Symbolic Violence in the Field of Tattooing

Having inherited the notion of deviance, most of the literature on tattoos is still infused with questioning its (supposed) unconventional character, leaving little room for the heterogeneity of tattoo imagery. This explorative study inductively explores, by data retrieved from questionnaires and interviews, the plethora of tattoo imagery, grounded in taste cultures. Taste cultures are common clusters of cultural forms, such as applied tattoo imagery, reflecting aesthetic preferences and social values. Three bodies of literature on taste cultures are identified. The first, performing individual taste, implies individual meaning ascribed to individually selected tattoos. The second, opting for a taste culture, implies a collective meaning that is recognized as such. The last, hierarchal taste cultures, implies that tattoos not only have collective meaning and are recognized, but also judged. These three bodies of literature are explored through individual meanings, collective meanings, recognition and moral judgment in tattoo imagery. It will be argued that tattoos are not mere (fragmented) individual decorative signs, for eight different subcategories of ascribed meaning are identified, either belonging to the self or to others. Nor are tattoos opted for articulations of individual preference for a taste culture – or collective meaning which is recognized – for an educational informed difference in ascribing meaning to and evaluation of tattoo imagery is found. Rather, the genre of body modification is stratified alongside lines of education, articulated through either a literal or symbolic ascribed and interpretation of meaning. Put shortly: it will be demonstrated that even in popular culture, amongst those (once) deviant, symbolic violence is maintained by the higher strata through valuing symbolic tattoo imagery over literal tattoo imagery.