Paper short abstract:

This paper explores challenges and possibilities of being sensory engaged with the research participants’ everyday situation as a method to understand the aesthetic aspects invovled when values and institutional practices of the wider society is expressed in human everyday practices and experiences.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents and discuss methodological challenges stemming from empirical research on older persons receiving home modification in Sweden, which addresses a situation where the intimate sphere of the home in a very concrete way - through an object brought in by the official service system - is connected to a specific cultural, political and historical context. In accordance with a body of recent literature on the anthropology of the senses and sensory ethnography I argue that approaching sensory experiences is key to understand how values and institutional practices of the wider society is expressed in human everyday practices and experiences. The ethnographic data illustrated how older persons expressed experiences of using and/or living with home modifications in terms such as ugly, dirty, loud, nice or pleasant. I understood this to indicate aesthetic evaluations of how the informants perceived the look, smell, sound and texture generated when they used the home modification. Further, those expressions implied a moral dimension in that they evaluated what was good and bad about the situation. This data was generated through the research participants invitations for me to engage with their their sensory experiences and moral judgements by looking, touchin, smelling and listening to how they used the modification. This paper adresses challenges and possibilities of being sensory engaged with the research participnats everyday situation as a method to understand the morals and/or aesthetic aspects invovled when values and institutional practices of the wider society is expressed in human everyday practices and experiences.