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The Odor of the Other: Olfactory Symbolism and Cultural Categories

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... modern societies. [24][25][26] In Antiquity and until the 17th century, odors were given great attention; body odors and the smell of excretions from people with illnesses were used to diagnose disease, 27 and smells were believed to infuse the brain of the recipient, having either positive, for example, nutritious, or negative, for example, poisonous, effects on the body. 28 Growing efforts have since been deployed to artificially cover smells, and reference to human body odors has become increasingly pejorative. ...
... 28 Growing efforts have since been deployed to artificially cover smells, and reference to human body odors has become increasingly pejorative. 24 Furthermore, the methodological difficulties of recording and quantifying odors, and the relatively inconspicuousness of olfactoryrelated behaviors, compared with auditory and visual behaviors, have biased our comprehension of the importance of this sensory modality. [29][30][31] As a result, olfactory communication and chemical signaling-in both humans and our closest living relatives-have remained largely ignored until more recently, at least in the biological sciences. ...
... 31 Indeed, olfactory consciousness-the awareness of undergoing an olfactory experience-appears to differ across human groups. 24 For instance, the Tsimane' forager-horticulturalist society from Bolivia was found to have a much higher sensitivity than urban Germans to n-butanol, a synthetic odorant unfamiliar to either group. 43 It has been reported by some studies that nonindustrialized societies generally show a greater reliance on smells in their day-to-day life, and display a larger olfactory-related language repertoire, than industrialized ones, owing to a combination of environmental, cultural, and potentially genetic factors. ...
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The sense of smell is an important mediator of health and sociality at all stages of life, yet it has received limited attention in our lineage. Olfaction starts in utero and participates in the establishment of social bonds in children, and of romantic and sexual relationships after puberty. Smell further plays a key role in food assessment and danger avoidance; in modern societies, it also guides our consumer behavior. Sensory abilities typically decrease with age and can be impacted by diseases, with repercussions on health and well‐being. Here, we critically review our current understanding of human olfactory communication to refute outdated notions that our sense of smell is of low importance. We provide a summary of the biology of olfaction, give a prospective overview of the importance of the sense of smell throughout the life course, and conclude with an outline of the limitations and future directions in this field.
... I argue that intangible smells transcend physical bodies, influencing the perception, and therefore often the social positioning, of individuals. This social positioning through intangible smell is powerful partly because of its ability to evoke the global as well as the local: odours link bodies to transnational markets, foods and practices of bodily management (Classen 1992). In making this argument, I suggest that attention to air in the sites -I use the word deliberately to make my pointof social research is generative of not only insight, but also insmell, insound, intaste and intouched analyses of situated experience. ...
... It speaks to a sensorial positioning of Africa that I and many other scholars have argued shows remarkable continuity between a narrative of the "heart of darkness" necessary for the justification of colonialism and the continuation of unjust economic and social policies at play in the world today (Parsons 2004;Nuttall 2006;Smith 2006;Auerbach 2020). What Constance Classen has called the "odouring of the other" was a fundamental tool of colonization and domination (Classen 1992;McClintock 1995;Smith 2006;Ameeriar 2017), and overcoming and reconstituting not only geopolitical but sensorial othering has been part of the crucial work of the post-colonial and decolonial periods. ...
... The paper has suggested that to be the "most fragrant man on the stage" is to assume a place in global discourse and awareness that is both powerful and proud. In this way, the sanitized subject of Western neoliberal modernity (Classen 1992;Ameeriar 2012;Boyer and Morton 2016;Green 2020) is not aspired to, but rather only fleetingly acknowledged. Instead, what emerges is a present that looks towards a version of the future on its own terms. ...
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This article considers the social, political and productive engagements with air as a foundational-but often invisible-consideration in scholarship. Drawing on ethnographic research in Angola, it develops Arundhati Roy's notion of "portals" as entry points into the reflection on and theorization of air. The paper argues that an "sanitized sensorium" of late globalized capitalism has shaped ethnographic work over the last two centuries, and in so doing has created an overwhelming reliance on visually informed insights that reveal only a small part of what can be made sense of. This is true for anthropology, as has been well documented, but it is equally true for the field of African studies. Here I suggest that in entering through alternative portals, including the olfactory, we might attend to the spaces between object and subject in which "the fullness of air" may yield valuable insmell-alongside insight. RÉSUMÉ Cet article examine les engagements sociaux, politiques et productifs vis-à-vis de l'air en tant que préoccupation fondamentale-mais souvent invisible-en matière d'érudition. S'appuyant sur une recherche ethnographique menée en Angola, il formule la notion de "portails" d'Arundhati Roy comme point d'entrée dans la réflexion et la théorisation de l'air. L'article soutient qu'un "sensorium aseptisé" du récent capitalisme mondialisé a façonné le travail ethnographique au cours des deux derniers siècles, et ce faisant, a créé une dépendance écrasante à l'égard de perceptions visuellement déterminées qui ne révèlent qu'une petite partie de ce qui peut faire sens. Cela est vrai pour l'anthropologie comme on l'a bien documenté. Je suggère ici qu'en entrant par des portails alternatifs, y compris l'olfactif, nous pourrions être attentifs aux espaces se situant entre objet et sujet, dans lesquels "la plénitude de l'air" peut produire "l'insmell" en même temps que la perception.
... We can now turn to the literature on sense or aroma in subject formation and the exercise of power, particularly within anthropology to enrich our understanding of this reception. While I am cognizant of works on aroma that center on the semiotic, metaphorical, and cognitive dimensions of olfaction (Constance Classen 1992;David Howes 1987;Anne Krogstad 1989; Kelvin E.Y. Low 2005; Brian Moeran 2007; Debora D Jackson 2011), my analysis focuses on the performative force of aroma. ...
... Constance Classen (1992) argues that, across cultures, "olfactory codes" help construct social categories; people use olfactory symbolism to express and regulate identity and difference, including different "types" of womanhood. I want to extend this line of thinking to examine aroma's diagnostic power in LZH, and its significance in enhancing feminine power-a compelling move for audiences in regard to essentializing gender roles in post-Mao China. ...
Article
This article combines ethnography and textual analysis to consider the reasons for the immense popularity of the 2012 Chinese television series “The Legend of Zhen Huan” (LZH). I argue that LZH, a historical melodrama, stages key phenomena—especially in the depiction of feminine wielding of aroma—that audiences recognize as parallel to contemporary gender norms and governance in China. In LZH, aroma is treated as a diagnostic, infiltrating, and affective force that makes the female body permeable and affective, extending feminine power. Women use aroma to channel and transform male power. For audiences, who watched the series by the millions and continue to repeat its catchphrases, the depiction of aroma in LZH highlights the forms of biopower they are subject to, as well as imagined possibilities for political and personal resistance. Such resistance involves strategic manipulation of gender norms that have been pressed in the government’s recent exertion of biopower.
