The practice of tattooing: Insignia, meaning and communication
- Man in India: Founded in 1921 by Sarat Chandra Roy
- 104(1-2), 2024: p.61-75
This article explores tattooing as a cultural practice that functions simultaneously as insignia, meaning, and communication. Tattoos, beyond their aesthetic appeal, serve as markers of identity, belonging, and social status across diverse societies. They often embody symbolic meanings tied to spirituality, kinship, resistance, or personal narratives, transforming the body into a communicative canvas. Anthropological inquiry reveals how tattooing operates as a form of non-verbal communication, conveying messages about heritage, values, and lived experiences. The study situates tattooing within broader debates on body art, cultural symbolism, and social expression, emphasizing its role in negotiating identity and transmitting cultural knowledge. By examining tattoos as both personal and collective signifiers, the paper underscores their enduring relevance in contemporary and traditional contexts. The popular culture comprises of music, film, television, sports and fashion. As diverse a form of media as they may be, they all transmit and communicate meanings. While meanings are effectively communicated through spoken as well as written languages, they can also be conveyed through symbols, insignia, totems or emblems, engraved on body as tattoos. Tattoos are a form of art or design made on the skin, which changes its pigment. Tattoos engraved on body as symbols signify varied meanings. They speak to society or simply to the members, making social life replete with messages. Similar to text, tattoos convey stories that may relate to existential questions like genealogy, identity, status, achievement, medicine/therapy as well as ontological relations like ancestors, spirits and animals. Tattoos being an integral part of all the cultures played significant functions like medicinal, spiritual, social and semiotic. The understanding and perception of tattooing as a practice itself has undergone several changes over different time periods. Further, tattooing as a cultural practice has attracted the interest of Anthropologists, Sociologists and Psychologists. This work tries to understand provenance of tattooing as a cultural symbol in aboriginal/primitive as well as modern societies and culturally specific meanings attributed to them in both Indian as well as other contexts.- Reproduced
https://www.arfjournals.com/MII/issue/338
Tattooing, Body Art, Insignia, Meaning, Communication, Identity, Symbolism, Cultural Practices, Rituals, Social Expression, Rites of passage, Semiotics, Subculture, Sacred.