This research explores the sociological factors underlying the increasing popularity of corporate logo tattoos. The authors draw upon critical theory, sociology of the body, and consumption to analyze data from in-depth interviews with a small sample of subjects with a corporate logo tattoo. Findings suggest that the increasing popularity of logo tattoos is a product of the commodification of culture via the culture industry. Findings show that the majority of the sample was motivated by brand loyalty and self-identification with a brand philosophy or lifestyle, while a small minority attempted to alter the intended meaning of the logo by appropriating it into a simulated meaning. This research suggests that corporate logo tattoos are one way that corporations have inscribed themselves onto the bodies and into the identities of many of those who acquire them, while others attempt to use such body modifications as a way to play with postmodern images.
Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer .1976. Dialect of enlightenment . Trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum.
2.
Arksey, Hilary, and Peter Knight.Interviewing for social scientists: An introductory resource with examples. London: Sage.
3.
Atkinson, Michael.2003. Tattooed: The sociogenesis of a body art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
4.
Austin, Mark, Patricia Gagné, and Angela Orend.Forthcoming. Motorcyclists: A critical theoretical analysis of the commodification of riding. The Journal of Popular Culture .
5.
Bakhtin, Mikhail.1968. Rabelais and his world. Boston : MIT Press.
6.
Barber, Benjamin R.2007. Consumed: How markets corrupt children, infantalize adults, and swallow citizens whole. New York: Norton.
7.
Baudrillard, Jean.1995. Simulacrum and simulation. Trans. Sheila Glaser. London: UMP.
8.
Baudrillard, Jean.1996. The system of objects. Trans. James Benedict. New York: Verso.
9.
Baudrillard, Jean.1998. The consumer society: Myths and structures. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Sage.
10.
Bauer, Eric.2002. The (trans)formation of image: Symbolic consumption, self, and society. Master's thesis, Florida Atlantic Univ .
11.
Bordo, Susan.1993a. Material girl: The effacements of postmodern culture . In Negotiating at the margins: The GENDERED DISCOURSES OF POWER AND RESISTANCE, ed. Sue Fisher and Kathy Davis, 295-316. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
12.
Bordo, Susan.1993b. Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
13.
Bradberry, Grace.1997. Branded for life. The Times, November 20, F1.
14.
Braunberger, Christine.2000. Revolting bodies: The monster beauty of tattooed women . NWSA Journal12:1-23.
15.
Butler, Judith.1993. Bodies that matter. London: Routledge.
16.
Campbell, Colin.1989. The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism . Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
17.
Chapkis, Wendy.1986. Beauty secrets: Women and the politics of appearance . Boston: South End.
18.
Charmaz, Kathy.1983. The grounded theory method: An explication and interpretation. In Contemporary field research: A collection of readings, ed. Robert Emerson, 109-28. Boston: Little, Brown.
19.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black feminist thought. New York: Routledge.
20.
Corrigan, Peter.1997. The sociology of consumption. London : Sage.
21.
Crossley, Nick.2001. The social body: Habit, identity and desire. London: Sage.
22.
Davis, Kathy.1995. Reshaping the female body: The dilemma of cosmetic surgery . New York: Routledge.
23.
DeBord, Guy.1995. The society of the spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books.
24.
DeMello, Margo.2000. Bodies inscription. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
25.
Donovan, Lauren.1997. Wearing their art. Bismarck Tribune , November 16, 1C.
26.
Douglas, Mary.1966. Purity and danger. New York : Praeger.
27.
Douglas, Mary, and Baron Isherwood .1979. The world of goods: Towards an anthropology of consumption. London. Routledge.
28.
Eisner, Elliot.1991. The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New York: Macmillan.
29.
Ewen, Stuart.1976. Captains of consciousness: Advertising and the social roots of consumer culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
30.
Falk, Pasi.1994. The consuming body. London: Routledge.
31.
