The Social Life of the Senses: Charting Directions

Abstract

Sensory scholarship in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and geography, among others, has proliferated in the last few decades. Sensory works in these disciplines argue for the senses as social, highlighting important insights that further our comprehension of selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I delineate five interrelated sections that inform how sensory works have developed over time. In the first section, I provide an adumbrated background with regard to the hierarchy of the senses, and call attention to the need to move beyond the hegemony of vision. The second section offers a discussion on how Sociology has contributed to sensory studies, addressed alongside other disciplines. Building upon these two sections, both theoretical directions and methodological issues will be deliberated in the third and fourth sections respectively. The last section locates the development of sensory research in organizational terms, by elucidating upon the various institutional efforts that have been pursued towards organizing sensory research and scholarly publications through different avenues. The article then concludes by putting forward the concept of sensory transnationalism as a suggestion for the next step forward towards broadening sensory research.Social science literature on the senses has proliferated in the last few decades, especially in the fields of sociology and anthropology. Departing from related works located within disciplines such as biology, psychology, and physiology, sensory studies argue for the senses as social, revealing important insights pertaining to selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I summarize this field in five interrelated sections. First, I provide a brief discussion of the 'hierarchy of the senses' and the need to maneuver beyond the hegemony of vision. In a second section, I discuss the contribution that Sociology can offer, alongside other (often overlapping) disciplines. The third and fourth sections examine (respectively) theoretical and methodological issues in sensory studies. Finally, a fifth section describes the various institutional efforts that have been pursued towards organizing and promoting sensory research. The article concludes with suggestions for the next step forward towards broadening the field of research, by focusing on the concept of sensory transnationalism.

Should there be more showers at the summer music festival? Studying the contextual dependence of resource consuming conventions and lessons for sustainable tourism

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Sensing the outdoors: a visual and haptic phenomenology of outdoor exercise embodiment

“…This developing oeuvre also draws our analytic attention to the socio-historical and cultural specificities of sensory experience (e.g. Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2011;Classen, 1993;Howes, 1991;Low, 2012;Vannini, Waskul & Gottschalk, 2011). The importance of the senses in social life is neatly encapsulated by Bull, Gilroy, Howes and Kahn (2006, p. 5), who highlight how: 'The senses mediate the relationship between self and society, mind and body, idea and object'.…”

Engaging the Senses to Explore Community Events

“…Duffy, Waitt, & Gibson, 2007;Fincher & Iveson, 2008;Lewis & Dowsey-Magog, 1993;Waitt & Duffy, 2010). Work in the social sciences in the last few decades has emphasized the significance of the senses in instituting forms of sociality because of the ways in which sensory experience contributes to concepts of the self and culture and their interrelationship (Low, 2012). As Ingold (2011) argues, "the senses are not keyboards or filters that mediate the traffic between mind and world.…”

“…Bodies and the spaces they inhabit are inseparable Edensor, 2010;Lefebvre, 2004;Merleau-Ponty, 1962), and a turn to the senses offers opportunities to consider our bodily relations to place and each other. A full exploration of the senses is beyond the scope of this article and available elsewhere (see for example, Classen, 1993;Howes, 1991Howes, , 2003Howes, , 2005Low, 2012;Pink, 2004;Porcello, Meintjes, Ochoa, & Samuels, 2010). What is presented here focuses on the ways in which experiential engagement produces certain forms of social relations.…”