Resistance and resilience among tattoo workers

Abstract

This chapter explains how tattooists create and sustain their social world. Importantly, it depicts how tattooists employ an anachronistic form of social organization in a modern capitalist system. We depict how tattoo work is a form of resistance to the characteristics of credentialism and formal education. We also demonstrate the resilience of workers to develop forms of social organization that adapt to change. Finally, of importance, this work shows how tattooists grapple the tensions of increasing popularity and sustaining their forms of social organization. Actors socially organize tattooing through a localized, grass roots, form of craft production. These characteristics conflict with the modern, rational, and impersonal nature of production in capitalist systems.