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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 910

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Formation of pan-immigrant localness in the city: tattooed symbols and personal identities

Authors: Hiramoto, Mie (1); Furukawa, Gavin (2)
Submitted by: Hiramoto, Mie (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

This study explores construction of identity and local values as demonstrated by local residents in a multiethnic urban community, namely Honolulu.  The concepts of mobility and moving texts have been proposed by Blommaert and his colleagues (Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck 2005; Blommaert 2007, 2009, etc.).  In this study, ‘mobility’ refers to the historical plantation immigration to Honolulu from various parts of the world that took place between the mid-1800s and early 1900s.  Because of physical mobility and globalization, Honolulu has become host to a variety of ethnic and cultural communities, as have many of today’s major cities.  This study focuses on the construction of hybrid ethnic identity and the value systems of local people in Hawai‘i as seen through an increasingly prevalent form of body art: tattoos.  A number of local people in Hawai‘i take pride in having tattoos displaying their heritage.

Data used for this project were collected through face-to-face interviews with a total of 20 local tattoo wearers.  Participants were asked about the meanings of their tattoos, reasons for choosing them, and their thoughts on their tattoos and those of others.  From the interviews, we investigated the participants’ identity construction patterns.  One of the goals of the project was to provide empirical evidence to evaluate how texts (e.g., Chinese characters, English words, hiragana or katakana, etc.) are displayed and interpreted by tattoo wearers as a token of their ‘local’ identity.  Along with texts, use of symbolic motifs (e.g., Polynesian tattoo designs, Hawaiian petroglypha, a map of Hawai‘i, flags, family crests, etc.) were also analyzed.  By and large, according to the interview data, the texts and symbols portrayed in the tattoos reflected social, cultural, or psychological affiliations to specific ethnic groups that the tattoo wearers feel close to.

Historically, first generation immigrants established diaspora communities in Hawai‘i at different plantation camps across the state.  The communities continued to grow and slowly merged with groups of other ethnicities.  As a result, the immigrants’ children integrated themselves into the newly formed local community; at this point, their children considered themselves to be members of this new homeland, newly established locals who no longer belonged to their ancestors’ homeland.  Over time, the plantation immigrants’ descendants developed a new lasting social configuration where the center of their social world had been moved from their old home to their new, and what they recognized as ‘local’ was now Hawai‘i. 

Data collected in this study show how tattoo wearers integrate their multilayered identities in symbolic forms such as their tattoos and language use.  For example, a Japanese American participant claims his Japaneseness through a tattooed family name in Chinese characters while admits that he can neither read nor write Japanese himself because he is an American.  As such, this study highlights an interconnection of transnationalism, the function of texts, and the value systems of tattoo wearers’ heritage in American context.