Senses

Rather than physical channels conveying information about the external world to the internal system of the individual mind, the senses are skills for embodied action and “avenues for the transmission of cultural values” (Classen 1997, 401). Studying the senses in culture and consumer culture requires abandoning the former, more common perspective, and embracing the latter. An understanding of the senses as active and reflexive modes of sensory communication (e.g., Finnegan 2002) is at the very core of what some have begun to call a sensual turn in the social sciences. Such sensual turn is marked by the following fundamental characteristics: (1) perception is shaped by cultural dynamics; (2) ideas on how many senses exist and which modes of embodied communication can be called a “sense” are deeply shaped by contextual factors such as language, culture, and history; (3) different societies place varying degrees of emphasis on the importance of certain senses, privileging some and undervaluing others; and (4) divisions such as those between the internal world of the individual person and the external world of objects and other people, or the division between body and mind, between cognition and sensation, and between behavior and perception, are but elements of an obsolete dualist understanding of the world that an embodied and sensual turn rejects.

The driving force behind the growth of a sensual revolution is of anthropological origin. Since the early 1990s with the publication of The Varieties of Sensory Experience, a book edited by David Howes, a growing number of anthropologists have begun to focus their empirical and conceptual attention on the meanings and the practices connected to different sensations and sensory faculties. Throughout the late 1990s and especially after the turn of the twenty-first century, anthropologists of the senses have been joined by other scholars such as sociologists, social and cultural theorists, philosophers, and communication and cultural studies specialists. Recently, even business writers, such as Martin Lindstrom, have discovered the potential of exploiting the human senses for the sake of building powerful brands and crafting appetizing consumer products and services. Together, these scholars have learned to examine how “sensory meanings and values form the sensory model espoused by a society, according to which the members of that society ‘make sense’ of the world, or translate sensory perceptions and concepts into a particular ‘worldview’” (Classen 1997, 402).

One of the most common findings of postsensual turn research on the senses is that of the dominance of sight in Western culture and society. Sight is believed to be the most dominant sense not only because of the importance placed on the uses of visual sensations—think, for example, of acts such as reading the written word, identifying persons through photographs, relying on images to sell and entertain, eye-witnessing to secure justice, and so forth—but also because of the deep reliance of Western languages on visual metaphors. To see is to believe, to understand, to empathize. To frame is to contextualize, to take a look is to examine and assess, to observe is to ponder and reflect, and so on. Such dominance has not only resulted in the elevation of visuality as the fundamental mode of experience, but also in the relegation of most other senses to a secondary or even absent role. Touch, for instance, is often associated with carnality, with contamination, with violations of privacy, and voracity. Smell is regularly linked to disease, putrefaction, danger, and the realm of the animal. And taste, while appreciated by the connoisseur of flavors, is seen as merely subjective, unscientific, and unpredictable. Other senses—such as balance, thermoception, proprioception, and nociception—generally are not even deigned as important. Let us take some space to outline the relevance of all of the senses in the context of consumer culture, beginning with the least explored senses.

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