While the cultural significance of the self-fashioning of tattoo has been increasingly recognized, the bulk of material on the subject has focused on the consumers, rather than the producers of these cultural signs. This special edition brings a long overdue focus on the tattooist as cultural agent and provocateur, and on the process and practice of tattoo. Contributors from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Samoa and the Cook Islands explore the changing faces and fascinations of tattooing from the intimacy of a brother"s kitchen, to the global reaches of a diasporic community.