SUBDISCIPLINES: Anthropology of the Senses

Anthropology of the Senses

written by Audrey Ricke 

“…sensory perception is a cultural as well as physical act” -Constance Classen (1997:401), “Foundations for the Anthropology of the Senses”

Introduction

Research Methodology

History

Main Contributors/Organizations/Conferences (Selective sample)

Bibliography

Links

Introduction:

The anthropology of the senses is a particular epistemological approach which advocates the importance of the senses for understanding the way people interact with others and their surroundings (Howe 2003:54). According to Constance Classen (1997:405),

the objective of the anthropology of the senses…is neither to assume that… [certain senses] will be dominant in a particular culture nor to assume that they they will be marginal, but to investigate the ways in which meanings are, in fact, invested in and conveyed through each of the senses.

Cross-culturally, the senses are not limited to the Aristotelian categories of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing, but also include such categories as balance and sentiment. In addition, sensory perception is dynamic and variable both within and across cultural groups, and long-term ethnographic fieldwork has much to offer to the analysis of such cultural variation. Thus, while historians, psychologists, and literary scholars also investigate the senses, the study of the senses is not only justifiable within anthropology, but also necessary. 

Research Methodology:

According to Paul Stoller, there are two main approaches to research within the anthropology of the senses. In one approach, emphasis is placed on interspersing analysis among richly depicted sensory ethnographic information. Researchers who follow this approach include Stoller, Michael Taussig, Michael Jackson, Robert Desjarlais, Ruth Behar, and Catherine Allen (Stoller, personal communication March 7, 2007). For the second approach, an emphasis is placed on cross-cultural comparison of sensory ethnographic information and the development of theory through case studies (Stoller 2004). This latter, cross-cultural approach is more common among anthropologists of the senses and includes such researchers as David Howes, Katheryn Geurts, and Constance Classen. In general, anthropological research on the senses extends beyond the preliminary sensations and into the meaning conveyed and formed by such experiences (Howes 1991 as cited in Howes 2003:49). Ultimately, the theories guiding the researcher in the formation of what Classen (1997:402) calls “sensory models,” or the “…sensory meanings and values…espoused by a society, according to which the members of that society ‘make sense’ of the world…”, will stem from the study of the respective culture rather than from Western ideology (Howes 2003:54). Furthermore, David Howes (2003:47) stresses that the senses are best understood in combination instead of singularly.

Anthropologists of the senses have wrestled with the same methodological issues that the discipline as a whole has confronted. These include questioning the anthropologist’s position in representing “the other,” the selection of research methods, issues of inter-group variation, and the medium through which the data should be published. In terms of positioning, while Stoller (2004) and others assert that it is possible for an anthropologist to do both analysis and sensory description, Katheryn Geurts (2002) and others believe that anthropologists should concentrate on analysis and leave sensory description for the native members of the culture since these individuals are in a better position to depict their sensory experience.

Another issue that pertains to sensory research is methodology. In The Taste of Ethnographic Things and Sensuous Ethnography, Stoller’s suggestions for sensory research draw from the foundations of anthropology, cultural relativism and long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and incorporate more recent approaches, such as self-reflection. For Stoller (1997: 26,137; 1989:10), humbleness, extended apprenticeships, language fluency, and annual trips to the field foster relationships essential to uncovering the ways in which other cultural groups perceive the world around them. Stoller also points out that “critical reflection” can help anthropologists check the influences that their own sensory perceptions have on the research (1989:9).

The third issue of relevance for sensory anthropologists is variation. Inter-group variations in sensory perception do not invalidate the objective of outlining another culture’s sensory model because the primary sensory model of a group still has an affect on its members (Howes 2003:55). Howes indicates that such diversity may result from variation in individuals’ pasts or it can follow culturally-rooted distinctions, such as those based on gender (2003:54-55).

The fourth issue relates to whether film or text serves as the best medium through which to publish data. While film can capture the visual and the auditory, it has the disadvantage of privileging these senses. Howes points out that the inability of textual representation to straightforwardly convey any of the sensory perceptions can actually be an advantage because it does not privilege any of the senses and more clearly delineates the information being perceived as filtered (2003:57). Stoller also finds that textual representations, specifically narrative ethnography, have advantages over film for reasons similar to Howes’ (1989:154). In addition, Stoller points out that a film’s narration, rather than its images and sounds, is the cornerstone for successfully conveying sensory data to the audience (1989:153). He cites Jean Rouch, a French anthropologist, as a leader in such filmmaking.

History

Within anthropology, the anthropology of the senses is like a stream, meandering in and out of the discipline’s history. According to Constance Classen (1997:406), Roy Porter was the first to use the phrase “anthropology of the senses” which appeared in the forward to Alan Corbin’s book, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Soon thereafter in 1989 Paul Stoller called for a more sense-sensitive approach within anthropology in his book The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Thus, the anthropology of the senses burst onto the anthropological landscape in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Timeline-Based on David Howes 2003 Sensual Relations unless otherwise noted

The anthropology of the senses’ distinctive approach differentiates it from other sub-disciplines within anthropology that use similar data. For instance, the anthropology of the senses’ emphasis on emic sensory categories is akin to ethnoscience’s focus on indigenous classification. Nevertheless, the ethnoscientific approach is concerned with the lexicon’s impact on classification while a sensory approach focuses on the social significance of differences in perception. Furthermore, the anthropology of the senses shares a similar subject matter with the anthropology of food. While political, economic, and symbolic aspects of food items are investigated within the anthropology of food, the anthropology of the senses concentrates more on the sensory qualities of food, such as taste and touch, and how this relates to their meaning within society (Howe 2003).

