Missed the launch? Don’t worry - there’s one tomorrow, taking off from Florida with a batch of Starlink 6-72 satellites in tow. And another, this time from Jeff Bezoz’s Amazon, blasting into orbit on April 9th, carrying the company’s newly-developed Kuiper internet satellites with it. In fact, this April alone, there will be 13 rocket launches by space agencies and private companies across the world, all looking to make their mark in space. That’s more than 3 a week. And this explosion of spacefaring activity is leading to scientists voicing their concerns - less about the missions themselves, but what they’re leaving behind.

Could we be running out of space - in space?

What’s the Big Deal about Space Debris

Space debris, or space junk as it’s better known, is a problem out of science fiction, coming to a planet near you. But what even is it, you might be wondering. They are non-operational, human-made objects over 1cm travelling in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO): in other words, the junk left over from space missions orbiting round our cosmic backgarden.

While this includes defunct satellites, rocket parts and collision collateral, most are as small as a paint chip. However, this doesn’t mean it’s harmless, according to Dr Olivia Drayson from the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research. When moving at 18,000 mph, which is 7x the speed of a bullet, these fragments “can cause a huge amount of damage, puncturing spacecraft or posing risks to astronauts on spacewalks.”

Though it might sound a bit far-fetched, this is a problem that is rapidly getting worse. We currently have 170 million pieces of space junk whizzing around the Earth at these incredible speeds, all ready to cause billions of dollars worth of damage to the satellites and space stations they pass by. Repairing such damage is now simply part of routine for astronauts on missions; and with the number of missions rising year on year, as private companies such as SpaceX and Amazon send more and more rockets into lower orbit, the amount of junk, and risk of damage, is going to increase exponentially.

This isn’t helped by something called Kessler’s Syndrone - which is essentially a chain reaction where collisions between pieces of junk create more junk, as objects shatter and more debris is produced. It’s such a concern that scientists like Drayson are worried the LEO will be completely unusable for space travel in the near future.

“Each collision creates debris, which then goes on to create more collisions, and could end up creating orbits that are completely unusable, just filled with nothing but debris. So realistically, we’re creating an environment where satellites will have a hard time going past a certain point, or they’ll need to really time it carefully.

And then we’re also creating a situation where there’s a sort of chaos effect of collisions causing more collisions, where you can’t predict how and when things are going to fall back into the Earth. Suddenly it’s not one or two pieces every day, it’s several pieces.”

Satellite Central

This cosmic waste isn’t just a problem in space - it’s going to affect life down here too, and more than you think. Our lives are made easier by the satellites up above our heads, connecting us to the internet, improving mapping systems, weather prediction, and even keeping global systems like banking and air travel running smoothly. But what if space is simply too full?

SpaceX currently have over 7000 satellites in our low orbit, providing connectivity across the globe. However, the $350 billion company’s ambitious plan to expand this into a “megaconstellation” of 42,000 satellites raises serious concerns about space congestion, and the growing threat of orbital debris.

Imagine trying to get home using Google Maps - but the GPS signal is down because of a satellite crash. Or your flight gets grounded because a weather satellite was knocked offline. Even something as routine as tapping your card could stop working. Space debris might seem distant. But in a world that runs on satellites, it’s anything but.

It’s not just urban dwellers that will be affected. Despite delivering internet connection to hundreds of millions of people, these megaconstellations disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities across the world, says Mi’kmaw interdisciplinary scientist Dr Hilding Neilson.

“Most indigenous people in North America live in more rural reserves, away from commercial centres. If junk comes down there, people are less likely to pay attention, or get necessary help. And because of all this debris and satellites, we are also having issues with light pollution. The whole night sky is getting brighter, changing how indigenous people are able to navigate and tell stories.”

Unidentified Falling Objects

It’s not just convenience that will take a hit - Earth itself stands in the firing line. The European Space Agency (ESA) released estimations that objects measuring 1-metre or larger reenter Earth’s atmosphere approximately once a week, while smaller tracked debris objects reenter on average twice daily.

