The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses
- ISBN-10
- 0802059023
- ISBN-13
- 9780802059024
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1991
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Author
- David Howes
Description
Western societies are overwhelmingly dependent on visual and verbal faculties for their experience of the world. But different societies use and combine the senses in different ways and to different ends. What is the world like to a culture that take actuality in less visual, more gustatory or tactile, auditory or olfactory terms than those to which we are accustomed? What is the impact of other "sensory ratios" on the life of the mind and the emotions? What is the relation of the hierarchy of the senses to social hierarchy, or relations between the sexes? The essays in this collection address these questions, and open up many new directions for research, by breaking with the visualism and verbocentrism of the sensually limited approaches of traditional anthropology, and by focusing on the interplay of all the senses. Among the topics explored are the visual politics of the "tourist gaze" ; matters of taste on an Indonesian island ; the use of incense in a Moroccan "ritual of silent wishes" ; the social structuring of sound and emotion in a New Guinea society ; the power of touch in a traditional South Indian medical system ; the contrasting sensory orders of the cultures of the Andes and the Amazon ; and the history of the senses in Western philosophy. The concluding chapter offers a holistic paradigm for sensing and making sense of other cultures. The book is ideal both for guiding research in the field and for orienting discussion in the classroom.