... Following the guidelines of Gleichman (1982) and Corbin (1987), a shift in the social perception of odor can be observed (Albert, 1990;Classen, 1992;Larrea Killinger, 1997), from the centrality of odor to the valuation of cleanliness in cities. This transition suggests a significant change in how societies perceive and prioritize odors and urban hygiene. ...
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Introduction The objective of this article is to analyze the social representation of odors and the identity of the population in the Ñuble region between 2019 and 2023. The research focuses on how industrialization and urban and rural development have altered the olfactory landscape of this region. This study seeks to understand how changes in the physical environment affect the representation of odors and how these, in turn, impact the daily lives of residents. The importance of smells is highlighted not only as sensory experiences, but also as social phenomena that influence the perception of the environment and community relationships. Methods The research adopts an interpretive approach, combining case studies and analysis of primary sources. The analysis is categorized into two main areas: public policy on odors and the situation of odors in the cities of Chillán Viejo and Chillán. Primary sources include government documents, technical reports, and interviews with residents and local authorities. The interpretive approach allows us to explore the perceptions and subjective experiences of odors among the residents of Ñuble. Results The study reveals that industrialization and urban and rural development have significantly transformed the olfactory landscape of the Ñuble region. In Chillán Viejo and Chillán, residents report changes in odors due to industrial expansion and urbanization. Public odor policy has attempted to mitigate negative impacts, but results have been mixed. While some measures have improved air quality, others have been insufficient to address community concerns. Discussion and conclusion Smells in Ñuble are not merely sensory experiences, but social phenomena that deeply affect the daily lives of residents. The perception of smells is closely linked to the identity and history of the region. Changes in the olfactory landscape have generated both adaptations and resistance among inhabitants. Public policies must consider not only the technical aspects of air quality, but also the social and cultural dimensions of odors. This study highlights the need to address odors as an integral part of urban planning and environmental policy to improve the quality of life of residents in Ñuble.
... Dudova et al., 2011). Our heterogenous findings indicate that the patterns of adult-child olfactory engagement during SBR are likely to vary and might need to be viewed in light of the unique social and cultural associations people have with different odours (Classen, 1992;Classen, Howes, & Synnott, 2002). We agree with Almagor (1990) that 'some aspects of odour sensation resemble the notion of a "private language"' (p. ...
... La decisión de marketing sobre el odotipo debe tener en cuenta, además del público objetivo, la generación de tráfico hacia el establecimiento, la ambientación en función del propósito de este y la percepción por parte de las diversas culturas y subculturas que asistan, de estar en una zona urbana o rural, en un barrio periférico o sofisticado, con turismo de una u otra procedencia. El aroma de éxito en un país puede ser rechazado en otro, y la posición social es también indicativa de las preferencias olfativas según han demostrado estudios como los de Classen (1992) ...
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Scent marketing is an area of sensory marketing of interest to meet the highest expectations of health, safety, and comfort, in a sector that must maintain a good reputation both in social networks and online travel agencies, regarding many of the bad reviews are related to sensory aspects such as bad smells. The article delves into the theoretical, applicative, and prospective framework of olfactory marketing, through modeling, qualitative empirical analysis through interviews with experts and analysis of consumer opinions on OTAs, Trivago and Tripadvisor. Thereby it is possible to better understand the influence of the scent on the hotel corporate identity in Spain and on the purchase decision. Finally, a new model of sustainable accommodation (Wellness Hotel) is proposed under the exposed experiential premises of greater attention to the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals. El odomarketing es un área del marketing sensorial de interés para cubrir expectativas de salubridad, seguridad y confort en un sector que debe lidiar con comentarios en redes y agencias online, muy críticos con aspectos sensoriales como el olor. En esta investigación, se trata su marco teórico, aplicativo y prospectivo, a través del análisis bibliográfico, la modelización y el análisis empírico cualitativo con entrevistas a expertos y la opinión de los consumidores en OTAs de Trivago y Tripadvisor, para conocer su influencia en la identidad corporativa hotelera en España y en la decisión de compra. Por último, se propone un nuevo modelo de alojamiento experiencial bajo estas premisas: el “Wellness Hotel´.
... Otro dominio sensitivo que, en principio no pareciera poder está muy afectado por el lenguaje es el olfato, más precisamente las categorías de olores (Classen, 1992(Classen, , 1993Geurts, 2002). Varios estudios habían mencionado el refinamiento de ciertas culturas en cuanto a la categorización de los olores. ...
Chapter
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Definición y orígenes El relativismo lingüístico se puede definir de manera sencilla como la forma en la que el lenguaje influye en el pensamiento. Por lo tanto, las variaciones lingüísticas (en el lexicón, las formas gramaticales, etc.) producen, de forma causal, variaciones cognitivas. Sin embargo, esta definición es demasiado simple y tomada de esta forma tan general implicaría que los hablantes de diferentes lenguas no podrían percibir el mundo de la misma forma y que el hecho de ser bilingüe no sería posible o equivaldría a tener dos cerebros. Trataremos estas limitaciones más adelante, pero una definición más razonada consideraría más aspectos que la pura estructura del lenguaje, sino que incluiría el uso de esta estructura y cómo describir lingüísticamente el mundo influye sobre la forma de percibirlo y memorizarlo. La idea que el lenguaje es fundamental para pensar no es nada nueva y los filósofos griegos proponen varias hipótesis al respecto. Sin embargo, autores como Herder (1744-1803) y Humboldt (1767-1835) fueron los primeros en se-ñalar al lenguaje como un órgano formativo del pensamiento y que éste y el pensamiento son inseparables, por lo tanto, tienen un impacto al nivel cognitivo. Esta idea fue retomada en Norteamérica por Bloomfield (1887-1949) y el programa antropológico, cultural y mentalista, que fue a la vez dirigido por Franz Boas (1858-1942). La corriente teórica de Boas favoreció el desarrollo del enfoque relativista en América.
... Previous studies also indicated that cultural differences in odor preference are due to food preference. It was stated that cultural background is a factor influencing odor preference (Engen and Engen 1997) and that differences in smell preferences are connected to food habits (Classen 1992;Moncrieff 1966). ...
Chapter
Chinese culture has the potential to influence Chinese people’s odor preference and odor-evoked emotion. However, previous studies have rarely investigated odor preference and odor-evoked emotion among Chinese people. Verbal reports are a widely used tool for measuring odor-evoked emotion. However, since it is viewed as inappropriate to verbally express negative feelings in traditional Chinese culture, it is challenging to measure odor-evoked emotion among Chinese people. This study conducted a survey to determine odor preference among Chinese people. A comparison of odor preference between Chinese people and German people was also conducted. Ninety-six Chinese participants and 103 German participants were invited to rate their preferences of forty odors. Additionally, an experiment was conducted to test odor-evoked emotions among Chinese and German people. Both verbal measurements (i.e., interviews and the Emotion and Odor Scale) and physiological measurements (i.e., electromyography and skin conductance) were used to evaluate emotional responses evoked by 12 different odors. Twelve Chinese participants and 12 German participants were invited to participate in this experiment. Cultural effects on odor preference and odor-evoked emotions were significant in this study. The use of both verbal and physiological measurements were necessary to gain a deep, comprehensive understanding of odor-evoked emotion among Chinese participants.