The good news is that, during the final 110km of the debris’ journey, or “the last 10 minutes before an object reaches the ground, the atmosphere is dense enough that the object heats up owing to air resistance, and it decelerates, leading in the majority of cases to its complete destruction.”

And in the event of larger objects, such as heavy scientific satellites that are constructed from high-melting-point materials such as stainless steel or titanium, the rate of reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere decreases to about once a year. Even in these cases, as humans inhabit roughly 10% of the Earth’s surface, “the risk to any single individual is several orders of magnitude smaller than commonly accepted risks faced in daily life. Being struck by lightning, for example, is 60 000 times more likely.”

However, the odds seem to be changing: on New Year’s Eve 2023, rural Kenyans in Makueni county woke up to a 500kg metallic rocket ring crashing into their village. Although no one was injured, the rattled community of Mukuku village described a burning ring that was “glowing red-hot” for hours. Inquiries as to where exactly this defunct piece of rocket came from remain ongoing.

And this isn’t the only incident recorded. In July 2023, a mysterious cylindrical object washed up on a beach in Western Australia, baffling locals and sending the international press spinning. An investigation revealed it to be the remains of an Indian rocket booster.

While these may seem for now like freak accidents, physicist Professor Richard Ocaya thinks we should be treating these occurrences as warnings.

“ We may be crossing that red line of no return. It would be very sad to have a disaster happen, like space debris landing on a military installation, before we take it seriously. And unfortunately in my, in my view, it would be too late, because people would’ve lost their lives.”

Can We Clean Up the Cosmos?

For any atsro-chondriacs out there, some solutions are on the horizon, says Ocaya - though they remain in the early days of such development. “Deorbiting these objects in a controlled fashion will help. One thinks of robotic arms, nets or harpoons. Japan is experimenting with wooden satellites that are guaranteed to burn on reentry. One could even use lasers that could disintegrate these objects in space - but you would need extremely high powered lasers to do that.”

Yet these technologies, while exciting, are still in their nascent stages. More important, Ocaya argues, is international cooperation, accountability, and robust collision tracking to mitigate the growing risk of space debris. He emphasises that no single nation can manage this problem alone, and so collaboration across borders, involving space agencies, private companies, and regulatory bodies, is key to maintaining the long-term sustainability of space. However, this is easier said than done.

“It’s a problem that affects everyone, but unfortunately, when it comes to private companies and competitions between different countries, it becomes extremely difficult to regulate these things.  And many of these objects are militaristic nature, so the creators may not be too keen on disclosing location, functionalities and so on. Their best hope is that when these objects fail, they will burn out in the atmosphere.”

With thousands of new satellites expected to populate LEO in the coming years, the unchecked growth of space traffic and the subsequent accumulation of debris could quickly outpace efforts to mitigate it. While international policies, such as the 1972 Liability Convention, establish that countries are responsible for damages caused by their space objects, enforcement remains inconsistent.

In fact, the Convention has been formally invoked only once - in 1978, when debris from the Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed in Canada, leading to a settlement of $3 million Canadian dollars. To put this in perspective, the rocket ring that crash landed in rural Kenya has never been officially linked with any state.

With such laissez-faire attitudes a norm in the industry, Ocaya warns that waiting for a shift in international policy and attitudes amounts to reclkessness.

“Space is a frontier, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t explore it, we should.  But we should do so very responsibly. We’ve seen, the effects of global warming and the climate. We don’t want to repeat mistakes like this. But the space debris problem is following the same patterns of human thinking.”

While the solutions exist, it will take swift and coordinated action to avert our nearest orbit becoming overcrowded cosmic chaos. As it stands, the message is clear: Houston, we have a problem.

With more than 80,000 refugees from Myanmar’s ethnic minorities sheltering in camps along the Thai border, humanitarian agencies are warning of an escalating crisis in a region heavily dependent on international aid.

