The Foul and the Fragrant in Urban Exploration: Unpacking the Olfactory System of Leisure

Abstract

The world of leisure is a sensual reality, especially strong with the odours of what the French cultural historian Alain Corbin gave the name 'the foul and the fragrant', and their emotional affects. Yet, when it comes to unpacking leisure in a critical way the significance and complexity of the olfactory system of institutions and norms is largely overlooked in leisure studies. What is more, although smell is something that shapes our leisure and which we all instinctively recognise it buckles under the pressure of leisure studies obsession with the visual and the verbal. It is with this in mind that this paper, drawing on my own ethnographic research, offers a critical assessment of the ways in which the olfactory system emerges in a form of leisure known as urban exploration. One important way of defining urban exploration would be to say that its adherents have the need for authentic leisure experience which is, for the most part, unmediated by deodorisation. As well as being viewed as 'deviant', 'abnormal' or 'heterotopic'-and because of this-urban exploration takes advantage of the olfactory system as it is used to stimulate fears, pleasures and the broader imagination as a different 'taste' of life is experienced. Following an introductory episode that draws the reader into the world of a group of urban explorers that is oozing with the earthy smells of decay and the honey tang of piss, the first section of this paper employs the seminal work of Corbin to unpack how modernity, which never ceases to evolve and transform, continues to have a powerful influence on social space and the olfactory system. What emerges from this discussion, though, is the suggestion that it is the other side of modernity (the one that operates under a certain poetics of putrefaction) that is also the perfect breeding ground for inflaming both the magical and painful feelings of nostalgia by exploiting this olfactory system. Thereafter, using Tony Blackshaw's concept of the mundane and spectacular, the paper goes on to expand this idea by arguing that 'the foul and the fragrant' play a crucial role in the creation of heterotopic social space and its essential performativity.

Language of smell: Tracing some cross-cultural insights from past and present

“…This further infers that abstract odor terms may be primed by psychological effects triggered by abrupt unpleasant smells (Lee, 2015), but again depending upon the culture fewer abstract terms were provided for unpleasant smells by English speakers (Poulton, 2020). The deeply rooted fear of the invisible vis-à-vis odors in Western societies, its frantic urge to clean the surroundings (Bingham, 2020), smell good and taboo culture (Poulton, 2020) kept it away from unpleasant smells (Allan and Burridge, 2006;Poulton, 2020), which could be a reason for less communication. Unpleasant smells have been perceived as less familiar and more intense (Pichon et al, 2015).…”