Odorous childhoods and scent(ed) worlds of learning: A sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives in Western Europe (1900s-1960s)

This paper develops a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives which featured (non-)formal schooling, analyzing these as belonging to (a) scent(ed) and more generally sense(d) world(s) of learning. Working with photographs as sensory objects of affect, and using as examples Belgian and Luxembourg open-air schools and associated sanitary and social welfare provisions, the paper explores issues so far under-researched in sensuous scholarship internationally: those of precise educational purposes, methods, processes and effects of sensory engagement, particularly pertaining to “smell”. Sensory practices and experiences and uses of senses generally are thereby traced in/as “situated, embodied” movements inextricably “enmeshed” with symbolism. The paper argues that while the educational goals underpinning the initiatives investigated and the approaches and practices characterizing these have changed, some (un)intended effects still have an impact today, for instance through Forest School as given shape in the United Kingdom. The concept of “odorous”, or rather “sensuous childhoods”, is proposed to denote ways that particular target groups have come to be imagined as in need of explicitly sensorial health and outdoor education

The sensorium at work: the sensory phenomenology of the working body

The sociology of the body and the sociology of work and occupations have both neglected to some extent the study of the ‘working body’ in paid employment, particularly with regard to empirical research into the sensory aspects of working practices. This gap is perhaps surprising given how strongly the sensory dimension features in much of working life. This article is very much a first step in calling for a more phenomenological, embodied and ‘fleshy’ perspective on the body in employment, and examines some of the theoretical and conceptual resources available to researchers wishing to focus on the lived working-body experiences of the sensorium. We also consider some possible representational forms for a more evocative, phenomenologically-inspired portrayal of sensory, lived-working-body experiences, and offer suggestions for future avenues of research

Sensual, material, and technological understanding: exploring prehistoric soundscapes in south India

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest within archaeology in the non-visual senses, and particularly sound. To date, however, most studies have focused on the evidence for musical instruments and the acoustic properties of special structures and spaces, like monuments and caves. This study reports on further evidence for special musical activities at the prehistoric site of Sanganakallu-Kupgal in south India, but then also moves on to a discussion of the acoustic dimension of more mundane Neolithic technological and productive activities, like flint-knapping, axe-grinding, and crop production. It focuses on the evidence for links between such activities at Sanganakallu-Kupgal, based on shared material, gestural, and acoustic properties, and argues that the hammering of ringing rocks to make music was only one aspect of a wider Southern Neolithic cultural propensity to address technological and ritual requirements by applying stone against stone. The article attempts to bring to recent discussions of the senses an awareness of the materiality of sensory experience, which, despite recent interest in the body, remains marginalized in theoretical accounts