Speaking at a press conference on the 7th of February, 2025, Sylvia Manchester* of The News* described the situation as “chaotic,” warning that the cuts have thrown humanitarian operations into disarray.

“Myanmar has been very badly affected in a lot of different ways,” she said. “The US is the largest donor to a huge humanitarian operation - everything from food deliveries to shelter and sanitation, as well as support for human rights organisations, civil society groups, and independent media.”

“When the freeze happened, the hospitals were suddenly closed, and people were discharged with nowhere to go,” she said. “Women in labour had to give birth in school classrooms. It’s incredibly dangerous.”

She added that organisations such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which supports displaced communities from Myanmar across nine camps along the Thailand border, were “scrambling” to determine whether they could continue their work at all.

Among the casualties of these closures is 71-year-old Karen refugee Pe Kha Lau, who died days after being sent home despite having chronic lung health issues. Describing their family as “very poor”, her son-in-law said her death could have been prevented if they had access to an oxygen tank.

The USAID freeze is also worsening conditions in Bangladesh’s Rohingya camps, where over a million refugees, mostly from Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority, have been displaced in overcrowded settlements since 2017.

Anamul Hasan, a journalist and Rohingya rights activist based in Cox’s Bazar, described the cuts as exacerbating an already dire situation: “Many already suffer from chronic diseases like Hepatitis C and diabetes. We’re likely going to see things get much worse.”

An 2023 MSF survey, which revealed the prevalence rate of Hepatitis C to be 28 per cent in Rohingya camps, compared to the general prevalence rate of the disease in Bangladesh as between 0.2-1 per cent, further underscores this suffering.

With already limited access to healthcare, Hasan pointed to rising gang violence as a direct result of such insecurity. “When needs aren’t being met, people [become] vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking,” he said, warning that groups within the camps were already taking advantage of the circumstances.

Humanitarian funding for Rohingya refugees has reached critically low levels; as of the 31st of October, 2024, the Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya refugee crisis received just over half of the estimated required funds - $452.1 million against an appeal of $852.4 million.

As aid agencies scramble to find alternative funding sources, the humanitarian situation in Myanmar’s refugee communities remains increasingly precarious. While Thai authorities have pledged to step in for the time being, concerns are growing over how long Myanmar’s displaced populations can survive without widespread assistance.

*real names not used

Duaa is one of 12 million Sudanese citizens displaced by a civil war that is consuming her country. She grew up in Omdurman, a large city in Khartoum State perched on the banks of the Nile; the skyline, once a warm mix of mosques and palm trees interspersed with skyscrapers and luxury hotels, now transformed into a battleground as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) push back against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

An hour’s-old BBC report of a random shelling killing 120, with numbers expected to rise, signifies the magnitude of the crisis.

“We tried to stay as long as we could,” says Duaa, recalling the first five months after war broke out. “We thought it would end soon. But during these five months, there were people being killed, and a lot of checkpoints where citizens are imprisoned… it was difficult to live there.”

Looking back, this bittersweet optimism of Duaa and her family was the writing on the wall for the violence that now engulfs Sudan. Like millions of others, the fighting between once-allied factions, which erupted on the 15th of April 15, 2023, was expected to last three, maybe four months at most. A perceived lack of soldiers, weapons, and funding meant many expected the power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burha and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (or Hemedti) to peter out, with the possibility of each side maintaining some level of control in rival spheres within Sudan.

These predictions did not play out. Describing Sudan’s situation as a “war of agency”, with the Dagalo militia conducting a “genocide war without any clear goals or demands”, Duaa pauses as she remembers the abrupt escalation of violence as the RSF grew in strength and numbers.

“Suddenly the soldiers were everywhere, with powerful weapons. They were waging war against the citizens - and many of them weren’t even Sudanese. We didn’t know where they came from. I’m not an expert, but I’m sure there is something going on. It has become a survival war for the state and the citizen.” Her voice cracks.

