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Tatau: A History of Sāmoan Tattooing
Tatau is a beautifully designed and richly illustrated retelling of the unique and powerful history of Samoan tattooing, from 3,000 years ago to modern practices.
The Samoan Islands are virtually unique in that tattooing has been continuously practiced with indigenous techniques: the full male tattoo, the pe'a has evolved in subtle ways in its design since the nineteenth century, but remains as elaborate, meaningful, and powerful as it ever was.
This cultural history is the first publication to examine Samoan tatau from its earliest beginnings. Through a chronology rich with people, encounters, and events it describes how Samoan tattooing has been shaped by local and external forces of change over many centuries. It argues that Samoan tatau has a long history of relevance both within and beyond Samoa, and a more complicated history than is currently presented in the literature.
It is richly illustrated with historical images of nineteenth and twentieth century Samoan tattooing, contemporary tattooing, diagrams of tattoo designs and motifs, and with supplementary photographs such as posters, ephemera, film stills and artefacts.
The Samoan Islands are virtually unique in that tattooing has been continuously practiced with indigenous techniques: the full male tattoo, the pe'a has evolved in subtle ways in its design since the nineteenth century, but remains as elaborate, meaningful, and powerful as it ever was.
This cultural history is the first publication to examine Samoan tatau from its earliest beginnings. Through a chronology rich with people, encounters, and events it describes how Samoan tattooing has been shaped by local and external forces of change over many centuries. It argues that Samoan tatau has a long history of relevance both within and beyond Samoa, and a more complicated history than is currently presented in the literature.
It is richly illustrated with historical images of nineteenth and twentieth century Samoan tattooing, contemporary tattooing, diagrams of tattoo designs and motifs, and with supplementary photographs such as posters, ephemera, film stills and artefacts.
- GenresAnthropology
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2018
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75 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 25, 2024
I think 3.5 stars is an appropriate rating for this book, and even though I usually round down I'm going to round up because in this case I'm not confident that these authors had an obligation to do much better.
Before I explain that, let me quickly hit the highlights. Purely in terms of the information it contains, the book is good. It's also very good as a visual reference. So in the most important area (communicating the truth about the subject matter at hand), the book is a success and I can't imagine a reason to rate it below, say, a 3/5.
With that said, the book has at least two major shortcomings. The first is its style and tone. Unfortunately, most academics are just not good writers, and that lack of writing talent is painfully evident here. In too many places, the text is clunky, dry, overly technical, or all three at once. I dearly wish that universities would put more effort into fixing this problem, but realistically I don't expect it to happen. We as readers just have to adjust.
The second major problem is the authors' and editors' fumbling, somewhat scattered approach to the subject of cultural appropriation. The reason I'm deciding to round up instead of down is that I don't think anyone can discuss cultural appropriation without coming across as fumbling and somewhat scattered.
To give you a sense of what I mean, here are some (paraphrased) claims that appear in this book:
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is bad because it's disrespectful.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is bad because it's injurious to Samoan culture.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is good because it provides opportunities for Samoan tattoo to evolve.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is good because it produces economic opportunities (and increased cultural prestige) for Samoan people.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans has ambiguous value because any change to Samoan tattoo culture is mostly a change in the balance of power among Samoan elites.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is inevitable, so whether it's good or bad is of secondary (if any) importance.
(This is a partial list; if you look closely, you can probably find more.)
Obviously, the takeaway message here is blurry at best. Moreover, I'm not confident that all of the premises are even true to begin with. (For example, I don't know what it means for a culture to be injured; a culture is an abstraction, not an actual, living, physical entity. So I'm not confident that Samoan culture *can* been injured, by the non-Samoan appropriation of Samoan tattoo or by anything else. Injury just seems to be the wrong concept here altogether.) Nor is there any single, systematic, sustained investigation of this topic. Instead, the editors seem to have opted for an approach in which every side gets to have their say and the reader just has to figure it out on their own (or, more likely, compulsively grab onto whichever claims feel emotionally compelling and then give the matter no further reflection).
