Appendix 1.1
On the Enculturation of Perception
David Howes
Perception is a matter of cultural practice, not just physiology, nor simply the psychology of the individual (e.g., Ingold, 2000) for that matter. This point cannot be stressed too strongly. Constance Classen states it best in “Foundations for an anthropology of the senses,” where she writes:
when we examine the meanings vested in different sensory faculties and sensations across cultures, we find a cornucopia of potent sensory symbolism. Sight may be linked to reason or to witchcraft, taste may be used as a metaphor for aesthetic discrimination or for sexual experience, an odour may signify sanctity or sin, political power or social exclusion. Together, these sensory meanings and values form the sensory model espoused by a society, according to which the members of that society ‘make sense’ of the world …. There will likely be challenges to this model from within the society, persons and groups who differ on certain sensory values [and practices], yet this model will provide the basic perceptual paradigm to be followed or resisted (Classen, 1997: 402).
Classen develops the concept of the sensory model further in her chapter on “McLuhan in the rainforest” (2005) in Empire of the Senses. There she presents three case studies, or études sensorielles: the thermal cosmology of the Tzotzil, the olfactory ontology of the Ongee, and the synaesthetic cosmology of the Deasana (inspired by the ritual ingestion of a hallucinogen, ayahuasca). The prioritization of thermoception (Tztotzil), olfaction (Ongee) and “vision” in the expanded, synaesthetic sense (Desana) has a concatenating effect: for example, colours are distinguished and classified by reference to their temperature among the Tzotzil, while among the Desana:
Colors constitute a primary set of energies … a secondary set is formed by odor, temperature and flavor. Odor is thought to be the result of the combination of color and temperature and is used by the Desana to classify people, animals and plants. Flavor, thought to arise from odor, is less important than the latter but still culturally elaborated. For example, different flavors are associated with different kin groups and used to regulate marriage (Classen 2005: 158)
The sense of the senses – or sensing – in a given cultural tradition also has implications for the construction of the sense of self (Gearin and Sáez, 2021). For these reasons, it is essential to take a dynamic, cross-cultural and relational approach to the study of the sensorium: the senses are not so many silos; rather, they form an “operational complex” (Ong, 1991). This is given in the notion of intersensoriality, which refers to “how the relations among the senses between the senses, and the correspondence or conflicts amongst their deliverances (colours, sounds, perfumes, etc.) are constituted differently in different societies and epochs” (Howes 2022a: 11). The senses are “relationally produced” (Dawkins and Loftus, 2013) after the manner of a fugue, to use a musical analogy, or as suggested by the contrapuntalism/kalleidoscopism of the lines in the medallions of “The Collideroscope Series” by Erik Adigard (see PLATE 1.2).