Tattoo: an anthropology

1. Introduction. The corporeality of tattooing and identities

Ideology and the body

Ideological shifts of Tahitian tattoo history

The temporality of tattooing

The spatiality of tattooing

Methodology of the study of the body

The structure of the book

1. Discontinuity and displacement : place and history of tattooing

Recovering Ma'ohi skin, renaissance of contemporary tattooing

Tattooing from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century

Conclusion

2. Practice and form

Practice of tattooing

Form of tattoos

Categories of tattoo form

Conclusion

3. Marking Taure'are'a : social relationships and tattooing

Gender, ethnic and age differences in Tahitian society

Tattooists in Tahiti

Tahitian tattoo world

Creation and transformation of tattooing

Conclusion

4. Exchanges in Taputapuatea : localization and globalization

Tatau i Taputapuatea

Tahitian and non-Tahitian interest in other tattooing

The ownership and transmission of tattooing

Friendship bonds in the Tahitian tattoo world

Exchange in Taputapuatea

Non-Polynesian tattooing : the case of Michel Raapoto

Four ownerships of tattoo

Conclusion

5. Dancing and tattooing at festivals : Tahitian, Polynesian and Marquesan identities

Festivals and images of islands

Heiva

Festival of Pacific Arts

Marquesan Art Festival

Conclusion

6. Inscribing the past, present and future : in Nuutania prison

The road to Nuutania prison

Le centre pénitentiaire de Nuutania

Prison life and tattooing

The inmate tattooists

The spatiality of prison tattooing

Body in the past, present and future

Conclusion

Glossary.