Featherstone, Mike.1991a. The body in consumer culture. In The body: Social process and cultural theory, ed. Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan Turner, 170-96. London: Sage.
32.
Featherstone, Mike.1991b. Consumer culture and postmodernism. London: Sage.
33.
Featherstone, Mike.1999. Body modification: An introduction. Body and Society5 (2-3): 1-13.
34.
Fiske, John.1989. Reading the popular. London : Routledge.
35.
Forbis, Melissa.1994. This is my body: gender, tattooing, and resistance in the United States. Master's thesis, Temple Univ .
36.
Foster, Gary, and Richard Hummel.2000. The commodification of body modification: Tattoos and piercings from counterculture to campus. http://www.lsus.edu/la/journals/ideology/contents/vol25/tattoos.pdf (accessed March 26, 2003)
37.
Foucault, Michel.1978. The history of sexuality: Volume 1, An introduction . New York: Vintage.
38.
Foucault, Michel.1986. Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In The Foucault reader, 76-100. New York: Pantheon .
39.
Foucault, Michel.1995. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage .
40.
Frank, Arthur.1991. For a sociology of the body: An analytical resource . In The body: Social process and cultural theory, ed. Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth , and Bryan Turner, 36-102. London : Sage.
41.
Frank, Thomas.1997. Conquest of cool. Chicago: University of Chicago.
42.
Gagné, Pat, and Deanna McGaughey .2002. Designing women: Embodiment, elective mammoplasty, and the masculine gaze. Gender & Society, 16(6): 814-838.
43.
Giddens, Anthony.1991. Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge , UK: Polity.
44.
Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson.1996. Sign wars. New York : Guilford.
45.
Gottdiener, Mark.2000. New forms of consumption: Consumers, culture, and commodification . New York: Rowman and Littlefield .
46.
Govenar, Alan.2000. The changing image of tattooing in American culture, 1846-1966 . In Written on the body, ed. Jane Caplan, 212-33. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
47.
Gramsci, Antonio.1971. Selections from the prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
48.
hooks, bell.1992. Selling hot pussy: Representations of black female sexuality in the cultural marketplace. In Black looks: Race and representation, ed. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, 113-28. Boston : South End.
49.
Jameson, Frederic.1991. Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
50.
Kang, Miliann, and Katherine Jones .2007. Why do people get tattoos ? Contexts6 (1): 47-47.
51.
Kleese, Christian.1999. Modern primitivism: Non-mainstream body modification and racialized Representation. Body and Society5 (2-3): 15-38.
52.
Klein, Naomi.1999. No logo. New York: Picador USA.
53.
Lash, Scott, and John Urry.1994. Economies of sign and space. London: Sage.
54.
Levins, Hoag.1998. The changing status of tattoo art. http://www.tattooartist.com/history.html (accessed April 5, 2002).
55.
Lincoln, Yvonna, and Egon Guba.1985. Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
56.
Lofland, John, and Lyn Lofland .1984. Analyzing social settings: A guide to qualitative observation and analysis. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
57.
Maffesoli, Michel.1996. The time of the tribes: The decline of individualism in mass society. London: Sage.
58.
McCracken, Grant.1988. Culture and consumption: New approaches to the symbolic character of consumer goods and activities. Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
59.
Mulvey, Laura.1989. Visual pleasures and narrative cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
60.
Orend, Angela.2003. Corporate logo tattoos: Literal corporate branding? Consumers , Commodities and Consumption, 5(1): 1-6.
61.
Otnes, Per.1988. The sociology of consumption: An anthology. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press .
62.
Patton, Michael Quinn.1990. Qualitative evaluation and research methods. 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
63.
Peters, Tom.1997. The brand called you. Fast Company10 (August): 83.
64.
Polhemus, Ted, and Lynn Proctor.1978. Fashion and anti-fashion. London: Thames and Hudson.
65.
RE/Search.1999. http://www.researchpubs.com/books/primprod.shtml (accessed April 5, 2004).
