Sensory Formations shows how the 'sensual revolution' has supplanted both the linguistic and the pictorial turns in the human sciences to generate a new field – sensual culture, where all manner of disciplines converge. Its objective is to enhance our understanding of the role of the senses in history, culture and aesthetics, by redressing an imbalance: the hegemony of vision and privileging of discourse in contemporary theory and cultural studies must be overthrown in order to reveal the role all senses play in mediating cultural experience.
Edited
By David Howes
December 01, 2004
With groundbreaking contributions by Marshall McLuhan, Oliver Sacks, Italo Calvino and Alain Corbin, among others, Empire of the Senses overturns linguistic and textual models of interpretation and places sensory experience at the forefront of cultural analysis. The senses are gateways of knowledge...
Edited
By Michael Bull, Les Back
November 19, 2015
The first edition of The Auditory Culture Reader offered an introduction to both classical and recent work on auditory culture, laying the foundations for new academic research in sound studies. Today, interest and research on sound thrives across disciplines such as music, anthropology, geography,...
Edited
By David Howes
October 01, 2009
What is the sixth sense? Is it physical, mental or spiritual? Do we all possess it or is it unique to exceptional individuals? Might there be a seventh sense and an eighth sense as well? What role does culture play in determining the range of our perceptual abilities? The search for a supplementary...
Edited
By Elizabeth Edwards, Kaushik Bhaumik
November 01, 2008
Vision is more than looking or seeing. It is integral to all human action. Visual Sense presents a series of readings which offer a range of alternatives to conventional psychological and social scientific approaches to the study of the ocular. The book highlights the multitude of ways in which ...
Edited
By Jim Drobnick
May 01, 2006
Smell is fundamental to experience but mired in paradox. Stigmatized as animalistic, it nonetheless feeds a vast fragrance and marketing industry. Considered ephemeral, scents have survived throughout the ages in a number of religious practices. The Smell Culture Reader provides a much-needed ...
Edited
By Constance Classen
July 01, 2005
This book puts a finger on the nerve of culture by delving into the social life of touch, our most elusive yet most vital sense. From the tortures of the Inquisition to the corporeal comforts of modernity, and from the tactile therapies of Asian medicine to the virtual tactility of cyberspace, The ...