... Anthropologists, historians, and cultural geographers have also shown that smell often serves as a basis for judging others. Immigrants have been and continue to be stigmatized for the smells of their preferred foods-cooking smells that permeate one's clothing and hair, for example, or smells from food vendors and restaurants-odors that are frequently identified as cultural "Other" (Classen 1992;MacPhee 1992;Law 2001;Manalansan 2006;Wurgaft 2006). Archaeologists should ask how odors associated with material culture and past landscapes would have formed the basis for the internal or external judgment of groups and individuals, and whether those odors led to stigmatization on the basis of class, status, ethnicity, or other identity. ...
... Odors are ancient, species-general signals that trigger complex neural changes that function to consolidate social bonds with conspecifics, augment the salience of contextual cues, and signify mother and habitat (6); odors are the only sensory cues that can represent the mother in her absence. While the role of olfaction in humans has received less attention compared with vision and audition, anthropological studies describe the reliance on odors for group living in non-Western societies, the recognition of group odor by its members, ceremonies by which a father's smell is "transferred" to his infant, or the rubbing of body odors (BOs) by axilla sweat, suggesting that children integrate into social groups through the detection of familiar odors introduced to infants by their mother (7)(8)(9). Furthermore, studies have shown that human neonates rely on olfactory cues to recognize their mothers (10,11), and maternal chemosignals reduce pain in newborns (12), increase infant attention to face and eyes (13), shape face categorization (14), and attenuate neural response to fearful faces (15), underscoring the importance of maternal odors for orienting infants to species-critical social cues. Still, the mechanisms by which maternal BOs support maturation of the infant's social brain are largely unknown. ...
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Maternal body odors serve as important safety-promoting and social recognition signals, but their role in human brain maturation is largely unknown. Utilizing ecological paradigms and dual- electroencephalography recording, we examined the effects of maternal chemosignals on brain-to-brain synchrony during infant-mother and infant-stranger interactions with and without the presence of maternal body odors. Neural connectivity of right-to-right brain theta synchrony emerged across conditions, sensitizing key nodes of the infant’s social brain during its maturational period. Infant-mother interaction elicited greater brain-to-brain synchrony; however, maternal chemosignals attenuated this difference. Infants exhibited more social attention, positive arousal, and safety/approach behaviors in the maternal chemosignals condition, which augmented infant-stranger neural synchrony. Human mothers use interbrain mechanisms to tune the infant’s social brain, and chemosignals may sustain the transfer of infant sociality from the mother-infant bond to life within social groups.
... Despite this lack of research, the fact that the human olfactory bulb projects monosynaptically to the MeA (Allison, 1954) implicates this subregion in a significant olfactory role which remains to be disambiguated. Odors trigger innate responses in humans (Yeshurun and Sobel, 2010), and humans engage in olfactory-guided social behaviors (Classen, 1992;Ober et al., 1997;Wysocki and Preti, 2004;Wyart et al., 2007;Samuelsen and Meredith, 2009;de Groot et al., 2012;Frumin et al., 2015), despite the lack of an accessory olfactory system (Mast and Samuelsen, 2009;Savic et al., 2009). The neural bases of these behaviors have yet to be identified. ...
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Three subregions of the amygdala receive monosynaptic projections from the olfactory bulb, making them part of the primary olfactory cortex. These primary olfactory areas are located at the anterior-medial aspect of the amygdala and include the medial amygdala (MeA), cortical amygdala (CoA), and the periamygdaloid complex (PAC). The vast majority of research on the amygdala has focused on the larger basolateral and basomedial subregions, which are known to be involved in implicit learning, threat responses, and emotion. Fewer studies have focused on the MeA, CoA, and PAC, with most conducted in rodents. Therefore, our understanding of the functions of these amygdala subregions is limited, particularly in humans. Here, we first conducted a review of existing literature on the MeA, CoA, and PAC. We then used resting-state fMRI and unbiased k-means clustering techniques to show that the anatomical boundaries of human MeA, CoA, and PAC accurately parcellate based on their whole-brain resting connectivity patterns alone, suggesting that their functional networks are distinct, relative both to each other and to the amygdala subregions that do not receive input from the olfactory bulb. Finally, considering that distinct functional networks are suggestive of distinct functions, we examined the whole-brain resting network of each subregion and speculated on potential roles that each region may play in olfactory processing. Based on these analyses, we speculate that the MeA could potentially be involved in the generation of rapid motor responses to olfactory stimuli (including fight/flight), particularly in approach/avoid contexts. The CoA could potentially be involved in olfactory-related reward processing, including learning and memory of approach/avoid responses. The PAC could potentially be involved in the multisensory integration of olfactory information with other sensory systems. These speculations can be used to form the basis of future studies aimed at clarifying the olfactory functions of these under-studied primary olfactory areas.
... In such cases, some have suggested that mobilization around stenches might, in some cases, rely on nothing more than complainants' imaginations and still be successfulwhen they draw on widely shared cultural meanings (see, for example, Classen, 1992 and the discussion of Morlan, 1950in Smith, 2006. It seems, though, that most sensory claims fail without technoscientific corroboration. ...
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A growing literature illuminates the limits of claims made on the basis of sensory perception in scientized, rationalized, and bureaucratic contexts. How to understand exceptions to the rule – cases where claims based on sensory experience are taken at face value, even without corroborating evidence? Here, I focus on one such exception, in which citizen complaints about the smell of a small shantytown functioned successfully as both demands and justifications despite a lack of the kinds of instrumentally and technologically enabled corroboration that the literature would suggest are necessary to strengthen such claims. I show how complaints slotted neatly into a specific cultural structure, an olfactory cosmology in which ‘bad air’ that endangers health can be identified by smell and requires ongoing management and amelioration, and where adherence to hygienic norms is required for full moral citizenship. The case suggests ways that the apparent weaknesses of olfactory claims might allow them to be uniquely weaponized in social and political life, and shows how such claims can exploit shared norms, values, and meanings to enroll others in the demand for action.
... Jewish Lublin and here especially Jewish bodies transgressing into Christian space were perceived as contaminating the city with bad odors. Olfactory constructions and social categories tend to overlap and result in social, political, and/or gender and ethnic "othering" (Simmel 1992(Simmel [1908Classen 1992;Beer 2000;Haldrup et al. 2006). The alleged "distinct Jewish smell" or foetor Judaicus has a long tradition. ...