66.
Ritzer, George.1999. The sociology of consumption: A sub-field in search of discovery. Consumers, Commodities, and Consumption1:1.
67.
Root, Deborah.1996. Cannibal culture: Art, appropriation, and the commodification of difference. Boulder, CO: Westview .
68.
Rosenblatt, Daniel.1997. The antisocial skin: Structure, resistance and modern primitive adornment in the United States. Cultural Anthropology12:287-334.
69.
Rubin, Arnold.1988. The tattoo renaissance. In Marks of civilization , ed. Arnold Rubin, 233-64. Los Angeles: University of California.
70.
Sanders, Clinton.1988. Marks of mischief: Becoming and being tattooed . Journal of Contemporary Ethnography16 (4): 395-432.
71.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Loïc Wacquant .2002. Commodifying bodies. London: Sage.
72.
Schor, Juliet, and Douglass Holt.2000. The consumer society reader. New York: New Press.
73.
Scott, Sue David Morgan.1993. Body matters. London: Falmer.
74.
Sever, Joy Marie.2003. A third of Americans with tattoos say they make them feel more sexy. The Harris Poll. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=407 (accessed October 8, 2003).
75.
Sheldon, Jamie, Cooley Godward, LLP, and Mary DeLongis.2001. Tattoo you-With a trademark. International Trademark Association Bulletin Archive. http://www.inta.org/index.php?option=com_contentandtask=viewandid=216andItemid=126andgetcontent=1 (accessed October 8, 2003).
76.
Shields, Rob.1992. Lifestyle shopping: The subject of consumption . London: Routledge.
77.
Shilling, Chris.1993. The body and social theory. 2nd ed. London: Sage.
78.
Slater, Don.1997. Consumer culture and modernity. London : Polity.
79.
Smelser, Neil.1976. Comparative methods in the social sciences. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
80.
Strauss, Anslem, and Juliet Corbin.1990. Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. London: Sage.
81.
Sweetman, Paul.1999. Anchoring the (postmodern) self? Body modification, fashion, and identity. Body and Society5 (2-3): 51-76.
82.
Synott, Anthony.1993. The body social: Symbolism, self, and society. London: Routledge.
83.
Travis, Daryl.2000. Emotional branding: How successful brands gain the irrational edge. Los Angeles: Prima.
84.
Turner, Bryan.1992. Regulating bodies: Essays in medical sociology . London: Routledge.
85.
Turner, Byran.1996. The Body and Society. 2nd ed. London: Sage.
86.
Turner, Byran.1997. Body marks: Neo-tribalism in cool societies. Keynote address at the Body Modification Conference for Theory, Culture, and Society, Nottingham, UK.
87.
Turner, Byran.1999. The possibility of primitiveness: Towards a sociology of body marks in cool societies. Body and Society5 (2-3): 39-50.
88.
Twitchell, James.1999. Lead us into temptation: The triumph of American materialism . New York: Columbia University Press.
89.
Vail, Donald Angus.2000. The tattoos we deserve: Producing culture and constructing elitism. PhD diss., Univ. of Connecticut.
90.
Vale, Vivian, and Andrea Juno.1989. Modern primitives. An investigation of contemporary adornment and ritual. San Francisco: RE/Search .
91.
Vanderbilt, Tom.1997. The advertised life. In Commodify your dissent , ed. Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland, 127-42. New York: Norton.
92.
Veblen, Thorstein.1994. The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of institutions. New York: Macmillan .
93.
Velliquette, Anne, and Jeff Murray.1999. The new tattoo subculture. In Mapping the social landscape: Readings in sociology, ed. Susan Ferguson, 68-81. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
94.
Werner, Oswald, and Mark Schoepfle.1987. Systematic fieldwork. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
95.
Williams, Simon, and Gillia Bendelow .1999. The lived body: Sociological themes, embodied issues. London: Routledge.
