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In my study, I deal with the anthropological aspects of perception in connection with a recent study by Katalin Sipőcz. Many people consider anthropology to be a science centred on vision and narration, which does not pay enough attention to the experiences of other senses. Sensual anthropology, which wants to reckon with this onesidedness, draws attention to the fact that in addition to the Western basic attitude that results in the ocular-centricity of anthropology, there are also other sensory/perception systems, the understanding of which can lead to a better understanding of the given societies. In connection with this problem, I review the experiences related to the perception of cold during my fieldwork among the Khantys in Western Siberia. The Khantys of Vasyugan express the temperature on the basis of different scales, expressing themselves with a specially understood Russian vocabulary. In addition to observing the thermometer and skin perception, cold and heat are also inferred with other sensory experiences, our perception is inherently synesthetic, which only we break down into separate senses and sensations. Different series of associations are connected to the cold, which may be radically different from our associations. Cold is a complex symbolic code for the Khantys of Vasyugan, which simultaneously means purity, freedom and activity, as well as peripherality. The inclusion of a wide range of perception in the research has serious consequences for the practice of anthropology and fieldwork as well. In order to understand the perception of other cultures, we must experience their sensory perception ourselves, or at least experience what they feel. In order to understand this, I interpret an entry in my field diary from 2001, with the help of which I came closer to understanding the cold, and thus the Khantys. But it must be clear that my personal experience influencing understanding is different from the experience of the Khantys, we can only really understand their perception if we get to know their stories as well. Anthropology therefore, despite its efforts to include as wide a range of perceptions as possible in its research, is still locked in the world of narration: it can only really understand the experiences of local people with the help of their texts about them, and it is best to convey its own - and other people's - experiences only in text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the stigma associated with cutaneous leishmaniasis, a vector-transmitted parasitic disease, focuses on aesthetic appearance affectation as the leading cause of stigmatisation. However, Indigenous populations in the hinterland of Amazonian Ecuador trigger stigma expressions by recognising (muco)cutaneous leishmaniasis, primarily through atypical smell, followed by the odd voice sound, appearance and taste. This empirical way of recognising symptoms relies on embodied forms of identifying a disease, contrasting the Western supremacy of visuality and demanding to be understood via multi-sensorial anthropology. Through ethnographic research and data retrieved from eighty-three semistructured interviews and fifteen focus groups in seven Ecuadorian ethnic groups – including six Indigenous groups in the Amazon region – this paper analyses how the sensorium is a health thermometer. Findings reveal that differentiated cultural responses to a sense of peril, contagion and social (self)rejection, understood as stigma expressions, are linked to the holistic approach to health (or well-being) shared by Indigenous populations. In forest societies, well-being is explained through successful (non-)human relationships, and disease permeates through bodies that lack balanced relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supported by an ethnography conducted between 2018 and 2019 with people —mainly from the Deaf Association of Cali— participating in a deaf community and culture in Cali, this article discusses the relevance of adapting the recording and investigative writing methods to the populations with whom we work. On the one hand, it explores ethnographic methodologies situated within broader discussions related to the anthropology of the senses, sensory ethnography, the problem of representation, the politics of transcription and the use of drawings as a methodological tool. On the other hand, this article gathers ethical reflections on consent, approach, sensitivity to the context, and the positioning assumed in the field, by choosing to position myself not only as an anthropologist or sociologist, but also as a hard of hearing woman. Thus, it is argued that a correct prior reading of the context of the population to be studied enables the construction of methodological and ethical designs that not only actively avoid reproducing denounced historical violence —such as epistemic violence—, but also provide entry points, readings, and analyses that prioritize local and personal experiences of existence, emerging categories, and the body as potential data to understand them. The article presents the ethical and methodological decisions involved in a study conducted from the perspective of an insider ethnographer, focusing on the social, political, and cultural aspects of Deafhood. It is precisely in the exploration of new intersectional and sensorially diverse perspectives that challenge the traditional ableist readings that this text intends to spark the debate on these collective identities that negotiate their existence within the framework of multiculturalism as a stage for the consolidation of enforceable rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most stereotyped minorities, the Roma are particularly 'good to think' in relation to constructions of Europeanness. In the production of 'Gypsiness', the body, the space, and the materiality of the dwelling are linked through smell as signifiers of a racial and cultural inferiority that does not 'belong' in and to Europe. Drawing on research projects carried out in the outskirts of Rome and in a small Romanian town, our contribution relies on a juxtaposed ethnography of constructions of 'Gypsiness' in relation to the spatial, sensorial and material inscriptions of the body. The article will examine the relationship between space and the social production of smell, discussing how spaces inhabited by Roma play a role in 'doing' Europeanness in a contrastive mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sensory experience of breathing, particularly the sensation of breathlessness in the case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is a rich though understudied topic in medical anthropology. Fieldwork in Uruguay made it clear to me that to study the sensorial experience of breathlessness, I would also have to study the widely shared cultural conceptualizations and practices surrounding air, breath, and health. In this article, I illustrate ethnographically how the experience of breathing and breathlessness is closely tied to perceptions of air outside the body – in particular humidity, temperature change, wind, and contamination. In conceptualizing breath as the mechanism and air the medium for environmental embodiment, I bring together sensorial medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, and the anthropology of wind and climate. My findings, in light of similar findings across contexts, suggest that a body transformed by COPD is hyperperceptive and hypersensitive to changes in air. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

