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Embodied Narratives: Tattooing as Cultural Negotiation and Self-Formation Among Urban Chinese Youth

Wan, Yawen LU (2025) SANM05 20251
Social Anthropology
Abstract
How do young Chinese women use tattooing to navigate the existential challenges of modernity? Understanding these embodied negotiations requires examining tattooing's role as an embodied practice for meaning-making and identity formation. Focusing on the tensions between traditional Chinese values and modern individualism, such corporeal strategies emerge as responses to what Beck termed "risk society" and Bauman's "liquid modernity"—conditions where traditional meaning systems have collapsed, leaving individuals to independently construct identities through ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai. These bodily inscriptions demonstrates that for educated urban Chinese women, tattooing functions as symbolic anchoring in an uncertain... (More)
How do young Chinese women use tattooing to navigate the existential challenges of modernity? Understanding these embodied negotiations requires examining tattooing's role as an embodied practice for meaning-making and identity formation. Focusing on the tensions between traditional Chinese values and modern individualism, such corporeal strategies emerge as responses to what Beck termed "risk society" and Bauman's "liquid modernity"—conditions where traditional meaning systems have collapsed, leaving individuals to independently construct identities through ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai. These bodily inscriptions demonstrates that for educated urban Chinese women, tattooing functions as symbolic anchoring in an uncertain world, allowing them to inscribe personal narratives onto their bodies while challenging gendered stigmatization and institutional discrimination. Rather than constituting passive responses to the widespread loss of meaning in contemporary China, these embodied practices represent active strategies for self-repair and cultural reflexivity. Such meaning-making mechanisms contribute to
anthropological understanding of how individuals creatively negotiate meaning through bodily practices in rapidly transforming societies, offering insights into contemporary selfhood and social transformation. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Wan, Yawen LU
supervisor
organization
course
SANM05 20251
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
embodied practice, tattooing, identity formation, cultural negotiation, contemporary chinese youth, social anthropology
language
English
id
9211865
date added to LUP
2025-09-08 09:49:13
date last changed
2025-09-08 09:49:13
@misc{9211865,
  abstract     = {{How do young Chinese women use tattooing to navigate the existential challenges of modernity? Understanding these embodied negotiations requires examining tattooing's role as an embodied practice for meaning-making and identity formation. Focusing on the tensions between traditional Chinese values and modern individualism, such corporeal strategies emerge as responses to what Beck termed "risk society" and Bauman's "liquid modernity"—conditions where traditional meaning systems have collapsed, leaving individuals to independently construct identities through ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai. These bodily inscriptions demonstrates that for educated urban Chinese women, tattooing functions as symbolic anchoring in an uncertain world, allowing them to inscribe personal narratives onto their bodies while challenging gendered stigmatization and institutional discrimination. Rather than constituting passive responses to the widespread loss of meaning in contemporary China, these embodied practices represent active strategies for self-repair and cultural reflexivity. Such meaning-making mechanisms contribute to
anthropological understanding of how individuals creatively negotiate meaning through bodily practices in rapidly transforming societies, offering insights into contemporary selfhood and social transformation.}},
  author       = {{Wan, Yawen}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Embodied Narratives: Tattooing as Cultural Negotiation and Self-Formation Among Urban Chinese Youth}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}