Tattooed

'For over a decade and a half, sociologists have been directing serious analytic attention to tattooing and other forms of body modification. The most praiseworthy and insightful discussions are appreciative rather than condemning and based on intimate personal experience with the phenomenon. Michael Atkinson's Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art is the latest and best of these works. In its pages, the reader encounters real-life tattoo enthusiasts and gains an understanding of the pride and problems that result from their decisions to wear permanent body decorations.' --Clinton R. Sanders, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut 'In Tattooed, Michael Atkinson brings tattooing out of the shadows of deviance. As tattoo enthusiasts - your friends, your children or siblings, your co-workers - use their skin as canvases on which to paint their lives, Atkinson uses their voices to depict an emerging sensibility of body and self, of work and relationships, and of authenticity and affiliation. This is sociology that gives us voices of real people, speaking about what they desire and what they fear. It calls us to listen.' --Arthur W. Frank, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary 'Any research on tattoos should start with Atkinson's book. This is the most complete book on the subject I have read.' --Craig J. Forsyth, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Louisiana at Lafayette 'The more one reads this book, the more one can see that it is not merely a study of tattooing behaviour but a considerate theoretical exploration of social life in the current post-modern world.' --Karen March, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University