Yet with the conflict now entering its 21st month, Duaa’s testimony reveals far more than a struggle for power between two megalomanic generals; it nods to the inner workings of a war that is being waged not just within Sudan, but from afar.

A web of geopolitical interests constricts Sudan, choking its people and casting a shadow on its future. Egypt has supplied arms to the SAF, while the UAE has funnelled weapons to the RSF, reportedly via Chad. Libya and South Sudan, though not officially aligned, have seen fuel flows reach the RSF. Eritrea is hosting training camps for SAF-affiliated armed groups, and even Ukrainian special forces are allegedly engaging RSF fighters alongside Russian mercenaries.

To obscure matters further, Sudan’s conflict isn’t merely a case of proxy warmongering between antagonistic nations. Egypt and the UAE, the two main external backers of the SAF and RSF respectively, demonstrate this clearly as they maintain close diplomatic ties, despite supporting opposing factions. Their involvement in Sudan is not indicative of a direct rivalry, but of strategic calculations that are rooted in personal regional interests.

As the violence showed no signs of abating, Duaa and her family fled to the North of the country in August 2023, when the local neighbourhood defence could hold off the marauding RSF no longer.

Insisting that she is “lucky to be displaced”, the occasional internet connection and unwavering support from her supervisor and colleagues has been just enough for Duaa to slowly continue her architecture studies with Khartoum University. She has even managed to present a paper on the use of AI in the revitalisation of cultural heritage in Kigali aged just 22 - a huge achievement for anyone, let alone a young woman caught in the crossfires of a bloody civil war.

When I ask Duaa what she misses most about her life back in Omdurman, she thinks for a moment. There are a lot of things to miss. Spending time with friends, revising for exams, walking around the university campus, eating meals cooked with love and patience. Once-ordinary moments, now on hold indefinitely.

She stays positive about her future, relieved that she has been able to continue her studies; still, she cannot hide from the fact that, across the global media scene, scant reporting and laissez-faire attention means Sudan is not attracting the attention it deserves, and desperately needs.

“I want the world to hear our story, because Sudan right now is forgotten. Every day, my people suffer; every day, someone is killed.”

At the time of our conversation, I felt I had little to offer in response. The global appetite for tragedy is insatiable - a macabre voyeurism fed by dark headlines and distant suffering. Sudan, with so many lives lost and communities displaced, cruelly fits the bill. Why is it that the world is turning away from Sudan?

Following my chat with Duaa, I had the chance to speak to the protest group London for Sudan about this very issue. Having assembled a small but powerful demonstration outside the Emirates stadium, a gutsy move given the Liverpool-induced temperament of Arsenal fans, principle organiser Lulu voiced a hard truth: that Sudan’s invisibility is rooted in anti-Blackness.

“Just Africans fighting again,” she said, distilling the dismissiveness that permeates Western media and UK foreign policy. A stark reflection of how the violence in Sudan is trivialised, her words stuck like a slap; but decades of British and Egyptian colonial rule marked by ethnic, regional, religious, and political fault lines reveal how Western indifference to Sudan is bound up in the deep scars of exploitation and division.

Rather than an oversight, this complicity in Sudan’s fractures, combined with an unwillingness to confront the lasting impacts of colonialism, presents a damning reflection of global systems that have long dehumanised African lives. Sudan’s plight is not inevitable, another chapter in a tired story of African conflict; it is the outcome of a deliberate unwillingness to reckon with the enduring legacies of colonialism and racial hierarchies.

The active role of countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE, who continue to bloody their hands by arming and financing the warring factions while engaging in strategic distractions such as sportswashing, further underscores the complicity of a world that allows these contradictions to persist. The coupling of historical forgetting and willing exploitation is silencing Sudan, its suffering overshadowed by a cocktail of greed and global indifference.

The eerie media silence that surrounds Sudan, instilled by the coupling of historical forgetting and willing exploitation, threatens to render civilians like Duaa and protesters like Lulu invisible, their voices drowned out by waves of indifference.