... What is more, this is typically found to be an unpleasant experience with those other unknown passengers of other races and/or social classes often suggested to have a 8 Note that high temperatures have also been linked to increased anti-social behavior (Baron and Ransberger, 1978). distinctive, and frequently disliked, scent (e.g., Orwell, 1937;Largey and Watson, 1972;Classen, 1992;Manalansan, 2006;Bever, 2019) 9 . ...
Article
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There is undoubtedly growing interest in the role of scent in the design of multisensory experiences. However, to date, the majority of the research has focused on its use in the (static) built environment. As highlighted by this narrative review, somewhat different challenges and opportunities arise just as soon as one starts to consider olfaction in the case of transportation–what might be called “scent in motion.” For instance, levels of anxiety/stress while traveling are often higher (especially in the case of air travel), while, at the same time, the passenger's personal space is frequently compromised. Four key functional roles for scent in the context of passenger transportation are outlined. They include the masking of malodour, the introduction of branded signature scents, short-term olfactory marketing interventions, and the functional use of scent to enhance the experience of travel. In the latter case, one might consider the use of scent to help reduce the stress/anxiety amongst airplane passengers or to give the impression of cleanliness. Meanwhile, in the case of driving, scents have been suggested as an inoffensive means of alerting/relaxing the driver and may also help tackle the problem of motion sickness. The specific challenges associated with scent in motion are reviewed and a number of future opportunities highlighted.
... Finally, misophonia may have, at least in part, an anthropological and/or sociological origin. For instance, western culture tends to eliminate or "deodorize" body odors 31 . Similarly, western culture tends to eliminate body sounds. ...
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Misophonia is a condition where a strong arousal response is triggered when hearing specific human generated sounds, like chewing, and/or repetitive tapping noises, like pen clicking. It is diagnosed with clinical interviews and questionnaires since no psychoacoustic tools exist to assess its presence. The present study was aimed at developing and testing a new assessment tool for misophonia. The method was inspired by an approach we have recently developed for hyperacusis. It consisted of presenting subjects (n = 253) with misophonic, pleasant, and unpleasant sounds in an online experiment. The task was to rate them on a pleasant to unpleasant visual analog scale. Subjects were labeled as misophonics (n = 78) or controls (n = 55) by using self-report questions and a misophonia questionnaire, the MisoQuest. There was a significant difference between controls and misophonics in the median global rating of misophonic sounds. On the other hand, median global rating of unpleasant, and pleasant sounds did not differ significantly. We selected a subset of the misophonic sounds to form the core discriminant sounds of misophonia (CDS Miso ). A metric: the CDS score, was used to quantitatively measure misophonia, both with a global score and with subscores. The latter could specifically quantify aversion towards different sound sources/events, i.e., mouth, breathing/nose, throat, and repetitive sounds. A receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the method accurately classified subjects with and without misophonia (accuracy = 91%). The present study suggests that the psychoacoustic test we have developed can be used to assess misophonia reliably and quickly.
... Filth and unpleasant smells are often recalled not only and not so much as a personal sensory experience but as an expression of antipathy towards the "others" (cf. Classen 1992;Stomma 2002, 9, 32-36, 163, 198, 217). The topography of the pre-war Lublin recalled by the narrators is strongly emotional and seems to reflect culturally constructed notions of the interwar city in the process of modernization. ...
Article
For several hundred years, Lublin has developed as a multiethnic city. As a result of World War II and the destruction of the local Jewish community, its urban structure and its cultural landscape were significantly altered. The image of pre-war Lublin emerging from archival documents, pictures, newspaper articles, and individual memories is multilayered. Studies of the oral testimonies of local inhabitants reveal the deeply sensory and cultural components of spatial experiences characteristic of the cultural landscape of pre-war Lublin. This aspect will be presented as a reference point to conduct analyses concerning cultural and social aspects of the perception of Lublin’s urban landscape.
... 104 Anti-Semites complaining about 'Jewish smells' is perhaps unsurprising, but it demonstrates olfactory codes classifying selfhood and otherness. 105 Smell helped elaborations of class and race, 106 and Polish National Democrats' discourse proves the concurrence between highly emotional national politics and the re-implementation of old olfactory stereotypes. This period of nation building and political tension coincided with heightened sensory sensitivities. ...
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From horse dung to garlic, olfactory debates raged in interwar Poland. Smells are ubiquitous and substantially influence how we perceive the atmosphere of a given place. This article focuses on ‘smell affairs’ and olfactory sensibilities that were emerging in the city of Lublin in Poland after 1918. In particular, it addresses what Lublin's courtyard smells tell us about the condition, development and mindset of a Polish city at that time. On their way into the ‘modern’ era, Lublin's citizens began to complain about rural elements interfering with the ‘metropolitan’ character of Lublin as well as how ‘ethnic smells’ of fellow Jewish citizens would intrude upon the air of ‘their’ ‘Polish’ city. Poking one's nose into the air and the ‘smellscapes’ of the urban courtyard, one can observe what was regarded as a part, or not, of a modern city in independent Poland.
... The taste and smell are criteria of medicinal and non-medicinal plants. Non-medicinal plants were more often reported to have no smell (or) taste (Classen, 1992 (Yesodharan & Sujana, 2007). ...
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The present study was aimed to document the ethnomedicinal knowledge among the Malayali tribal of Chitteri hills Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India. Field visits were made to the Chitteri hills every month covering all seasons. Interviews with traditional healers and other knowledgeable inhabitants and farmers were conducted. The Malayali tribal people of Chitteri hills use 320 plant species for their day-to-day life, this ethnobotanical exploration revealed they were the habit of using around 216 species of medicinal plants belonging to 200 genera under 45families. Malayali tribes use morphological characters such as bark surface, leaf colour, leaf taste and exudates, underground plant parts and ecology of species as criteria for identification of 135 species belongs to 105 genera under 46 families. The documentation of the knowledge of Malayali tribal identification of plants of Chitteri hills is to be accorded top priority in the preservation of our ancient traditional knowledge.
... Kokunun kültürü ve toplumu şekillendiren başlıca unsurlardan biri olduğu fikri öne sürülmüştür. Bu fikir ilk başta kültürel antropoloji ve gündelik tarih araştırmaları alanında çalışan bilim adamları tarafından dile getirilmiştir (Corbin, 1982 1 ;Classen, 1992). 2000'li yıllardan itibaren gerek Batı'da gerekse Rusya'da koku olgusu disiplinlerarası bir yaklaşımla incelenmeye başlanmıştır. ...
