La perception sauvage. Étude sur les ordres sensoriels des enfants " sauvages "

La perception sauvageÉtude sur les ordres sensoriels des enfants " sauvages "Cet essai se veut une étude de trois cas classiques d'enfants " sauvages " : l'enfant sauvage de l'Aveyron, les enfants-loups de l'Inde et Kaspar Hauser. Ces cas sont examinés pour ce qu'ils peuvent nous apporter sur les ordres sensoriels, ou modes de perception, de tels enfants. On a constaté que chaque enfant connaît un ordre sensoriel particulier, lequel semble avoir été déterminé par son environnement. Une fois ramené à la société, l'enfant se voit contraint de former ses sensations au régime sensoriel de la culture dominante. Ces trois récits démontrent les différentes façons selon lesquelles les sensations peuvent être ordonnées, à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur de la culture. Ils laissent aussi entrevoir à quel point la société détermine ce que l'on perçoit et la manière dont on le perçoit.The Savage SensoriumA Study of thé Sensory Orders of " Wild " ChildrenThis essay is a study of three classic cases of " wild " children : the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the Wolf Children of India, and Kaspar Hauser. The cases are examined for what they can tell us about the sensory order, or mode of perceiving, of such individuals. It is found that ail of the children have different sensory orders, and that these appear to have been shaped by the environments in which they lived. Once they are brought into society, they are pressured to bring their sensations into conformity with the sensory regime of the dominant culture. The three accounts draw attention to the différent ways in which the senses can be ordered, inside and outside of culture, and the extent to which society directs what and how we perceive

L'arôme de la marchandise. La commercialisation de l'olfactif

L'arôme de la marchandiseLa commercialisation de l'olfactifCet article montre comment la relation qu'entretiennent les Nord-Américains avec leur corps se fait maintenant par l'entremise de divers articles de toilette (savon, déodorant, rince-bouche) qui offrent au consommateur une protection contre le rejet social en éliminant ou en supprimant les odeurs corporelles indésirables. Les auteurs y relatent la petite histoire du marketing de ces produits et présentent un échantillonnage des identités olfactives idéales qui s'offrent aujourd'hui au consommateur avide de parfums ou d'eaux de toilette. Ils font ensuite état de l'utilisation croissante des fragrances pour augmenter l'intérêt du consommateur à l'égard de divers produits manufacturés en raffinant leur « aura ». Cet article se termine par une brève étude de la façon dont un régime de valeurs unique, américanisé, se répand maintenant à la grandeur de la planète, sans toutefois négliger le fait que ce régime est en voie de transformation et qu'il est parfois confronté à la résistance qu'opposent diverses traditions locales.The Aroma of the Commodity The Commercialization of SmellThis essay traces how the relationship of North Americans to their bodies has come to be mediated by various toiletry products (soap, déodorant, mouthwash) which promise to shield the consumer subject from social rejection by eliminating or suppressing unwanted body odours. The authors go on to describe the history and analyze the range of ideal olfactory identities currently available for adoption by the consumer subject through the purchase of perfumes or colognes. There follows a discussion of the growing use of scents to enhance the consumer appeal or " aura " of manufactured products. The article concludes with a brief examination of how a single, American-style regime of olfactory values is spreading around the world, but also shows how this regime is undergoing changes and has encountered résistance in various quarters

"Now he walks and walks, as if he didn't have a home where he could eat": food, healing, and hunger in Quechua narratives of madness

In the Quechua-speaking peasant communities of southern Peru, mental disorder is understood less as individualized pathology and more as a disturbance in family and social relationships. For many Andeans, food and feeding are ontologically fundamental to such relationships. This paper uses data from interviews and participant observation in a rural province of Cuzco to explore the significance of food and hunger in local discussions of madness. Carers’ narratives, explanatory models, and theories of healing all draw heavily from idioms of food sharing and consumption in making sense of affliction, and these concepts structure understandings of madness that differ significantly from those assumed by formal mental health services. Greater awareness of the salience of these themes could strengthen the input of psychiatric and psychological care with this population and enhance knowledge of the alternative treatments that they use. Moreover, this case provides lessons for the global mental health movement on the importance of openness to the ways in which indigenous cultures may construct health, madness, and sociality. Such local meanings should be considered by mental health workers delivering services in order to provide care that can adjust to the alternative ontologies of sufferers and carers

Taking into account sensory knowledge: the case of geo-techologies for children with visual impairments

This paper argues for designing geo-technologies supporting non-visual sensory knowledge. Sensory knowledge refers to the implicit and explicit knowledge guiding our uses of our senses to understand the world. To support our argument, we build on an 18 months field-study on geography classes for primary school children with visual impairments. Our findings show (1) a paradox in the use of non-visual sensory knowledge: described as fundamental to the geography curriculum, it is mostly kept out of school; (2) that accessible geo-technologies in the literature mainly focus on substituting vision with another modality, rather than enabling teachers to build on children's experiences; (3) the importance of the hearing sense in learning about space. We then introduce a probe, a wrist-worn device enabling children to record audio cues during field-trips. By giving importance to children's hearing skills, it modified existing practices and actors' opinions on non-visual sensory knowledge. We conclude by reflecting on design implications, and the role of technologies in valuing diverse ways of understanding the world

