Think Before You Ink

The prevalence of tattoos has increased over the past several decades. The societal shift of how tattoos are perceived has contributed to tattoo popularity and why artistry is desired. However, tattooing is not without risks. The potential health risks, psychological motivation, and perceived benefits of tattoos are topics to be considered before getting a tattoo. This article explores the risks, benefits, and reasoning behind tattoos in modern society

Competitive advantage as a legitimacy-creating process

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how small firms in the tattooing industry actively shape institutional expectations of value for consumers in a changing industry. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon interviews with key actors in the firms under study to explore their experiences with consumers and other constituents in determining how competitive advantage is constructed in this environment. These data are complemented data with interviews with governmental representatives and material from secondary sources. Findings – The results reveal efforts of firms to construct and increase organizational legitimacy through the prominence of discourses of professionalism based on artistry and medicine/public health. These bases of competitive differentiation are not the clear result of exogenous pressure, rather they arise through the active efforts of the firm to construct value guidelines for consumers and other constituents. Practical implications – Strategic management in small firms is a complex and dynamic process that does not necessarily mirror that of large organizations. Constructing competitive advantage is an interacting process between key actors of small firms and various constituents. Originality/value – The paper extends the application of institutional theory in strategic management by illuminating the active role that firms play in creating industry norms, especially in industries where norms are not well established or no longer entrenched. Moreover, exploring an alternative site of study offers a means through which to see well-studied issues in new ways

"Does it mean anything?" and other insults: Dreadlocks, tattoos and feminism.

Drawing on feminist theorizing, phenomenological investigation of lived experience, and embodied ways of knowing, I interrogate my own creative and political acts moving in the world. As a dancer, my understandings of movement as epistemologically significant provide the basis for my re-creations of self, and for my play with the markings of gender, identity and culture. While dance performances provide a means for personal embodied theatrical engagement in issues of gender, culture and identity, my everyday encounters with others are also a rich context for interpretation, re-creation and play, In particular, my manner of dress, dreadlocks and tattoos provide markings of gender, culture and identity that seemingly confront others' stereotypes and generate encounters that can be either positive or negative. This presentation, utilizing personal experience narratives or autoethnographies, provides a context for personal reflection, interrogation and interpretation, moving towards more politicized embodied understandings

From Cellblocks to Suburbia: Tattoos as Subcultural Style, Commodity and Self-expression

This research study uses scholarship on tattooing, popular cultural representation and the practice and experience of tattooing to look at how subcultures (social groups excluded from mainstream society) express themselves through style and how style creates meaning and identification. These subcultures differ from other subcultures, such as racially marginalized groups, in that they create style in order to separate themselves from the mainstream. These marginal ideas of style are often picked up and adapted by America’s mainstream, materialistic culture and marketed as “cool” by corporations and other members of mainstream society for mass consumption. When discussing related subcultural theory in light of tattoos, one must not overlook the unique features of tattoos, including their permanent quality and the way society continues to perceive tattoos. Moreover, in today’s consumption-obsessed society, it is difficult to escape capitalism’s effect on “cool” and the ways in which cool is commodified. The mainstream is constantly commodifying subcultural trends, forcing subcultures to continually create new trends to remain marginal. Because commodification is perpetual and corporations are constantly seeking new ways to profit off of the mainstream’s next perceived idea of “cool,” it is somewhat remarkable that a centuries-old form of self-expression has largely managed to escape this process of commodification as tattoos have done

And If Your Friends Jumped Off A Bridge, Would You Do It Too? : How Developmental Neuroscience Can Inform Legal Regimes Governing Adolescents

Legal models of adolescent autonomy and responsibility in various domains of law span a spectrum from categorical prohibitions of certain behaviors to recognitions of total adolescent autonomy. The piecemeal approach to the limited decision-making capacity of adolescents lacks an empirical foundation in the differences between adolescent and adult decision-making, leading to counterintuitive and inconsistent legal outcomes. The law limits adolescent autonomy with respect to some decisions that adolescents are perfectly competent to make, and in other areas, the law attributes adult responsibility and imposes adult punishments on adolescents for making decisions that implicate their unique volitional vulnerabilities. As developmental neuroscientists discover more about the biological underpinnings of juvenile decision-making, policymakers now have the opportunity to enhance consistency within and across the legal domains that regulate adolescent behavior. To serve this goal, our paper typologizes extant legal regimes that account for the limitations of adolescent decision making, reviews the neuroscientific evidence about how the brain’s developing structures and functions affect decision making, explores case studies of how certain youth behaviors that implicate the adolescent brain’s unique vulnerabilities intersect with the legal system, and proposes a matrix-based approach for the consistent legal evaluation of adolescent behavior