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Son yıllarda insani bilimlerde koku olgusuna yönelik ilginin artmasına rağmen dilbilim çerçevesinde olgunun kapsamlı araştırmalarının yapılmadığı tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışmanın amacı Rus dili dizgesinde koku olgusunun dilbilimsel çözümlemesi olarak belirlenmiştir. Koku olgusunun Rus dili dizgesinde biçimlendirilmesinin anlaşılması için art zamanlı bir araştırmaya ihtiyaç duyulmuştur. Eski Rusçada koku olgusunun biçimlendirildiği birimler ve adlandırma modelleri tespit edilmiştir. Eş zamanlı yaklaşım doğrultusunda Rus Dili Derlemi’nden faydalanılarak koku olgusunun çağdaş Rusçadaki adlandırma modelleri belirlenmiştir. Çağdaş Rusçadaki koku olgusunun adlandırma modellerinin özellikleri betimlenmiştir. Bu modellerin sınıflandırılması için işlevsel dilbilim çerçevesinde geliştirilen ve gerçeklik ile ilgili bilgilerin dil dizgesinde kodlama modellerinin tespitini amaçlayan yaklaşım uygulanmıştır. Çağdaş Rusçada Eski Rusçadaki eylemci odaklı adlandırma modelinin yanı sıra durum ve olgu odaklı modellerin kullanıldığı belirlenmiştir. Adlandırma modellerinin Rusçada oluşturduğu sözdizimsel yapılar ele alınmış ve betimlenmiştir. Sentetik ve analitik olmak üzere sınıflandırılabilen bu yapıların özellikleri gösterilmiştir. Analitik yapıların sınıflandırılması “anlam↔metin” kuramının belirlediği sözcüksel işlevlere göre yapılmıştır. Çalışmada yapılan tespitlerin çağdaş Rus dili araştırmaları, dil tipolojisi, yabancı dil ve çeviri öğretimi açısından önemli olduğu ileri sürülmüştür. İşlevsel yaklaşım çerçevesinde yapılabilen karşılaştırmalı dil araştırmalarının önemi vurgulanmıştır.
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This chapter examines a variety of metaphors that link the sense of smell to the perception of odors, which can be found in the symbolic lexicon of smells. Throughout history, strangers have been characterized and marginalized by the representation of their unpleasant smell, and this trend continues today with the various ways in which we perceive the smells of others. Different social groups, such as Jews, Roma, Arabs, Chinese, Native Americans, slaves, prostitutes, witches, and the impoverished, have been stigmatized in society and distinguished by a distinct stench or at least an unpleasant smell. In general, bad smells are linked to the concept of otherness and are associated with various social categories such as gender, age, nationality, and skin color.
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The anthropological concept of displacement serves as a theoretical frame for describing the transitory feeling of “distant hereness" in the migration context of the Chukchi and Yupik young people coming to St. Petersburg and in the case of indigenous tourism in which the native village receives foreign tourists. In both cases the sense of home is challenged. The home owners, for instance, providing their homes for accommodation of tourists, become tourists at their homes themselves. In contrast, migrants for whom the first months of staying in a new city are like an inspection process of all the urban attractions, over time begin to feel that a new place may feel like a home. The idea of what a home means, is accompanied in each case by an olfactory code: “what smells good". It is concluded that in experience of displacement, the sense of smell plays an important role.
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El presente trabajo estudia la representación que hace el oidor sevillano Antonio de Morga de dos gustos de los habitantes del archipiélago asiático en los Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (México, 1609). Analiza cómo se manifiesta la actitud de Morga hacia los filipinos a través de su presentación de las costumbres culinaria e higiénica de aquellos. Se arguye que, a pesar de su reconocida imparcialidad, la imagen filipina de Morga revela un sistema de conceptos destinados a esquematizar cualquier mundo desconocido y no cristiano.
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In the Great War, home front schemes in support of wartime causes included the making and transportation of what were called smellies: homemade tokens and commercial gifts that invoked supposedly traditional British scents. For volunteers, this entailed the collection and distribution of homemade lavender and verbena bags as an allegedly effective—and practical—means of aiding those injured at the front. For others, like commercial perfumers, this meant the production of scented commodities like lavender water and eau de Cologne for transport to troops overseas. In both cases, supporters mobilized the symbolic power of perfumed items to promote a fictitious version of rural, white, English life that could allegedly be resumed after the conflict. These campaigns obscured the social, racial, gendered, and material realities of war. What resulted was a profoundly limited definition of British smells and, by extension, their idealized British recipients: white, English-born servicemen from across classes. While perfumed gifts were designed to comfort these select recipients and bring a sense of order to the front, accounts of gifts’ production and reception ultimately reveal fractures—and failures—in the deployment of national smells to order the disordered smellscapes of war.
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For years, city officials in Paris have tried to reduce ‘incivility’ to maintain public order and security. While civility is being used by the city to enforce a respect for others through a respect for public space, it is also being used to claim moral authority and legitimacy by groups who already enjoy a privileged access to these spaces. Although some of these groups may seek to bring their neighbours into an imagined moral community through ‘awareness raising’, others attempt a revanchist approach to push the ‘uncivil’ and ‘undeserving’ further outside the borders of this community. This article argues that in combatting incivility and bad behaviour, local associations attempt to establish a spatial and moral community that legitimises their vision of appropriate consumption and use of public space and excludes already-marginalised publics from its borders.
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The minority “Bengali Muslim” or Miya community of Assam, a northeastern Indian state, is marked as foul-smelling. Underlying this slandering and humiliation is a racialized notion of smell and bodies. This article examines how the racialization of perceived smell relates to Miya people’s everyday struggles in Assam. The emphasis will be on the attempts made by the community to resist the trope of the “foul-smelling Miya.” Data for the article are drawn from fieldwork conducted in a char (floodplain) of central Assam’s Darrang district in 2016 and 2017. Fieldwork highlighted that the community has developed the idea of reodorization to counter the overarching narrative of a “foul-smelling Miya.” The act of using deodorants otherwise understood to mask smell (deodorization), was reinstated to mean aestheticization of smell (reodorization). Reodorization enabled the community to disassociate itself from the racialized smell. My participants underlined that there is no racialized foul smell and that their bodies only carry their natural odortypes (unique body odors that vary from person to person). This conceptualization of reodorization is an act of agency. It takes us back to the wider debate of agency—how agency arises and thrives in the most complex and seemingly paradoxical ways.
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There is a long history presuming smell is not expressible in language, but numerous studies in recent years challenge this presupposition. Large smell lexica have been reported around the world thereby showing high lexical codability in this domain. Psycholinguistic studies likewise find smell can be described with relatively high agreement, demonstrating high efficient codability . Often the two go hand-in-hand: languages with high lexical codability also display high efficient codability. This study compares two Austroasiatic (Aslian) languages – Semaq Beri and Semelai – previously shown to diverge in their efficient codability for smell: Semaq Beri showed relatively high efficient codability, whereas Semelai did not. Despite this, we demonstrate that both languages have high lexical codability, i.e., large lexica of basic smell terms. This seems to be a feature of the Aslian language family, suggesting a long-standing preoccupation with odours. More generally, the dissociation between lexical and efficient codability suggests a more nuanced approach towards linguistic expressibility is necessary.
