Anthony Synnott

David Howes

HOWES SMITH

Constance Victoria Classen

Constance Classen

This text argues that smell is repressed in the modern West, and its social history ignored. It attempts to break the "olfactory silence" of modernity by offering an exploration of the cultural role of odours in Western history and in a wide variety of non-Western societies.

The Cultural History of Smell

Aroma

Les Back

Michael Bull

ECONOMIC SOUNDS: The racket (Frances Dyson); The sounds of economic exchange (Trevor Pinch); Neoliberal capitalism and the rise of digital sampling (Timothy Taylor)

The Auditory Culture Reader

Emily Thompson

Wolfgang Schivelbusch

Norman Pressman

An Alternate Approach to Urbanism

Sense of the City

A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Anthropological Horizons, Vol. 1)

The Varieties of Sensory Experience

Berg Publishers

In Empire of the Senses the senses are considered as cultural systems. Bringing together classic pieces by key thinkers--from Marshall McLuhan and Alain Corbin to Susan Stewart and Oliver Sacks--as well as newly commissioned articles, this path-breaking book provides a comprehensive overview of the "sensual revolution," where all manner of disciplines converge. Its aim is to enhance our understanding of the role of the senses in history and across cultures by overturning the hegemony of vision in contemporary theory and demonstrating that all senses play a role in mediating cultural experience. It asks provocative questions that most of us take for granted. Are there, for example, only five senses, or is this assumption a Western construct? This radical contribution to revisioning cultural studies will be essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the full complexity of how we experience our world.

The Sensual Culture Reader

Empire of the Senses

With audacious dexterity, David Howes weaves together topics ranging from love and beauty magic in Papua New Guinea to nasal repression in Freudian psychology and from the erasure and recovery of the senses in contemporary ethnography to the specter of the body in Marx. Through this eclectic and penetrating exploration of the relationship between sensory experience and cultural expression, Sensual Relations contests the conventional exclusion of sensuality from intellectual inquiry and reclaims sensation as a fundamental domain of social theory. David Howes is Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.

Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory

Sensual Relations

Mylon Sinclair, a war hero pilot, at the last minute must test pilot the 'Warp Speed Test.' But, the test goes awry and Our Hero & Crew are lost in the vast reaches of the universe. In order to return to Earth to watch his young son's first T-ball game, Our Hero & Crew must comply with Alien demands in order to have them help them! Enjoy the adventure!

A Space Cowboy

Mylon Sinclair

Goods are imbued with meanings and uses by their producers. When they are exported, they can act as a means of communication or domination. However, there is no guarantee that the intentions of the producer will be recognized, much less respected, by the consumer from another culture. Cross-Cultural Consumption is a fascinating guide to the cultural implications of the globalization of a consumer society. The chapters address topics ranging from the clothing of colonial subjects in South Africa and the rise of the hypermarket in Argentina, to the presentation of culture in international tourist hotels. Through their examination of cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation of the representation of otherness and identity, Howes and his contributors show how the increasingly global flow of goods and images challenges the very idea of the cultural border and creates new spaces for cultural invention. Marian Bredin, Concordia University, Constance Classen, Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago, Mary Crain, University of Barcelona, Carol Handrickson, Marlboro Colleg

Global Markets, Local Realities

Cross-Cultural Consumption

What is the sixth sense? Is it physical, mental or spiritual? Do we all possess it or is it unique to exceptional individuals? Might there be a seventh sense and an eighth sense as well? What role does culture play in determining the range of our perceptual abilities? The search for a supplementary sense has taken many directions and yielded numerous possibilities for an "additional faculty" of perception - from magnetism and movement to dreaming and clairvoyance. Stimulating reflection and debate, The Sixth Sense Reader explores the cultural contexts which give rise to such reports of "psychic" and other powers that exceed the ordinary bounds of sense. In this groundbreaking volume, leading scholars in history, anthropology and biology take the reader on a tour of the far borderlands of consciousness. From the world beneath to the world beyond the five senses, every potential avenue of sensation is opened up for investigation.

The Sixth Sense Reader

Ways of Sensing is a stimulating exploration of the cultural, historical and political dimensions of the world of the senses. The book spans a wide range of settings and makes comparisons between different cultures and epochs, revealing the power and diversity of sensory expressions across time and space. The chapters reflect on topics such as the tactile appeal of medieval art, the healing power of Navajo sand paintings, the aesthetic blight of the modern hospital, the role of the senses in the courtroom, and the branding of sensations in the marketplace. Howes and Classen consider how political issues such as nationalism, gender equality and the treatment of minority groups are shaped by sensory practices and metaphors. They also reveal how the phenomenon of synaesthesia, or mingling of the senses, can be seen as not simply a neurological condition but a vital cultural mode of creating social and cosmic interconnections. Written by leading scholars in the field, Ways of Sensing provides readers with a valuable and engaging introduction to the life of the senses in society.

Understanding the Senses In Society

Ways of Sensing

Jon P. Mitchell

"Ritual, Performance and the Senses is a unique and timely collection at the heart of which is an experiment in anthropological theory. It explores the possibility of developing a new anthropology of ritual by combining theoretical insights from three distinct domains of anthropological inquiry: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the anthropology of the senses. These three areas of study are often considered, and indeed operate institutionally, as distinct academic sub-fields, and yet they share substantive objects of study, with their focus on experience, the body and the relationships between percept, concept and action. Bringing together scholars from each of these disciplines to consider the potential for drawing insights from each area to help to theorize ritual, this collection sheds new light on one of anthropology's most enduring research objects: by understanding ritual we understand processes at the very centre of human social life - of humanity itself. This will be invaluable reading for students and scholars of anthropology, cognitive science, performance studies and religious studies"--

Ritual, Performance and the Senses

Smell is a social phenomenon, given particular meanings and values by different cultures. Odours form the building blocks of cosmologies, class hierarchies, and political odours. They can enforce social structures or transgress them, unite people or divide them, empower or disempower. The authors argue that the sociology of smell is repressed in the modern West, and its social history ignored. This book breaks the "olfactory silence" of modernity. It offers the first comprehensive exploration of the cultural role of odours in Western history - from antiquity to the present. It also covers a wide variey of non-Western societies. Its topics range from the medieval concept of the "odour of sanctity", to the aromatherapies of South America, and from olfactory stereotypes of gender and ethnicity in the modern West to the role of smell in postmodernity. Its subject matter will fascinate anyone who likes to nose around in the inner workings of culture.

David Howes

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