Insufficient access to harm reduction measures in prisons in 5 countries (PRIDE Europe): a shared European public health concern

Background: Prisoners constitute a high-risk population, particularly for infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to estimate the level of infectious risk in the prisons of five different European countries by measuring to what extent the prison system adheres to WHO/UNODC recommendations. Methods: Following the methodology used in a previous French survey, a postal/electronic questionnaire was sent to all prisons in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Italy to collect data on the availability of several recommended HIV-HCV prevention interventions and HBV vaccination for prisoners. A score was built to compare adherence to WHO/UNODC recommendations (considered a proxy of environmental infectious risk) in those 4 countries. It ranged from 0 (no adherence) to 12 (full adherence). A second score (0 to 9) was built to include data from a previous French survey, thereby creating a 5-country comparison. Results: A majority of prisons answered in Austria (100 %), France (66 %) and Denmark (58 %), half in Belgium (50 %) and few in Italy (17 %), representing 100, 74, 89, 47 and 23 % coverage of the prison populations, respectively. Availability of prevention measures was low, with median adherence scores ranging from 3.5 to 4.5 at the national level. These results were confirmed when using the second score which included France in the inter-country comparison. Overall, the adherence score was inversely associated with prison overpopulation rates (p = 0.08). Conclusions: Using a score of adherence to WHO/UNODC recommendations, the estimated environmental infectious risk remains extremely high in the prisons of the 5 European countries assessed. Public health strategies should be adjusted to comply with the principle of equivalence of care and prevention with the general community

Global Cultures Local Interpretations: A Comparison of Wearing Tattoos in Ecuador and in the United States

This thesis explores the practice of tattooing and how it has been affected by the globalization of local practices. Tattooing is an ancient practice that virtually all societies have performed. Today, tattooing is practiced in an infinite number of ways and it is interesting to understand local influences as well as global themes portrayed in modern day tattooing. A study abroad trip from September 2012 to May 2013 in Ecuador gave me the opportunity to study tattooing in the Latin American country. A series of the same interviews in the United States from September 2013 to December 2013 allowed me to gain another perspective on the practice of tattooing. Tattooing in Ecuador is happening in an informal, unregulated manner in which there are professional tattoo shops and also informal and often unhygienic shops that have popped up around the country. Due to the lack of regulations and the conservative catholic pressures of the mainstream Ecuadorian society, tattooing has been deemed out of the norm. Furthermore, those that tattoo have replicated the same social structure of the mainstream society, which has caused a type of self-imposed norm in the tattoo world. Meanwhile, in the United States tattooing is an accessible way to purposefully assert one’s uniqueness. People in the United States are constantly pushing the boundaries of tattooing while at the same time struggling to conform to Corporate-America standards. Many Americans tattoo in easily covered places to assure that their tattoos do not prevent them for being hired

Academic reflections between Polynesian tattooing and reflective practice

In Polynesian culture stories which may be generations old are told via tattoo art: the Tahitian word ‘tatu’ or ‘ta-tu’ means to strike something and links directly to the ancient art of tattooing to preserve an ancestral lineage and/or record a particular event or story that has been handed down from generation to generation via the same method (Villequette, 1998). Some scholars such as Gell (1993), and Schrader (2000) and Jones (2000) in Schildkrout (2004), write of tattoos being associated with “subsidiary selves, spirits, ancestors, rulers and victims” that are resident within the tattooed individual, while some write of ethnographic work being inscribed on bodies (Sparkes, 2000, p. 21 and Schildkrout, 2004, p. 322). Auto-ethnographic study (the study of ourselves) is a relatively new field and is often associated with qualitative analysis; as such it has stimulated the author to introduce the term ‘internal’ reflection. I believe that this may describe a ‘personal’ or ‘internal’ reflection that is transmitted to the outside world in the form of a tattoo. Drawing on the work of Sparkes, an auto-ethnography is a narrative of self, although this research offers tattoos as a viable alternative to narrative and suggests that auto-ethnographic tattoos are not only commonplace but that they can also be very real transcripts of the narrative equivalent. Further, this research shows that different cultures reflect in different ways and that the tattoo is a popular and essential method of ethnographic captur