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Regulating and disciplining the urban environment, especially the sensory improprieties of a city, have always been a crucial means to demonstrate new political orders. This article examines how various authorities attempted to regulate and reshape the Old Town neighbourhood of the Polish city of Lublin during the first half of the twentieth century and how a continuous discourse on order and cleanliness reinforced ethnic, class and political prejudices. It shows how the sensory mapping of the city in pre-war times, including noisome odours, crowdedness and unsightly buildings related, more often than not, to the area’s ‘Jewishness’. The profound changing of the Old Town neighbourhood after the Second World War was a major symbolic act of the new communist regime to make a clean sweep of unpleasant legacies to create the ‘Lublin of the future’.
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Framed within Entwistle’s perspective of dress as “situated bodily practice” and olfactory impression management, we explored the topic of odor in clothing. A series of eight focus group interviews were used to explore the types of odors that can adhere to clothing, commonalities among clothing or textile properties that accentuate odor, and odor management practices to control, reduce or avoid odor building up in clothing. We found that many different sources of odor can permeate clothing fabrics and most odors are deemed unpleasant and unwanted. Odors arising from the body, particularly from sweat, were the most commonly cited source of odor. As part of everyday routines, individuals undergo a series of separate and interconnected odor management practices to prevent, control, or eliminate odor in their clothing. Among these, laundering clothing was the most common practice. However, individuals also attempted to control odor at the source, using the “sniff test” to assess odor and actively avoid certain items of clothing known to be persistently odorous. We also found that odor management included a progressive delegation of odorous clothing from one’s “civilized wardrobe” to other uses where odor may not matter or odor was unavoidable. It is clear that part of the embodied practice of selecting, wearing and caring for clothing, odor acts as a sign for interacting appropriately within the social world.
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The use of perfumes, incense, colognes, and plant and flower essences in Amazonian healing practices is a hallmark feature of vegetalismo, a form of healing in Peru’s Amazonian regions. Sprayed, smoked, rubbed on bodies, and poured in medicinal baths, these odorous tools are vital allies to the curandero for cleansing bodies and spaces, for protection, or to add potency to medicinal plants. Certain perfumes are more common than others, particularly the citrusy Agua de Florida, an 18th Century eau de cologne from the United States. Focusing in on the history of Agua de Florida and its ubiquity in Western Amazonia, I suggest the necessity of a sensory anthropology for exploring the vast healing potential of vegetalismo. Going beyond the visual to consider other sensory experiences lends insight into the various healing mechanisms in Amazonian shamanism that are often overlooked by western epistemologies of health and healing.
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Cognitive body odour Specificity of body odour Cognitive hygiene Epistemological implications of the odour metaphor Epistemological relationship between human values and olfaction Policy implications of cognitive body odour -- for collective "bodies"
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The intensity of attention to the sexual domain within the defilement discourse of the HB raises important questions that have yet to be addressed. It is straightforward to understand, on the one hand, how sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) were perceived as contagious and threatening, and on the other hand to understand why sexual transgressions were believed to produce a stain of culpability that carried the threat of divine retribution. What remains to be explained is the following: why were ordinary sexual emissions, specifically semen, menstruation and birth lochia, regarded as defiling when other bodily emissions were not? In particular, according to the largely compelling view that pollution relates to disgust, one would expect excrement to be defiling, yet surprisingly one finds that P does not mention it as a source of impurity. Intriguingly, even the law of the war camp in Deuteronomy 23:10–15 (discussed below), which explicitly requires the distancing of impurity (specifically seminal emission) and excrement, treats these topics independently and does not ascribe pollution to the latter.
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In this book, Yitzhaq Feder presents a novel and compelling account of pollution in ancient Israel, from its emergence as an embodied concept, rooted in physiological experience, to its expression as a pervasive metaphor in social-moral discourse. Feder aims to bring the biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence into a sustained conversation with anthropological and psychological research through comparison with notions of contagion in other ancient and modern cultural contexts. Showing how numerous interpretive difficulties are the result of imposing modern concepts on the ancient texts, he guides readers through wide-ranging parallels to biblical attitudes in ancient Near Eastern, ethnographic, and modern cultures. Feder demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary and psychological research can be applied to ancient textual evidence. He also suggests a path of synthesis that can move beyond the polarized positions which currently characterize modern academic and popular debates bearing on the roles of biology and culture in shaping human behavior.
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This article serves as an introduction to the special section on Sensorial Politics, which includes articles by Nicholas Caverly, Elsa Davidson, Susan Falls and Ali Kenner. The introduction outlines the arguments of the articles before proceeding to a discussion of the common themes they illuminate as a whole. In particular, they address four key issues: the relationship between the sensorial and the political; the role of sensorial disruption and its political effects; the issue of labor; and the issue of knowledge. We conclude that while these pieces advance our understanding of the relationships between the sensorium and politics, they also open up avenues for ongoing research and theorization, particularly in our contemporary situation, in which the Covid-19 pandemic has recast sensorial politics in new ways.
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Early modern societies were pervaded by smells and odours, but few traces have survived that offer a glimpse of the olfactory experience. This essay reconstructs this lost early modern ‘smellscape’, focusing on the smell of disease and death in the late medieval Antwerp Church of Our Lady (c. 1450-1559). Bustling cathedrals and parish churches could be a minefield of life-threatening odours, as there was a strong interaction between externally perceived body odour and a person’s inner sweetness. Through devotional objects and liturgical rituals, however, it was possible to protect oneself from the stench of both living and dead parishioners. Exemplary markers for the shared discourse of smell on a medical and spiritual level were aromatic prayer beads and purifying incense.
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Sometime before the Great War, somewhere in England, a woman in a green silk kimono locks the door of her room and lights a gold-tipped cigarette. This simple act, and the memory of it traced in the archive, will be explored and used as a route into narrating a sensory history of the smoking suit from its use as a masculine garment designed to obviate putrid tobacco smells to its eventual adoption as a feminine object of high fashion. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, from newspaper and magazine articles to etiquette books, advice manuals, fashion plates, and trade journals, the paper examines the representations of the smoking suit from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century and the role it was ascribed in the constitution of gendered smoking spaces. By weaving through the textures, smells, flavors and places associated with it, the paper attempts to tease out the sensory, affective and embodied micro-politics of wearing as this plush item of smoking fashion moves from the private space of the home, to the public spaces of the fashion show. The paper concludes by arguing for the importance of taking seriously the multisensory, everyday geographies of fashion, and their capacity to both perpetuate and disrupt wider relationships of power.