Laid bare by Duaa’s testimony of being caught in the crossfires between proxies and power struggles, the war clearly doesn’t lack horror - far from it. What it does lack, however, is an audience.

Yet Gen Z, as ever, has something more fun up their sleeves. It began with hundreds of mysterious posters dotted around New York, advertising an impromptu Timothee Chalamet-lookalike contest. Thousands of attendees, some dubious doppelgangers, and 4 arrests later, a winner was crowned and awarded $500 in the city’s Washington Park Square. Topping off the fever dream, the Academy award winner himself actually turned up, congratulating the victor and bewildering fans.

Two weeks on, the doppelganger craze has somewhat-predictably gone global. A copycat contest in Dublin, where you couldn’t move for mulleted-and-moustachioed twenty-somethings in Paul Mescal’s iconic short-shorts, sent fangirls spinning. This weekend, London got in on the action, hosting a homegrown Harry Styles competition, complete with awards for Best Hair, Style, and even Daddy Harry. The following day, a smattering of ‘you-know-who-you-remind-me-of’ Dev Patel’s gathered in San Francisco’s Bay Area, where the winner took home a floral arrangement as well as $50.

More than just a lark, the meteoric rise of such contests nods to the coping mechanisms of Gen Z, and how they are managing in a time where futures have never seemed so uncertain. Recent reports show Gen Z are more than twice as likely to say they frequently experience stress and anxiety than Baby Boomers; student debt, stagnant wages, don’t-even-ask house prices and climate change concerns are just some of the reasons behind this.

So how did we get to the lookalikes? Social media marketing manager Anna Buckley notes how this rise of celebrity-centred contests highlights Gen Z’s ability to “find humour in situations” despite being under “a lot of stress”.

These sentiments were shared by London-based Katrina Mirpuri, organiser of the Harry Styles contest in Soho Square, who emphasised how such moments that are the “perfect recipe for madness and disaster” are becoming necessary in a world “where there is a lot going on”.

Moreover, Mirpuri insisted that whilst her competition was the third instalment of “topical, young, cool heartthrob” contests, she and the judging panel were keen to keep inclusivity at the heart of their branding.

Awards for different categories allowed for the event to be “something everyone could get involved in”, agreed author, superfan and Judge Bonnie McLaren. Going “completely off script and [giving] Best Hair to one of the girls” was just part of the fun: “Harry Styles loves feminism, so why not.”

While the atmosphere, complete with Harry cardboard cutouts, megaphones and paparazzi, felt like a forgotten episode of Ab Fab, winner of ‘Best Style’ Oliver laughed “I think it’s fun, it brings people together.” Though Oliver didn’t win outright, and failed to scoop up the £50 prize, he was pleased nonetheless: “He likes good clothes, I like good clothes. I must be doing something right!”

With a Zayn Malik contest lined up in Brooklyn this Saturday, there are already murmurings on social media that the trend may have run its course, with some discontented netizens calling it “boring”.

However, for Gen Z, these lookalike events clearly offered something more: a playful escape and a unique opportunity to find community in an increasingly complex world. Whether or not these contests endure, they at least captured a moment in pop culture that resonates deeply amongst a generation looking to find sparks of spontaneity and joy in a world of seeming doom and gloom.

A key way this melding of religions can be witnessed is through local cuisines. Foodstuffs are used ritualistically, eating practices become religious in tone, and the protective power of spirits and ceremonies all demonstrate the influence of faith across this diverse continent.

A country where religion is of great salience in mealtimes and eating practices is the West African Guinea-Bissau. For many Guinea-Bissauans, religion is as much a statement about belief as it is ethnicity, with religious identity impacting heavily on cuisine. In a country where forty-five percent of the population is Muslim, practiced widely by the Fula, Soninke, Susu and Mandinka ethnic groups, Islam overcomes ethnic and linguistic differences through specifically Muslim dishes.

