Wafting on the wind: smell and the cycle of spirit and matter

Abstract

Over the centuries among many peoples, wind, air, breath, and notions of soul and life‐force have been regarded as intertwined semantically and in their effects on the world. Humans and intangible and invisible non‐human agents are often said to share these elements. Life as breath and wind as spirit, and both as evidence of consciousness, intention or soul, allow persons to abridge what they otherwise view as the separate domains of solid and non‐solid phenomena. They may understand them as transformable one into the other: human becoming spirit and spirit taking on human characteristics and form. The further association of this complex with smell reinforces the cyclical idea of human and non‐human transformation, by presenting it as what we ethnocentrically call a material and spiritual cycle, because smell itself has molecular origin and effect and yet, as regards vision and touch, can be elusive like spirit. The particular case described is of Bantu‐speaking inhabitants of the East African coast, and shows how Muslims and non‐Muslims have common metaphysical assumptions concerning this semantic cluster despite differences of religious belief.

Boholano Olfaction

“…Artificial fragrances are highly valued as they are embedded in discourses on being smelly or not and positively evaluated modern consumption patterns, while artificial stenches are perceived as threatening and unclean. unpleasant artificial chemical odors are not part of the cycle of smells of reproduction, birth, disease, and decay (compare Cohen 1988;Parkin 2007). The categories of artificial fragrances and artificial stenches are positioned very differently within the sociocultural domain of odors.…”

“…In the context of interethnic marriages, in concepts of race, bodily differences and ethnic categories (Beer 2000(Beer , 2002 smells play an important role. In Bohol odors are central in many sociocultural spheres such as the perception of the environment (mud, stagnant water and garbage, rotting dead animals, fragrances of flower and fruits), preparing and sharing food, medicine and healing, elaborate funeral practices (preparing the dead body), church masses (burning incense), Easter celebrations (perfuming Jesus feet), and communication with the spirits of the ancestors or other supernatural beings (Beer 2007; see also Burenhult and Majid 2011;Pandya 1993;Parkin 2007). Social interactions and relations are one of the most important areas, where Boholanos constantly worry about odors and self-presentation.…”

Enwinding Social Theory: Wind and Weather in Zulu Zionist Sensorial Experiences

“…We also know that religions all over the world closely relate air and wind to the notions of spirit, and hence to a sphere outside of human influence and control (Donner 2007). Parkin (2007) has accounted for the ritual significance of air, wind, and smell for both the Swahili-speaking Muslim and Bantuspeaking non-Muslim populations along the East African coast. This applies to Zulu as well.…”

The Reorganization of the Sensory World

“…Within this new theoretical terrain, scholars have carved out space for gender (Geurts 2002, Sanders 2008; extraordinary experience (Straight 2007); sensory cosmopolitanisms (Farquhar & Zhang 2005); refigurations of the nature/culture divide (Viveiros de Castro 1992) and of the interactive human and spirit ontology (Parkin 2007); various forms of synaesthetic experience (Meneley 2008); the social production of heightened mind-body awareness (Chau 2008); healing, diagnosis, and well-being (Desjarlais 2003, Farquhar 2002, Kuriyama 1999, Stroeken 2008; and truth-making in ethnographic encounters (Straight 2007, West 2007. The multisensory becomes a primary means of understanding conflict and suffering, not as a social aberration as in Turner's model but as a component of lives lived in struggle in relation to a fractured globalized political economy (Frykman et al 1998, Herzfeld 2001.…”