Conflict and Change in the World of Tattooing: A Subculture of Consumption

• In Event: 365 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Narrating the Self; Embodying Culture

Abstract

Using ethnographic data and interviews with over 50 tattoo artists and collectors, this article addresses cultural conflicts that arise from subcultural commodification (Goulding and Saren 2007), the process by which subcultural goods and services are incorporated into the mass marketplace. Through appeals to tradition and claims of authenticity, hardcore traditionalist tattooers and their patrons rework boundaries of membership and create new forms of subcultural capital in order to protect their subjectivities in this subculture of consumption. Unlike tribal entrepreneurs, who promote popular interest in subcultural forms and fashions, traditionalists find ways to accommodate their ideals with the everyday realities of running a business and the new customers they now routinely see.

Author

• David Paul Strohecker, University of Maryland-College Park