“Feeling for Beauty”

May Morris (1862–1938), renowned craftswoman and daughter of William Morris, had an unconventional Victorian childhood in a home where all the members of the family were engaged in various forms of aesthetic labor, either as amateurs or professionals, and shared an aesthetic philosophy that blended the artisanal and the experimental from which would develop the Arts and Crafts movement. This article will examine the fragmentary recollections of her childhood recorded by May Morris in the introductions she wrote for the twenty-four-volume edition of The Collected Works of William Morris as a rich resource for Victorian sensory history because of the emphasis she places on the development of the child's sensorium, especially in relation to touch as the vital sense that linked family intimacy with creative activity. Employing the term “tactile aesthetics,” I show how, in the Morris household, the pleasurable sensual apprehension of the objects or materials worked by the hands of the craftsperson was inseparable from the complex feelings of connection with others. In such an environment, a feeling for beauty comprised a vital component of habitus, the embodied knowledges and aptitudes that, according to Pierre Bourdieu, are acquired from earliest childhood through the practices of everyday life within a specific social setting

“Feeling for Beauty”

May Morris (1862–1938), renowned craftswoman and daughter of William Morris, had an unconventional Victorian childhood in a home where all the members of the family were engaged in various forms of aesthetic labor, either as amateurs or professionals, and shared an aesthetic philosophy that blended the artisanal and the experimental from which would develop the Arts and Crafts movement. This article will examine the fragmentary recollections of her childhood recorded by May Morris in the introductions she wrote for the twenty-four-volume edition of The Collected Works of William Morris as a rich resource for Victorian sensory history because of the emphasis she places on the development of the child's sensorium, especially in relation to touch as the vital sense that linked family intimacy with creative activity. Employing the term “tactile aesthetics,” I show how, in the Morris household, the pleasurable sensual apprehension of the objects or materials worked by the hands of the craftsperson was inseparable from the complex feelings of connection with others. In such an environment, a feeling for beauty comprised a vital component of habitus, the embodied knowledges and aptitudes that, according to Pierre Bourdieu, are acquired from earliest childhood through the practices of everyday life within a specific social setting

Embodied viewing and Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: a multi-disciplinary experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture

This paper presents a cross-disciplinary project based on an experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture (Sainsbury’s Centre for Visual Arts), which aimed to study viewers’ movements around an iconic sculpture: Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The experiment studies how viewers respond to this three-dimensional artwork not only by looking at it but also through their own bodily reactions to it, such as by unconsciously mimicking a represented attitude or gesture. We compared two groups of viewers: classically trained dancers and non-dancers. Our hypothesis was that the skills and embodied experiences of the dancers would alter the ways in which they engage bodily with the work compared to the non-dancers. Our underlying research question was: how are vision and the body interlinked in esthetic and kinesthetic experience? This paper does not give results, which are forthcoming. It focuses on methodology and provides a commentary on the design and development of the interdisciplinary collaboration behind the project. It explores an interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges the humanities and experimental sciences and asks how being confronted with unfamiliar methodologies forces researchers in a given field to critically self-examine the limits and presuppositions of their practices

O "CC" e a patologização do natural: higiene, publicidade e modernização no Brasil do pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial

The aim of this article is to discuss the relationship between consumption and changing habits through new industrial products related to health and hygiene, which were announced as the possibility of replacing the natural odor and industrialized by artificial smell. This would represent the cultural transformation of natural physiological functions, such as sweat, something unwholesome and socially repugnant and also a synonym for backwardness. The ideal of a hygienic, modern and deodorized find life in the media and advertising - in the modernization and expansion process in the Brazil post-II World War the privileged space for the placement and supply of new and abundant products that promised to cancel the threat of "body odor" - "BO" and replace it, by the "smell good", hygienic and socially enjoyable that could be bought.O objetivo do artigo é discutir a relação entre consumo e mudança de hábitos por meio de novos produtos industrializados relacionados à saúde e à higiene, que foram anunciados como capazes de substituir o odor natural pelo cheiro artificial e industrializado. Sugerimos que foi um processo social e cultural de transformação de funções fisiológicas naturais, como o suor e o mau hálito, em algo nocivo à saúde e repugnante socialmente e também em um sinônimo de atraso. O ideal de uma vida higiênica, moderna e desodorizada encontrou na imprensa e na publicidade - em processo de modernização e expansão no Brasil após a Segunda Guerra Mundial - o espaço privilegiado para a veiculação e oferta de novos e abundantes produtos que prometiam cancelar a ameaça do "cheiro de corpo", o "CC", e substituí-lo pelo "cheiro bom", salubre e socialmente aceitável que poderia, inclusive, ser comprado