From Ancestral Ritualism to Cyberanthropomorphia: An Ethnographic Analysis of Technology Uses and Body Modification

Nowadays, bodily practices have been significantly influenced by emerging technologies, the new era of digital communication and modern consumer dynamics. This work problematises the relationship between body and technology through the phenomenon of body modification, exploring the conception of the body as a place of cultural reproduction and symbolic expression.

Body modification is considered as a total social fact that involves socio-historical and physio-psychological factors, and groups a variety of practices and disciplines. Between the diversity of body modification nowadays, this research focuses specifically on tattooing. It is analysed through a qualitative methodology –based on ethnographic fieldwork in the form of participant observation sessions and in-depth interviews–. The methodological design is complemented by an approach to autoethnography –exploring the dual role of researcher and tattoo consumer–, in order to understand the role played by artistic styles, identity patterns and market logics around the skin marking.

In this context, it is interesting to observe the evolution of new technical, aesthetic and ideological trends of body modification, especially those phenomena related to the posthumanist challenges in today’s mass culture –such as cyberanthropomorphia or AI–. Tattooing fosters the materialisation of emotions and narratives, adapting to the current digital era. It is a mode of embodied expression which allows to examine the (bio)technological dispositives of body regulation, and even questioning the fugacity or durability of the body and its stigmas –by looking, for example, at the rapid development of tattoo removal technologies or, conversely, the preservation of tattooed skin in museums–.

Therefore, this investigation offers a holistic viewpoint with potential to enrich current academic debates about socio-anthropology of the body, intersectional analysis of new technologies and epistemological challenges posed by the situated production of knowledge.