The dissertation deals with the issue of physical modifications, especially tattoos, in the environment of Czech male prisons. It is based on ethnographic research conducted between 2013 and 2017 in a total of five Czech men's security prisons. The aim of the thesis is to describe the phenomenon of decorating the body of inmates sentenced to serve prison sentences in Czech male prisons and to present the interpretative and meaningful potential of body treatments, especially tattooing, in relation to the so-called second life of the convicted. As a part of the thesis, the design of ethnographic research in the environment of Czech male prisons, including its limits and pitfalls, is presented, while the specificity of this research field in the field of socio-scientific research is demonstrated. Attention is paid to the issue and importance of body in the prison environment and, in consequence, to body modifications that are used at the prison level to resist against the attempt to discipline convicts' bodies through unified institutional practices. Emphasis is placed primarily on tattooing as the most frequent and the most significant physical modification of the criminal subculture in the Czech prison environment. The final chapter and the pivotal part of this thesis brings the categorization of...

This thesis discusses aspects of how the Late Neolithic society in southern Sweden changed through the use of metal. Particular focus is on how the different categories of the material culture were utilized in this process – the Late Neolithic flint daggers and objects of stone imitating objects of metal. The presence of metal in the Late Neolithic society is discussed and explicated by the correlation of metal objects to objects imitating metal. Imitations are not perceived as passive copies, but as a continuing dialogue between artefacts. These imitations are viewed as filling a function wherein they help to prepare society to express social and political processes in a different material, as a way to meet and relate to the new world-view that the metal objects implied through their existence. The difference between resharpened and non-resharpened flint daggers is explored through a variety of quantitative and qualitative analyses. There appears to have been two differing rules of deposition of the two types of flint daggers in the Late Neolithic society. Resharpened and non-resharpened flint daggers thus seem to relate to different societal spheres of significance in society. It is suggested that the flint daggers were used in varying forms of ritual body modification practices, as tools for alteration of bodily appearance. These rituals can be termed passage rituals – rituals connected to the individual’s journey through her life-cycle. The resharpening of the dagger blade is then to be understood as a ceremonial resharpening, a ritual remaking of the dagger. During the Late Neolithic, gallery graves, mortuary houses and votive offerings were used to express a connection to an older, ancestral ideology, based on communal rituals. At the same time a new ideology was expressed through the use of individual earth graves and ritual body modification practices. The human body, previously attributed an ancestral role, was now used as a medium of classification, signification and individual expression. The ritual practice works both as a societal regulator and as a way for individuals to express themselves in relation to others. The ritual body modification practices, manifested in different rituals of passage, may have been a way for individuals to relate to the changes in society during the course of the Late Neolithic.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-07-21T15:35:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 barbaranascimentoduarte.pdf: 1096346 bytes, checksum: 6bd81b3b4fd9bee4c73eae5fd62722c5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-07-22T15:33:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 barbaranascimentoduarte.pdf: 1096346 bytes, checksum: 6bd81b3b4fd9bee4c73eae5fd62722c5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-22T15:33:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 barbaranascimentoduarte.pdf: 1096346 bytes, checksum: 6bd81b3b4fd9bee4c73eae5fd62722c5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-11 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Na Modernidade o discurso científico suspeita do corpo e o posiciona como um simples suporte da pessoa, um objeto à disposição sobre o qual é necessário trabalhar a fim de alcançar seu aperfeiçoamento. É também a matéria-prima onde se dilui e concomitantemente se conquista a identidade individual. A partir da leitura dos relatos das leitoras da revista feminina Boa Forma do ano de 2009, esta pesquisa tem por objetivo discutir os significados e valores do corpo, considerando o papel das práticas de modificação corporal reflexiva na busca da concretização de um projeto corporal. A Modernidade viabilizou um projeto do corpo que consiste em moldá-lo para construir e/ou reconstruir a identidade individual. Nessa perspectiva, o corpo não é o lugar da condenação, sim uma nova possibilidade de manifestação do eu, uma nova forma do sujeito se reportar ao mundo, portanto, digno de todo investimento. O corpo tornou-se a possibilidade de “salvação individual” e um estilo de vida. Sob o signo de uma promessa messiânica: os feios ficarão belos e os velhos ficarão jovens, perceber-se-á que mais do que o investimento no invólucro corporal com fim em si, a dedicação ao corpo se deve à constante busca de definir a interioridade a partir da exterioridade. / In modern scientific discourse there is the consideration of the person‟s body and the postulate that it is simply the support of the person, an object which is available and which is necessary to work on in order to achieve improvement. Also, it is seen as the raw material in which an individual person‟s identity is both lessened and simultaneously mastered. From reading the reports of female readers of the magazine Boa Forma from the year 2009, this present research aims to investigate the meanings and values of the body and to advance an understanding of the practices of reflective body modification in order to understand their roles in the search for a body plan.The modern form makes possible a body design that consists of shaping it to build and/or reconstruct its individual identity. From this perspective, the body is not a place for criticism, but rather it becomes a new possibility of the manifestation of the self, a new form of the subject to be presented to the world, and therefore is worth all of the investment. The body becomes the means of a person‟s salvation and also of his/her lifestyle. From being a priori the absolute identity of the individual, it was broken up, accompanying the reformation of the subject. As a sign of the messianic promise: the ugly will become beautiful and old will become young, people will realize that, even more than an investment in the covering of the body as an end in itself, the important question for the body is the constant search to define the interior from the exterior.