Kaldu di mankara (chicken with peanut sauce), kabeza di karnel (sheep’s head), and kabra (grilled goat with vegetable oil and tomato sauce) are favoured as distinguishable from Kristons, or non-Muslim, preferences. Adhering to religious taboos on alcohol and pork and eating halal foods purchased near the mosque further establishes Islam as a determining factor on accepted foodstuffs.

Furthermore, engaging with specific religious food practices is considered as a way to reaffirm one’s religious identity, and as a means of engaging in the umma (global Muslim community). Eating with one’s right hand, common across Guinea-Bissau and embedded within Islamic tradition, again enacts this virtuousness, entangling eating with faith as well as ethnicity. Cuisine thus embodies the multiple identities inhabited by Guinea-Bissauans − Muslim/non-Muslim, Guinea-Bissauan, African, Black − with these identities all being mediated by the experience of food.

The influence of traditional beliefs across sub-Saharan cuisine is another aspect where religion and food interact. Many actively participate in Christianity or Islam, yet also believe in witchcraft, evil spirits, sacrifices to ancestors, religious healers, reincarnation and other elements of traditional African religions.

The customs of the Mbeere in Kenya demonstrate how traditional beliefs surrounding human harmony and wellbeing implement food taboos within their society: pregnant women are forbidden to eat offal, gourds of milk, or drink bitter substances, highlighting the role that Indigenous knowledge plays in building a healthy body.

Other ethnic groups in Kenya traditionally prohibit pregnant women from eating eggs and reserve chicken meat for men and guests, drawing attention to how cuisine and traditional beliefs cross at gendered intersections within communities across the sub-Sahara, and how these beliefs are embodied by the pregnant female.

Celebrations are also where tradition and cuisine marry. The ritualistic sacrificing and feasting of goat in South African Nguni communities when a new-born arrives stems from respect for the spirits of ancestors, ensuring the child will grow and thrive. This again reinforces a relationship between food and religion, where sacrifices and feasts serve a greater purpose than simply sustenance.

Staple crops provide a further prism through which to understand religious influences on cuisine across the sub-Sahara. The reverence for rice across the region owes itself to many African histories and geographies including climate, colonisation and migration, yet religion here too has a grip. Across the Diola people of Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia and Senegal, rice symbolises ethnicity, continuity, ‘all that is traditionally Diola’, and is considered part of a promise with the supreme deity, Emitai.

This covenant encourages Diola farmers to work hard, cultivate the crop, and receive the nourishing rains from Emitai. Rice is thus used in shrines, rituals, and celebrations. The grains become deistic, anthropomorphised, embedded with religion even as communities turn to Christianity and Islam: the role of rice as integral to religious practices and celebrations is not lost.

However, the impact of climate change on communities dependent on this thirsty crop has meant a shortage of African rice for these ceremonial purposes. The Asiatic rice that is now imported to sub-Saharan Africa is deemed sufficient for satiation, but insufficient for celebration. The monumentality of changing environments is influencing religious practices right down to the tiny grain of rice, thus reinforcing the entanglement of belief and food with wider phenomena across Africa.

Whilst sub-Saharan African cuisine in all its variety and contextualisation cannot be addressed in a singular essay, reflecting on the way faith unites millions of people across the African continent draws attention to the role of religion in food practices. Islamic meals and mannerisms, Indigenous beliefs, and the symbolism of staple crops highlight the connection between ethnicity, gender, tradition, politics and climate change that all come to the fore on the dinner plate.

Drawing on data from 2020 to 2022, the UK-wide Maternal, Newborn and Infant Clinical Outcome Review Programme reveals deeply entrenched racial disparities in maternity care, fuelling renewed calls for reform to tackle institutional biases in the NHS.

Trish Balusa, a maternity care activist and Black mother, shared her story of having to persistently advocate for her health during her second pregnancy. When still in her second trimester, Balusa felt the stitching from her previous birth beginning to tear; despite reporting her pain, she was initially sent home.

