SOCY1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences
Week 7: Sense of Smell
There are ways to thinking about embodiment:
Mind and body dualism:
The body is a vessel for who you are, which is the mind.
Sociologists reject this idea, saying that we don’t ‘have’ bodies, we are
bodies.
Who we are is constituted through our physicality, our human being. We
are metabolic, corporal beings.
Your body experiences always inform who you are in the world.
Bodies matter in 2 interrelated ways:
1. Bodies matter as a way to mediate the world and the sensory
experiences through our corporal being
2. Bodies matter through categorisation, we categorise and group
bodies to make sense of the groupings
The body is critical in the process of living and socialisation, as we are
constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli and it is through our body we
can give meaning to these stimuli.
Readings: Microprocesses of social experiences and how they take place in the
environment
The first article is about sensory experiences of smell. Their larger point is that smell has
moral meaning, what we designate as smelling good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, is
always going to be socially and contextually contingent; and because of this, we manage
smells in our own person and in our surroundings that represent us
Moral & Contextually Contingent
As a sense, smell is especially moral because it is shared; to emit a scent
interpreted as unpleasant is offensive, culturally speaking. Every scent has a
distinct moral quality, due to which scent comes with rules. These rules hinge on
intensity in context. Smells aren’t just good or bad, it is always dependant on
situations.
It’s not just our bodies, but also our space and surroundings which we want to
smell acceptably.
We learn social of what smell is good or bad, and attach mediations to
our judgements. E.g. the smell of a human body in the world doesn’t necessarily
smell bad, but as a culture we have developed a norm around deodorants
and perfume, thus we mask the smell of the human body as an agreed upon norm
so despite how it intrinsically doesn't smell bad, we have decided that it does.
The cultural level of what smell is unacceptable/acceptable is learnt through
socialisation. E.g. we are offended by those who do not adhere to these norms.
Not only these things are social decided, but also by our personal biography. Our
personal experiences can often shape how we come to interpret
Document Summary
The body is a vessel for who you are, which is the mind. Sociologists reject this idea, saying that we don"t have" bodies, we are bodies. Who we are is constituted through our physicality, our human being. Your body experiences always inform who you are in the world. Bodies matter in 2 interrelated ways: bodies matter as a way to mediate the world and the sensory experiences through our corporal being, bodies matter through categorisation, we categorise and group bodies to make sense of the groupings. The body is critical in the process of living and socialisation, as we are constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli and it is through our body we can give meaning to these stimuli. Readings: microprocesses of social experiences and how they take place in the environment. The rst article is about sensory experiences of smell.