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Misophonia is a condition where a strong arousal response is triggered when hearing specific human generated sounds, like chewing, and/or repetitive tapping noises, like pen clicking. It is diagnosed with clinical interviews and questionnaires since no psychoacoustic tools exist to assess its presence. The present study was aimed at developing and testing a new assessment tool for misophonia. The method was inspired by an approach we have recently developed for hyperacusis. It consisted of presenting subjects (n=253) with misophonic, pleasant, and unpleasant sounds in an online experiment. The task was to rate them on a pleasant to unpleasant visual analog scale. Subjects were labeled as misophonics (n=78) or controls (n=55) by using self-report questions and a misophonia questionnaire, the MisoQuest. There was a significant difference between controls and misophonics in the median global rating of misophonic sounds. On the other hand, median global rating of unpleasant, and pleasant sounds did not differ significantly. We selected a subset of the misophonic sounds to form the core discriminant sounds of misophonia (CDS Miso ). A metric: the CDS score, was used to quantitatively measure misophonia, both with a global score and with subscores. The latter could specifically quantify aversion towards different sound sources/events, i.e., mouth, breathing/nose, throat, and repetitive sounds. A receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the method accurately classified subjects with and without misophonia (accuracy = 91 %). The present study suggests that the psychoacoustic test we have developed can be used to assess misophonia reliably and quickly.
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This paper investigates some of the ways the unique qualities of sensory representations in literature, especially olfactory representations, can convey some of the atrocities of the battlefield and their moral implications. An analysis of olfactory descriptions, and of their emotional and even physical impact on readers, may uncover qualitative differences between different authors’ account of the battlefield: Is war shown in all its violence, naked cruelty, and horror? Are visceral feelings articulated bluntly? Or does the writer choose to leave the harsh reality only implied and stylized, obedient to the idea that “silence screams louder than words”? What ethical stance may underlie these aesthetic decisions? My thesis is that the use of visceral olfactory representations coincides with a firm anti-war stance, whereas their absence may attest to a more patriotic and nationalistic attitude. It comes as no surprise that Israeli literature frequently deals with war. The ethical issues raised by Israeli war writing have been probed from the political, historical, and gender points of view. As I show in this paper, Israeli war fiction constitutes a good case for an examination of the poetics of war writing. After briefly presenting a theoretical framework, I analyze olfactory depictions of war in works by Yoram Kaniuk, Shulamith Hareven, Yuval Neria, Haim Sabato, S. Yizhar, Haim Be’er and Yitzhak Ben-Ner. Comparing these writers’ use (or omission) of the olfactory aspect demonstrates the significance of olfactory representations and their potential contribution to literary criticism. Thus, this study participates in an emerging discourse of sensory representation in literature, following a growing interest in the senses and their significance in the Social sciences and the Humanities.
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During the course of the sixteenth century, the Aztec (or Mexica) city of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco (present-day Mexico City) was transformed from a sweet-smelling lacustrine city into a foul one, the direct result of the Spanish invasion (1519–21). This article reconstructs both the sources of odors and culturally situated ideas about smell among the city’s Nahuatl-speaking residents. They are opposed to the ideas about smell held by settler colonists, derived from the framework of Hippocratic medicine. These imported ideas about acceptable smells (like those of urban slaughterhouses) and dangerous smells (swamps) came to have disastrous consequences as they played out in the unique environment of the Basin of Mexico.
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The aim of this study is to explore how the smells associated with particular emotions encode the feeling of belonging in Russian Beringia. The differing olfactory patterns are conceptualised within the broad socio-political processes of Soviet and post-Soviet modernisation. The odours, the mental representations of the odorous stimuli, are considered socially constructed. Following David Howes (2002) and Constance Classen et al. (1994), it is assumed that the cultural politics of olfaction intensify under the changing social regimes. The study further draws on David Chaney’s concept of lifestyle (1996) that proves to be helpful in enhancing the investigation of the interrelation between social differentiation and aesthetic patterns in the context of the Soviet mission civilisatrice. In the analysis of the impact of the Soviet (and post-Soviet) policies on the native olfactory practices, the study shifts the focus from deodorisation (a concept that refers to elimination of those odours that colonizing western discourse finds socially unacceptable) towards sanitation (process in which cleanliness as a synecdoche for civility may lead to, but not necessarily does, a repudiation of certain odours). It demonstrates that the realms where the senses, aesthetic, and social hierarchies overlap have a wide spectrum of cultural forms, often unintended from the point of view of the Soviet or post-Soviet policy makers.
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Within some of the earliest textual and material evidence for the history of Islam, pilgrimage appears as an important ritual of devotion, identity, and community. Yet modern scholarship has given little attention to early Muslims’ sensory experiences of pilgrimage sites and what they physically encountered while there. This article examines the importance of smell within Islamic pilgrimage practices of the first/seventh and second/eighth centuries. Drawing upon literary and material evidence, I reconstruct several olfactory components of pilgrimage in this period, including intensive usage of perfume and incense at pilgrimage destinations such as the Kaʿba and the Dome of the Rock, as well as pilgrims’ collection and ingestion of scented materials from these locations. I then argue that the prominence of pleasing aromas at these sacred spaces is connecting to early Islamic ideas about the proximity of paradise to these pilgrimage sites.
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The article analyses information on religious elements in the representation of senses in literary sources of late imperial China. The Introduction presents psychological and social functions of olfaction with reference to China. The second part deals with the concepts of *xiang*, especially in the meaning of incense, but also the supernatural and symbolic aromas and the pollutant load of its antonym *chou*. The third part offers a survey of other bodily sensations in relation to religion.
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ABSTRACT The magic of Greek and Roman witches is often described as fragrant, or even as being itself a kind of scent. Classical descriptions of witchcraft thus echo ancient fears of women's perfumes and scented cosmetics, which were conventionally thought of as altering the minds of men, who could be seduced by sweet scents into doing things they would not willingly choose to do. Witches' spells similarly charm and confuse their targets, acting as more aggressive supernatural versions of ordinary women's scents, even as witches themselves were increasingly described as old, repulsive, and foul-smelling. Meanwhile, male magicians are largely inodorate in the fantastic literature of antiquity. Clarifying the links between ancient discourse on perfumes, gender, and magic offers new ways to read Greco-Roman fantastic literature.
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The article analyses information on religious elements in the representation of senses in literary sources of late imperial China. The Introduction presents psychological and social functions of olfaction with reference to China. The second part deals with the concepts of xiang, especially in the meaning of incense, but also the supernatural and symbolic aromas and the pollutant load of its antonym chou. The third part offers a survey of other bodily sensations in relation to religion.