Reflecting on the experience with friends, Balusa realised the stark difference in treatment that women of colour often face. “The experience isn’t the same for everyone,” she said.

While maternal mortality rates for ethnic minorities are improving over the years, disparities remain significant. Nana-Adwoa Butcher, a co-host of the Black Mums Upfront podcast, maintains that persisting racial biases in the NHS can lead to Black mothers being overlooked in maternity wards.

Revealing how a friend who qualified as a midwife eight years ago was taught “that black women can endure more pain,” Butcher emphasised how this leads to “white mothers, side by side with Black mothers on the ward, [being] seen first, even if the Black mother urgently needs attention”. Pointing out the “ridiculous” unscientific assumptions around pain tolerance, Butcher underscored the need for urgent NHS reform to help save the lives of vulnerable Black and Asian women.

Acknowledging the ingrained biases that the NHS has yet to confront, The Race and Health Observatory’s Policy Lead for Maternity Arnie Putnis insists that progress is underway.

The Royal College of Midwifery, Putnis explained, has introduced a “decolonising curriculums toolkit” aimed at addressing racial biases and dismantling harmful narratives. Moreover, the toolkit encourages healthcare professionals to recognise these biases, through challenging assumptions about Black and Asian women, and expanding the studies upon which maternity research is conducted.

Responding to the developments that are underway across NHS Maternity Care, Balusa welcomes such shifts in education as crucial in preventing further tragic outcomes.

“Putting [these conversations] into the learning for healthcare professionals will make such a big difference, as we don’t know our biases until they come - and unfortunately for black women, it’s when we are dying.”

Embedded with colonial themes of racialisation and Othering, tattoos resurged within 18th century Europe with the return of Captain James Cook from Polynesia, accompanied by native ‘specimens’ wearing extensive tribal tattoos (Werner, 2005). Aristocratic European society held a fascinated horror with the tattooed body, corporealising imaginative geographies of the exotic Other (Said, 1979). Despite this initial popularity, the proliferation of exoticised entertainment through ethnic shows and ‘habitat exhibits’ across Europe and North America, such as the display of tattooed Tahitian communities (Werner, 2005) fetishized the tattooed body as primitive and ‘freakish’ (Kerchy and Zittlau, 2012). Tattoos were simultaneously exonerated or demonised through structures of class and social background, as well as position in colonial worlds as either subject or oppressor.

The short-lived rise of beachcombing in the late 18th century, where white European sailors returned from living amongst Polynesian communities adorned with tribal tattoos, uncovered the vulnerability of whiteness, rendering such bodies as liminal figures; many such beachcombers went on to earn their living through performing in side shows as ‘made freaks’ (Fordham, 2007; Cummings, 2003), cementing their marginalised status. Through subverting white, unblemished ideals, tattoos became associated with the ‘underbelly of society’ (Gilman, 1985).

Pathlogisation of the body in the early 20th century alongside the positivist revolution (Pitts, 1999) shifted associations of tattooed individuals from exotic to criminal and mentally unstable (Lombroso, 1911). Studies of tattooed males in psychiatric wards and prisons (Gittleson et al. 1969), reaffirmed public conceptions of tattoos as degenerate and abnormal (Foucault, 1977). Tattoos became symbols of societal outcasts, affiliated with deviant bodies such as the military, gang members and prisoners (Kosut, 2006)- traditionally male dominated groups, thus masculinising the tattoo and promoting aggressive associations. They were even made illegal across parts of the US, such as New York City in 1961, reaffirming such associations.

However, defiance to norms of ‘unblemished skin’ (Irwin, 2003) encouraged many marginal groups to celebrate tattooing as a sign of resistance and collective identity. Post-War discontent left communities, especially working-class youths, at economic and societal margins eager to materialise their own collectives (Hall and Jefferson, 1993; Steward et al., 1990). Indelible ink became an expressive functionality of multiple subcultures from anti-establishment Punks to working-class Skinhead solidarity, building a heterogeneous tattoo community who recognised and embraced this form of common resistance and utilising style as symbolic subversion.