However, the boundaries between sub-disciplines are more fluid than rigid, and the anthropology of the senses approach is being applied within other anthropological sub-disciplines. In fact, Constance Classen (1997), Paul Stoller (1989), and Michael Herzfeld (2001) call for the sensory approach to be incorporated into the analysis of any aspect of culture. Herzfeld (2001:240) specifically notes that sensory analysis should not be relegated to the sidelines as a “specialist concern.” Studies of gender, identity, art, religion, memory, and material culture are just a few of the areas which can and have benefited from such a reorientation toward the senses within socio-cultural anthropology.

Main Contributors/Organizations/Conferences (Selective sample)

There are many anthropologists who have made contributions to the anthropology of the senses. This synopsis has focused primarily on those in the United States and Canada. Two of the main contributors to the anthropology of the senses in Canada are David Howes and Constance Classen and in the United States, Paul Stoller and C. Nadia Seremetakis (Classen 1997:407). Prior to 2006, the anthropology of the senses did not have a journal devoted specifically to its sensory approach. Sensory researchers with a cultural focus published in such journals as American Ethnologist, Anthropology Quarterly, Anthropologie et Sociétés, Cross-Cultural Consumption, Culture, Cultural Anthropology, Ethos, International Social Science Journal, and Visual Anthropology. In 2006, the journal The Senses and Society was published.

As of 2007, the main organization devoted to sensory research was the Concordia Sensoria Research Team (CONSERT) at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. CONSERT was founded in 1988, and information about its membership and on-going projects can be found at their website. The Society of Visual Anthropology also works with the senses, but a society specifically devoted to the anthropology of the senses has not been formed within the American Anthropology Association.

Publications and conferences largely serve as unifying factors for the anthropology of the senses. For instance, Jim Drobnick’s 2006 edited book, The Smell Culture Reader, includes chapters by Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes, Constance Classen, and David Howes. The American Anthropology Association Conference, Wenner-Gren Symposium, CONSERT conferences, and Synaesthetic and Sensory Practices in Anthropology Conference at the University of Manchester are a sampling of the conferences where sensory scholarship was represented. Courses in the anthropology of the senses are offered at such institutions as John Hopkins University and San Francisco State University.

Bibliography:

Bourdieu, Pierre

1977   Outline of a Theory of Practice. Richard Nice, trans. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Bull, Michael and Les Back, eds.

2003   The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.

Carpenter, Edward

1973   Eskimo Realities. New York: Holt, Rinehalt, and Winston.

Classen, Constance, ed.

1993   Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London: Routledge.

1997   Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses. International Social Science Journal 153: 401-412.

2005   The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg.

Corbin, Alain

1986   The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Miriam Kochan, Roy Porter, and Christopher Prendergast, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Desarlais, Robert

1992   Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Drobnick, Jim, ed.

2006   The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.

Edwards, Elizabeth, Chris Gosden, and Ruth Phillips, eds.

2006   Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums, and Material Culture. Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series. Oxford: Berg. 

Feld, Steven

1982   Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Geurts, Kathryn

2002   Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Herzfeld, Michael

2001   Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, Inc. 

Howes, David

2004   Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.

2003   Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

1991   The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses.

Jackson, Michael

1983   Knowledge of the Body. Man 18:327-45.

Korsmeyer, Carolyn, ed.

2005   The Taste Culture Reader: the Experience of Food and Drink. Oxford: Berg.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude

1969   The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol 1. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman, trans. New York: Harper and Row.

M cLuhan, Marshall

1962   The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

1964   Understanding Media. New York: New American Library.

Ong, Walter

1969   World as Review and World as Event. American Anthropologist 71: 634-647.

1982   Orality and Literacy. New York: Methuen.

Seeger, Anthrony

1981   Nature and Society in Central Brazil: The Suyà Indians of Mato Grosso. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Seremetakis, C. Nadia

1994   The Senses Still: Memory and Perception as Material Culture in Modernity. Boulder: Westview.

Stoller, Paul

1997   Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1989   The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

2004   Review of Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community. American Ethnologist 31(1). Electronic document, http://www.aaanet.org/aes/bkreviews/result_details.cfm?bk_id=3024

Taussig, Micheal

Mimesis and Alterity: A Particualr History of the Senses. Longdon: Routledge.

Links:

The Concordia Sensoria Research Team (CONSERT)  

http://alcor.concordia.ca/~senses/

The Senses and Society Journal, Berg    

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/tsas

Visual Anthropology

http://www.visualanthropology.net/

Society for Visual Anthropology

http://www.societyforvisualanthropology.org/

David Howes

http://www.david-howes.com

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