchanges in International Tattoo Conventions (ethnoscape) are domesticated on the local body that is ultimately contextualized.