Alongside these discourses of deviance and resistance, attitudes towards tattoos began to widen throughout the latter half of the 20th century. The ‘Tattoo Renaissance’ that indicated tattooing’s revival was pioneered by artists in the 1950s and 1970s. American tattooist Don Ed Hardy was one such figure, widely credited with pioneering modern tattoo styles such as neo-Japanese works from studying in Japan under tattoo master Horihide in 1973, indicating a modernising shift in the way Orientalist practices of acquisition were carried out under discourses of globalisation and creative hybridisation (Yamada, 2009). Tattoo styles began diversifying, becoming avant-garde through Japanese, single-needle and tribal styles rather than fixating on bold Traditional American or scripture, encouraging personal agency and creative expression regarding the unlimited choice of tattoo style individuals now possessed.

In the last three decades, the tattoo industry has experienced rising popularity. Individuals traditionally distanced from the marginalised ‘tattoo community’ (Pitts, 2003), including the middle-classes, professionals and women (Irwin, 2001; 2003), are becoming inked. This limbing attraction has been attributed to greater tattoo ‘sanitisation’, accessibility to tattoo removal, and positive media and trend-setting through celebrity influence (Velliquette et al., 1998), but the shifting mindset of society towards individualism and employing personal agency demonstrates how the relationship between subcultural capital, conceptualisations of authenticity and tattooing is changing.

Nevertheless, it is this very labelling of tattoos as subversive to conventional society that subcultural scholars such as Hebdige (1979) argue to be part of the sequence of the ‘incorporation’ of subcultures into the mainstream (Heath and Potter, 2006). In this sequence, confrontation becomes conformation, and rebellion is redefined as fashion. Hebdige’s post-War analysis of society explored how subcultures such as Punks, Teddy Boys and so forth emerged as challenges to social normalisations, situating each subculture within historic, racial, socioeconomic and class backgrounds (Torode, 1981). He posited that subcultures follow the same trajectory: stemming from common resistance and utilising style as symbolic subversion, the dominant society then assesses such groups as radical and dangerous to social order, thus finds ways to appropriate and commodify their style to containing recklessness, making it available to mainstream society (Heath and Potter, 2006). Style, ranging from music to drug-use, becomes ‘incorporated’ into the fashion system- a ‘supermarket of style’ where everything is up for grabs and holds little meaning (Sweetman, 1999). Applying Hebdige’s theory to the context of indelible inking, tattoos can be considered as transforming from being socially ‘othered’, to core components of resistive movements, and eventually being ‘incorporated’ by discriminating mainstream society (Hebdige, 1979). The proliferation of tattoos across Western society thus arguably showcases the transition of tattoos from the margins to the core of society as a form of incorporation.

Yet it is imperative to reflect how tattoos evolved into reflections of the individualism within contemporary Western society rather than static repurposed symbols of mediated and neutralised insurgence by dominant society. Tattoos are valuable as they inhabit a unique position within subcultural discourses, as enthusiasts may get inked for purely aesthetic reasons or on a whim (Thomas, 2012; Eubanks, 1996), but may also embody rich and multi-layered meanings representing an interaction of body and mind (De Certeau, 1984). In a neoliberal world where individual agency is often valued over the traditional and structural agencies of the post-War era, tattoos allow for the embracement of individualism regardless of hegemonic narratives or subversive discourses that lay claim to the shifting attitudes towards this body art.

Using subcultural and post-subcultural theorist frameworks, the changes in how tattooing is experienced and worlded into existence by diverse and heterogeneous bodies draws attention to the non-static and plural nature of tattoos as symbolic, as creative expression, as a worlding practice, as a consumer aesthetic, natures that can be engaged with simultaneously and/or separately, individually and/or collectively.