This thesis examines the symbiotic relationship between the meanings of tattoos and social norms through a comparative analysis of three distinct periods in twentieth-century American history. I use extensive archival material and an interdisciplinary approach to explain how the meanings of body ink shifted and to identify factors that influenced the public’s perceptions of tattoos as deviant or acceptable. In the 1920s and 1930s, tattooing practices among favored social groups, specifically military personnel, middle- and upper-class white men and women, and circus performers, generally received more positive reactions than those among lower-class and criminal subcultures. In the 1950s and 1960s, body ink became practiced primarily by marginalized individuals, such as criminals, bikers, and sex workers, and the general public’s understandings of tattoos as indicators of deviance and dangerous immorality strengthened. The new clientele and practitioners of the 1970s and 1980s mainly came from a high socio-economic status and reframed their tattooing practices as artistic expressions of individuality. I argue that, although body ink aesthetic by and large supported American values of patriotism, heteronormativity, and racial advantage, tattooing practices among ‘respectable’ groups were more accepted than those by ‘deviant’ subcultures. My research shows that the fluctuations between public rejection and appreciation of tattoos in these periods rested principally on the appearance and function of the inked design and on the position of the tattooed body in the social hierarchy. This thesis demonstrates that tattooing practices created and perpetuated but also destabilized and influenced gender-, race-, and class-based American ideals, and my research exposes the nuanced connections of body ink with deviance and normativity, the malleability of social conventions, and a complex web of power relations constantly in flux. / Graduate / 2018-08-23

In this thesis, I argue that the modern view on tattooing as a new trend and its former association with antisocial people is an old trope, in many ways constructed by the newspapers.  Tattooing is a practice with a long and multifaceted history. From Ötzi the iceman to the presumed tattoo-boom or tattoo-renaissance in the late twentieth century, it has waxed and waned in popularity but never fully got out of sight. The inhabitants of Sweden's capital city Stockholm are said to be the world's most tattooed people.  The Swedish word for tattoo: tatuering, was introduced in 1799 in an article about natives in the South Pacific. For about half a century, the newspapers mostly wrote about tattooing as a native practice in faraway countries. But, as far back as 1869, the Swedish newspapers started to report on a more western-centered tattoo interest. Approximately 30 years later, it was also reported as a trend attracting new target groups such as women and nobility in America and Britain. Since then, Swedish newspapers have repeatedly described tattooing alternatively as a new trend reaching out to new target groups, a practice on the brink of extinction, a danger to the health, or a stigmatizing mark. The tattooed person has been depicted as odd, self-destructive, an outcast, or incapable of making their own decisions. Authorities such as medics, scholars, social workers, and journalists have taken a right to interpret, discuss and judge the choices of other people. From researching Swedish Newspapers from 1799 to 1999, I conclude that the modern reports on tattooing as a trend, a danger, or a sign of deviance is a narrative with a long history. The view of tattooed people as odd, strange, and victims of self-destructive behavior is a discourse with an equally long tradition. Further, I argue that the tattooed person, when interviewed or depicted to this day, is constructed by old conceptions and stereotypes. The result is that people with an interest in tattooing internalizes prejudices as a self-image. This image is either promoted and self-encouraged, or the object of denial, and a wish to be seen as a whole person, not a stereotype or cliché.

This work deals with the phenomenon of tattoo in hardcore subculture. In the theoretical part it reflects the transformation of the concept of subcultures in his historical progress, with an emphasis on the concept of style in the connection of the Center of contemporary culture Studies and post subcultural theory, especially the writing of David Muggleton. The diachronic perspective, this work also deals with the phenomenon of tattoo and its functions and meanings to it in today's society ascribed. An integral part of the theoretical part is to describe hardcore only in terms of its progress in the USA and in Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic, but also in terms of the side of music and shared ideology, which is the main key featuring to this subculture. Concepts described in the theoretical part are then used in actual research, which is conducted by using qualitative methodology. Exploration aims to describe the meanings and functions of the hardcore subculture and determine whether they are content and motivation ascribed to tattoo influenced subcultural ideologies, or whether it is primarily an expression of the contemporary individualistic discourse. In this work tattooing is examined in terms of its individual nature with regard to the subcultural, or wider, societal context, which together...

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Based on what body adornment has been throughout history, this project investigates what it might be in the future. The possibilities, forms and methods of body adornment has changed and will continue to change over time, along with our societal and environmental shifts as well as with developments in science and technology. Our bodies are increasingly perceived as malleable objects that we can modify, enhance and improve. I use speculation as a method to explore how the human body may develop and be modified in the future. I envision a world where we have become increasingly intertwined with technologies, where environmental changes and our lifestyle have affected our biology, and where our bodies have continued to be altered based on social norms. Through this project I have become some kind of contemporary Frankenstein scientist, although I am not in a laboratory but in a jewellery workshop. My objects, which I call potential jewellery, or maybe-jewellery, are presented in an installation in the form of a clinical setting. It is a representation of where body adornment meets medical technology, where jewellery meets prostheses and implants. This project does not have any answers or a clear message about what is right or wrong – it is based on a curiosity without having a conclusion in mind. The installation is meant to be a reminder that our bodies are always adorned, modified and in transformation – that we are in an ongoing metamorphosis from one state to another.