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- Convenors:
-
Rajko Mursic
(University of Ljubljana)
Juhana Venalainen (University of Eastern Finland)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/017
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel invites presentations to discuss topics of hope and transformations from (multi)sensory anthropology by paying attention to more-than-individual aspects of sensing and sense-making. We invite empirical, theoretical or methodological contributions, experimental and artistic approaches.
Long Abstract:
What can shared sensory experiences tell us about socio-cultural transformations, or how they can take part in enacting these changes? How can we commonly sense the moments of hope and together make sense of them?
Particularly, we encourage the panelists to delve into the topic through the perspective of the sensory commons. By this notion, we refer to the efforts of studying the sensory relations beyond the individual experience – for example, as relational processes, overlapping biographies, or historically emerging, technologically mediated sensibilities. By the focus on “common sensing” and shared sensory tonalities, we stress the ways in which the sensory experiences of an individual are inescapably interconnected to other lives coexisting in the same space and at the same time, and even to the ways in which the allegedly personal and private faculties of sensing can be understood as ephemeral outcomes of collective sense-making. The approach can highlight social and cultural practices that implicitly or explicitly challenges the individualist accounts of making sense, and rather to investigate how shared sensescapes are being “commoned”, that is, how they are continuously produced and reproduced in complex, site-specific arrangements.
The papers may discuss, for example:
Sensing beyond the individual experience
Sensing as a mode of subjectivation
Sensing as "commoning"
Common and contested spaces of hope and transformation
Inclusion, exclusion, and sensory conflicts
Technologically transforming sensescapes
Urban experience and sensory memories
Natural environments as sensory commons
Art practices and common sensescapes
Music events as sensory commons
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Light meal (qingshi) is a fashion food in contemporary China. Despite medical authorities' debunk, it is believed to bear transformative effects to make busy urban residents healthier. In-depth 1-on-1 interviews reveal commoned sensory experience as the key to the widely perceived healthy effects.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 2010s, the light meal (轻食) has gained surging popularity in Chinese cities with social media promotions. Without an official definition, it is described generally as nice-looking, simply seasoned, and time-efficient food promoting healthiness and weight loss. Although professional dieticians and nutritionists have been accusing its exaggerated advertisement, it is still cherished by many young adults who describe the light meal eating experience as transformative: keeping the 'sub-healthy (亚健康)' urban residents healthier. Sub-healthiness, widely accepted in China, states that most people are neither completely healthy nor really sick, but somewhere in between and in need of care to avoid slipping into sickness.
28 individual interviews with these light meal eaters, recruited in Beijing, highlight 'commoned' sensory experiences to be the key to such transformative effects. Light meals are collectively framed by eaters and promoters as closely tied to the habitus of aspiring young adults, the predominant Asian beauty standards favouring slim body shapes, the socio-historical contexts of rapid urbanization, and the emerging neoliberalist awareness of self-care. They thereby foster shared visceral feelings of being lighter (mentally and physically), more refreshed, closer to nature, and healthier during or after eating light meals.
Yet, such sensory experiences are contested and constantly reshaped: while they are beyond individuals, individuals can still interpret their own feelings, which would in turn feed back into the commoned sensescapes. Biomedical hegemony is simultaneously rejecting, negating, yet contributing to, and consolidating the collective sense-making.
Paper short abstract:
In Hiberno-English, "craic" refers to social buzz that emerges from performances of Irish traditional music. These ensembles model how juxtapositions of humans, animals, materials, and forces can foster collective sensations, commemorations, and new reckonings of relations across social divides.
Paper long abstract:
In Hiberno-English, "craic" refers to social buzz and happenings, especially as these emerge from public performances of Irish traditional music. This paper uses these ensembles to model how certain juxtapositions of humans, animals, materials, and spatial settings can afford possibilities for transformative reckonings of social relations and new frameworks of belonging.
Inishbofin is a small island off the west coast of Ireland. From the mid-20th century, the island's traditional agricultural and fishing economy has transitioned to greater reliance on seasonal tourism. Inishbofin's heritage resources feature significantly in the tourist trade, which relies upon annual extended stays by return visitors who feel a since of home on the island. Since 2012, I have undertaken extended participant observation of practices that involve interactions between islanders and tourists, including traditional music performances, archaeological walking tours, and farming tasks. I argue that these forums of interaction can promote new reckonings of relationships by evoking the past, engaging other-than-human forces, and cultivating intense and memorable collective sensations.
Musical performance, walking tours, and farming tasks, viewed as ensembles, can be seen as gambits for resonance, for shared sensory experiences that foster perceptions of belonging or trust. These gambits may succeed or fail, as participants - whether human or animal - may resist interactions or misconstrue others' expectations. I suggest that the viability of both Inishbofin's tourist trade and pastoral economy relies upon islanders' capacity to orchestrate collective sensations through carefully staged, but spontaneously executed interactions of humans, substances, animals, and landscape.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on sonic experiences in Germany and Australia, as well as mythologies attached to them, this paper argues for eco-acoustic means through which to (re)imagine the good life (buen vivir) beyond late liberal political and economic interests.
Paper long abstract:
In 2015, Marrugeku, a dance company from the Kimberley region in Northwest Australia, performed Cut the Sky in Ludwigshafen (Germany). The piece mixes contemporary and traditional dance with live music and Dreaming stories to tell about heated conflicts between resource extraction and Indigenous heritage preservation. A couple of days after their performance, I went on a walk with Edwin Lee Mulligan, the storyteller on whose poems Cut the Sky is based, and Bruce Goring, the then managing director of Marrugeku to speak about their work. In 2017, Bruce, Edwin and I went to Noonkanbah (Australia), the Indigenous site that inspired Cut the Sky. Drawing on the sonic experiences in these different places, as well as mythologies attached to them, the paper argues for eco-acoustic means through which to (re)imagine the good life (buen vivir) beyond late liberal political and economic interests. I propose the method of ‘listening care-fully’ as a tool to carry the post-growth paradigm into a wider public, via school curricula, art projects and sound installations. ‘Listening care-fully’ enables people to take part in enacting change, in commonly sensing hope and togetherness - a sensory commons of human and more-than-human actors. Through ‘thick-description’ of our shared eco-acoustic experiences of place, I argue that listening care-fully provides access to alternative scenarios to structure society, technology and politics in accordance to contemporary needs, reshaping attitudes and behaviours towards sufficiency as a leading principle to meet future challenges.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to investigate how the design of multisensory experience within performative walks provides an alternative to retell and reinterpret the city's past. It is based on ethnographic research on guided walks during the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is particularly interested in the new form of guided walking tours dedicated to the history of Kraków Jews. Guided walks are a popular activity of both tourists and Kraków residents. Performative walks have been organized since 2018 as part of the largest Jewish Cultural Festival in Europe. The innovative approach and participatory role of the attendees allow one to experience the city's past rather than gain knowledge about it.
Drawing upon ethnographic research, the following questions will be raised: How do artists design a multisensory experience to evoke shared emotions? And in what ways do these emotions reflect the younger generation's conceptualizations of the city's past and heritage? By mixing fact and fiction, the authors of the walks have developed a new mode of retelling the past. During the events, space mediated through the senses expresses the loss and nostalgia for the multi-ethnic society before World War II. Furthermore, these notions are shared with the participants of the guided walk.
From an anthropological perspective, the investigation of the guided walk goes beyond knowledge transfer to embrace an embodied experience in space. Using a theoretical framework of Memory Studies and Critical Heritage Studies, the guided walk is captured as a phenomenon that co-creates the cityscape of imagined pasts of Kraków Jewish communities.