Article
Purpose The sublime in scent refers to the use of language and description that excites thoughts and emotions beyond ordinary olfactory experience, and I would like to borrow this literary concept to explore the recent development of incense traditions in Japan and China from a sociocultural perspective. In order to understand how olfactory characters of incense have been verbally expressed, we can start by looking into the sublime in scent through the articulation of relevant subtle approaches since ancient times. Design/methodology/approach This paper explains how the description of scent experienced by individuals has been associated with thoughts and history and why the sublime in scent is more complicated than the aroma people can tell. The data collected for this research is mostly based on observations by participating in various events and conversations with different people. Findings In Japan and China, the use of incense has a long history, and relevant scent cultures have been developed not only for offerings in religious practices, but also as a kind of scent appreciation together with a poetic presentation. Again, it is important and significant to discern several interactions of incense traditions in these two countries, since the transformations became obvious in the last two decades, while Japanese Kodo participated more in international exchange, and the Chinese people's view of intangible cultural heritage has become more important in their daily social practices. Originality/value As a way of showing how the study of scent can enhance ethnographic writing and the understanding of changes in the appreciation of incense, this paper hopes to contribute to the study of art and tradition.
Article
Résumé Le déclin de l'olfactif, mythe ou réalité ? Sommes-nous devenus des infirmes olfactifs ? Les sociétés industrielles contemporaines auraient fait de l'odorat le " parent pauvre " des sens et relégué l'olfactif dans un rôle plus que modeste. Faut-il croire pour autant qu'elles ont connu autrefois un " âge d'or " olfactif dont ne subsisteraient aujourd'hui que de maigres vestiges ? Mesurer l'appauvrissement de l'odorat paraît difficile et aléatoire. On peut, en revanche, tenter d'évaluer l'importance comparée de l'odorat et des odeurs dans le passé et le présent de nos sociétés en examinant leur rôle dans différents domaines comme les relations humaines, la maladie et la connaissance.
Article
We have presented a somewhat different picture of the “sensory profile” of the mid-to late-eighteenth century than is found in the work of so renowned an historian as Michel Foucault.49 According to Foucault, sight is the dominant (and dominating) sense of the modern ara; we live in a “society of surveillance.” In his account, there has been a steady progression in the power of the gaze to organize both knowledge and society since the Enlightenment. It was the reorganization of the space of the prison, hospital, and workplace in accordance with the “principle of individualizing partitioning” under the “scrupulously ‘classificatory’ eye” of the master-disciplinarian that crystallized this tendency and laid the foundations for the scopic regime of contemporary Western society.50
Article
The Northern Yaka see the body as an expanse bounded in time and space. Alimentary traffic, olfactory exchange, and procreation constitute oriented transitions of the body boundaries. The y provide a spatiotemporal order (inner-surface-outer, high-middle-low, before-simultaneous-after, etc.) which, by symbolic transference, patterns the semantic integration of the social. natural and bodily domains and which is itself patterned by this integration. The body-self has to do with the body as receptive of, and participating in, the activities of the other: in sensorial interaction, that is, in encounter, exchange, smelling, listening, speaking and seeing, individuals serve as reciprocal points of identification. The y pattern, and are patterned by, the relationships between the psychosomatic and the sociocultural, between self and other, ascendant and descendant, male and female, etc. I am concerned with the ways these multidimensional relationships in and through the body acts and the body-self may be symbolic, i.e., when they integrate, by differentiation and mediation in a metaphoro-metonymical process, the bodily, social and natural spheres; these relationships are symptomatic when they are disintegrative, dualistic, or intrusive.
Article
11 y a une connexion intrins6que entre I'olfaction et la transition, c'est-8-dire, le changement de catkgories. Etant donnk que cette association se retrouve dans le contexte des divers rites de passage 8 travers le monde, elle semble Otre universelle. C'est a cause du fait que les odeurs 6mannent toujours de leurs objets, et qu'habituellement elles signalent les processus de transformation, v.g., cuisson, putrkfaction, qu'elles sont utiliskes comme mkdiateurs (et comme support aux transitions) entre des catbgories sociales. There is an intrinsic connection between olfaction and transition, or category-change. This association would appear to be universal, for it finds expression in the context of diverse rites of passage the world over. The author suggests that it is because smells constantly escape from their objects, and because of the way they normally signal processes of transformation, e.g., cooking, putrefaction, that they are used to mediate (and manage transitions) between social categories.
Article
The indigenous peoples of South America culturally code sensory perceptions in varied and complex ways. This article outlines and compares the sensory models of indigenous cultures from two contrasting South American regions: the central Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. While the various peoples of the Andes appear to share the same basic sensory model, those of the Amazon manifest significant differences in the symbolic values they accord the different senses. One common factor among the Amazonians, which also distinguishes them from the Andeans, is the importance given to the senses dependent on proximity, particularly smell. Such differences can be attributed to a variety of causes and are seen to have a variety of cultural effects. In conclusion, the anthropological implications of examining indigenous theories and modes of perception are explored.
Article
Among the Warao Indians of eastern Venezuela herbalism is a nonritualized occupation practiced by women. As a medical practice herbalism complements the ritual occupation of shamanism practiced by men. But whereas Warao herbalism is governed by a theory of supernatural causation of illness mystically brought about by contagion, Warao shamanism is a theory of supernatural causation of illness attributed to spirit aggression and object intrusion. According to herbalist theory, pathogenesis results from odoriferous agents that invade the body regions (head, thorax, abdomen) of the victim. Here they expand in the form of fetid gas, producing clinical symptoms by affecting the organs and the soul of a particular region. Treatment of disease by herbal medicines is allopathic. Upon administration the remedy transforms into an aromatic gas which is denser, hence more powerful, than the noxious gas. This enables the therapeutic air to displace the pathogenic air. A cure is achieved after both gases have left the body, returning the patient to an inodorous state. This study presents physical, cultural and ideational data as they relate to health, disease and herbal medicine among the Warao. The status and role of the female herbalist are described. Warao herbal curers make use of more than 100 plant species from which they prepare 259 remedies. The collecting and processing of materia medica conform to a meticulous protocol which is transmitted from mother to daughter through informal methods of training. Treatment of 'symptom-oriented' diseases is effected through the administration of ablutants, ingestants and/or inhalants. While practicing medicine in a nonritual way Warao herbalists are nevertheless directly aligned with the Mother of the Forest.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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Despite their many endeavors, sociologists have yet to systematically analyze the significance of olfactory phenomena in human interaction. In this essay, theauthors explore the social definitions of individuals, groups, and settings in terms of odors; and it is suggested that interpersonal and group relationships are at least partially contingent upon those definitions. More specifically, moral status, stereotypes, patterns of avoidance and attraction, and impression management techniques are examined in terms of odors.
A Good Snob Nowadays Is Hard to Find
  • Morrow Lance
Heaven's Scent: The Odour of Sanctity in Christian Tradition
  • Classen Constance
The Odour of the Rose: Floral Symbolism and the Olfactory Decline of the West. Paper presented at the Religion/Theology Colloquy Queen's University
  • Classen Constance