Tělo za katrem – Lochmannová Alena (2020)

Jack London once said, "Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past." Although tattoos have experienced a renaissance in society and have overcome the long-standing stigmatization associated with them, spreading across the social spectrum, economic classes, age cohorts, and individuals with various social statuses, there are still environments where tattoos are an identifying transformation, a sign that marks and serves as a significant tool of nonverbal communication. This is particularly true in the environment of total institutions, represented by prisons. The publication 'Body Behind Bars' presents the outputs of ethnographic research conducted by the author in Czech male prisons since 2013. The author explores the diverse body modifications of inmates serving their sentences, particularly tattoos and their specific symbolism, as well as the techniques of execution, the so-called second life of the inmates, while also explaining the specifics of body modifications in the prison environment based on various aspects of the transforming pre-prison identity of the inmates into a prison identity. The publication is supplemented with parts of interviews that the author conducted with over a hundred inmates and...