The Globalisation of Samoan Tattoo

Abstract

In an era of increased interconnection between groups of people and places, how is it possible to draw a line around them and claim them as distinct? Today cultural products, people, ideas and information move quickly on global cultural flows that loosen the ties to particular locations or contexts of meaning. How do anthropologists account for this? How do they understand and describe these processes? These are among the questions this thesis explores through a study of the Globalisation of Samoan Tattooing. Tattooing is well established within contemporary Samoan society. There are distinct male and female forms of tattooing that are widely and positively upheld in Samoan society as being emblematic symbols of Samoan culture. However, in this body of research I suggest that Samoan tattoo is more than this. I argue that Samoan tattooing represents more than an expression of Samoan identity or a sense of nationalism. It is not a cultural practice that is only relevant to Samoa. Like other cultural phenomena, Samoan tattoo circulates transnationally and globally and is made and remade in different locations in many diverse ways. My research examines the contexts for Samoan tattooing and what they collectively reveal about the greater transnational and global systems of which Samoan tattooing is a part. I discuss the processes that people put to work, in creating multiple meanings and multiple centres of knowledge around the symbols and artifacts of culture. Through this research I outline the challenges and potential of the anthropology of transnationalism and globalisation.