To me, this approach is more unhelpful than helpful. Presenting the reader with a disorganized collection of mutually incompatible moral claims is already a bit much for a public-facing book like this one; it's significantly worse to do so when none of those moral claims is fully fleshed out and many of them are presented as snippets (or even asides).
But, again, I don't see how the editors could reasonably have done better. My experience of this discussion is that *all* claims regarding cultural appropriation are a little muddled right now, and it's not up to anthropologists or museum curators to fix that problem. The best they can do is present the claims that other people make, which is what this book does. Appropriation is a subject that has to be more finely tuned by the people who are in charge of it, i.e., cultural theorists, philosophers, activists, and so on. That was never going to happen in this book.
So, yeah, there's the 4/5 rating: really it's more like 3.5, but I'm willing to forgive half a star when the people who made the book did their best with imperfections that are outside of their control.
Before I explain that, let me quickly hit the highlights. Purely in terms of the information it contains, the book is good. It's also very good as a visual reference. So in the most important area (communicating the truth about the subject matter at hand), the book is a success and I can't imagine a reason to rate it below, say, a 3/5.
With that said, the book has at least two major shortcomings. The first is its style and tone. Unfortunately, most academics are just not good writers, and that lack of writing talent is painfully evident here. In too many places, the text is clunky, dry, overly technical, or all three at once. I dearly wish that universities would put more effort into fixing this problem, but realistically I don't expect it to happen. We as readers just have to adjust.
The second major problem is the authors' and editors' fumbling, somewhat scattered approach to the subject of cultural appropriation. The reason I'm deciding to round up instead of down is that I don't think anyone can discuss cultural appropriation without coming across as fumbling and somewhat scattered.
To give you a sense of what I mean, here are some (paraphrased) claims that appear in this book:
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is bad because it's disrespectful.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is bad because it's injurious to Samoan culture.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is good because it provides opportunities for Samoan tattoo to evolve.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is good because it produces economic opportunities (and increased cultural prestige) for Samoan people.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans has ambiguous value because any change to Samoan tattoo culture is mostly a change in the balance of power among Samoan elites.
- The appropriation of Samoan tattoo by non-Samoans is inevitable, so whether it's good or bad is of secondary (if any) importance.
(This is a partial list; if you look closely, you can probably find more.)
Obviously, the takeaway message here is blurry at best. Moreover, I'm not confident that all of the premises are even true to begin with. (For example, I don't know what it means for a culture to be injured; a culture is an abstraction, not an actual, living, physical entity. So I'm not confident that Samoan culture *can* been injured, by the non-Samoan appropriation of Samoan tattoo or by anything else. Injury just seems to be the wrong concept here altogether.) Nor is there any single, systematic, sustained investigation of this topic. Instead, the editors seem to have opted for an approach in which every side gets to have their say and the reader just has to figure it out on their own (or, more likely, compulsively grab onto whichever claims feel emotionally compelling and then give the matter no further reflection).
To me, this approach is more unhelpful than helpful. Presenting the reader with a disorganized collection of mutually incompatible moral claims is already a bit much for a public-facing book like this one; it's significantly worse to do so when none of those moral claims is fully fleshed out and many of them are presented as snippets (or even asides).
But, again, I don't see how the editors could reasonably have done better. My experience of this discussion is that *all* claims regarding cultural appropriation are a little muddled right now, and it's not up to anthropologists or museum curators to fix that problem. The best they can do is present the claims that other people make, which is what this book does. Appropriation is a subject that has to be more finely tuned by the people who are in charge of it, i.e., cultural theorists, philosophers, activists, and so on. That was never going to happen in this book.
So, yeah, there's the 4/5 rating: really it's more like 3.5, but I'm willing to forgive half a star when the people who made the book did their best with imperfections that are outside of their control.
August 5, 2019
Incredible deep anthropological, historical, sociological and contemporary view of Samoan and Polynesian culture thru the frame of traditional tattooing. Beautiful coffee book that stands up to heavy reading. Absolutely beautiful book.
June 10, 2023
"I reckon you should tatt around your ass and dick" - Taema and Tilafaiga
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews