Senses as Mobile Actants: Sketching Conceptual and Comparative Possibilities

The senses and their concomitant practices have historically and contemporaneously traversed borders and boundaries and in effect, acquire different meanings. Sensory modalities and ways of knowing become reconfigured as a result of cross-cultural sensory encounters in everyday life. Drawing from co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills) Vol. 64; no. 10; pp. 1430 - 1443
Main Authors Low, Kelvin E.Y., Abdullah, Noorman
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.09.2020
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Borders
Boundaries
Colonialism
Cultural differences
Ethnography
Everyday life
Meaning
Mobility
Senses
Sensory perception
Sociocultural factors
actants
mobility
temporalities
senses
borders
movement
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Summary:The senses and their concomitant practices have historically and contemporaneously traversed borders and boundaries and in effect, acquire different meanings. Sensory modalities and ways of knowing become reconfigured as a result of cross-cultural sensory encounters in everyday life. Drawing from colonial and contemporary ethnographic encounters in Singapore, we make a case to extend sociocultural analyses of the character of the sensory—in particular, sound and smell—to consider its agentic potential to permeate and traverse boundaries. We employ the sensory as a lens to capture intimations of connectedness and disconnectedness; and to more broadly unravel alternative and comparative understandings of mobility and movement through time and space.
ISSN:0002-7642
1552-3381
DOI:10.1177/0002764220947781