RESUMEN En este artículo, abordo el saludo de mano en la zona costera de Kenia no sólo como una forma de acción social corporeizada sino también como una táctica cotidiana usada en la presentación de sí mismo, la evaluación de otros, y la negociación de relaciones interpersonales. Mirando más allá de la asunción que un apretón de manos es una simple actuación sujeta a la manipulación estratégica, llamo la atención hacia el significado del contacto corporal sentido con este gesto en orden a proponer que el significado es generado no solamente en los actos dicotómicos de ofrecer o rehusar un apretón de manos sino también en utilizar la tactilidad del gesto. En particular, argumento que mujeres en la zona costera de Kenia negocian los cambiantes entendimientos de heshima (respetabilidad), y las posiciones sociales a las cuales está atada, por medio de la manipulación de los detalles sensoriales del saludo de mano. Este artículo contribuye a las discusiones recientes en antropología sensorial mientras también provee una ilustración etnográfica de una teoría corporeizada de la interacción social. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spaces where humans, plants, and animals intermingle are rich junctures of mobility, sensuality, and impressions that together evoke a sense of place. Visual anthropology can help interpret these humaNature events-where dichotomies and divisions are blurred, and lived experiences of multispecies mingling are brought to the fore through emerging practices that apply experiential and experimental devices. Attending to emotional textures of intimacy, soundscapes of multiple species, and embodied, sensuous ways of knowing that do not privilege solely the agency of human actors, nor rely primarily on a linear narrative and didactic logic, the academic-artistic endeavor that I discuss in this article-and demonstrate in its accompanying short video, Senses of Silver River-is aimed at bringing feminist, decolonial ways of knowing the world to the forefront (cf. Collins; Harrison; Trinh). Toward this effort, I propose a methodological intervention that I call evocative ethnography, which favors a sensorial realm to explore, interpret, and share a sense of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mesoamerican Formative period (1600bce–ce250) saw the establishment of sedentism, dietary transformations and the development of ceramic technologies for subsistence, artistic representation and the region’s earliest preserved musical instruments. These instruments include aerophones such as whistles, ocarinas and flutes. In this paper, we describe sixty-three ceramic aerophones from mostly Formative period contexts in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. We situate our analysis in the broader contexts of research on music and iconography in Mesoamerican archaeology, as well as of the anthropology of sensory perception. Through a consideration of archaeological context, artifact form and technical properties, we conclude that music was used in a wide range of social settings and carried multivalent meanings in ancient coastal Oaxaca. Specifically, we argue that instruments acted in both public and private settings, and that the anthropomorphic and zoomorphic imagery they bear indicates complex social practices such as communication with revered ancestors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that empathy should be considered a multimodal process that not only involves perception, intellection, affect, and imagination but also the bodily and sensory aspects of lived experience. The problem of empathy in anthropological, philosophical, and therapeutic contexts is discussed and a phenomenological approach to empathic experience is advanced. An outline of local orientations to empathy on the island of Yap is provided. The place of pain, tactility, and empathy in the context of a local healer's therapeutic practice is detailed, and a series of specific therapeutic interactions are analyzed. It is argued that local moral orientations to suffering require the healer to rely on alternate modalities of empathic discernment in her attempts to gain access to what her patients are feeling and how their treatment is progressing through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article supports the call for the sensorially engaged anthropological study of healing modalities, popular health culture, dietary practices, drug foods and pharmaceuticals, and idioms of distress. Six concepts are of central importance to sensorial anthropology: embodiment, the mindful body, mimesis, local biology, somatic idioms of distress, and 'the work of culture'. Fieldwork in South and Southeast Asia and North America illustrates how cultural interpretations associate bodily sensations with passions (strong emotions) and anxiety states, and bodily communication about social relations. Lay interpretations of bodily sensations inform and are informed by local understanding of ethnophysiology, health, illness, and the way medicines act in the body. Bodily states are manipulated by the ingestion of substances ranging from drug foods (e.g., sources of caffeine, nicotine, dietary supplements) to pharmaceuticals that stimulate or suppress sensations concordant with cultural values, work demands, and health concerns. Social relations are articulated at the site of the body through somatic modes of attention that index bodily ways of knowing learned through socialization, bodily memories, and the ability to relate to how another is likely to be feeling in a particular context. Sensorial anthropology can contribute to the study of transformative healing and trajectories of healthcare seeking and patterns of referral in pluralistic healthcare arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]