David Howes's sweeping history of the senses in the disciplines of anthropology and psychology and in the field of law lays the foundations for a sensational jurisprudence, or a way to do justice to and by the senses of other people. In part 1, Howes demonstrates how sensory ethnography has yielded alternative insights into how the senses function and argues convincingly that each culture should be approached on its own sensory terms. Part 2 documents how the senses have been disciplined psychologically within the Western tradition, starting with Aristotle and moving through the rise of Lockean empiricism and cognitive neuroscience. Here, Howes presents an anthropologically informed critique of experimental and cognitive psychology, sensory science, and phenomenology. In part 3, he introduces the paradigm of the "historical anthropology of the senses and sensation" and applies it to the analysis of trade relations between Europe and China in the early modern period, to the treaty-making process in North America during the colonial period, and to all the unresolved disputes over land rights and Indigenous sovereignty that continue to this day, arguing that these differences are rooted in a cultural clash of sensoria. Designed for the classroom, Sensorial Investigations displays an expansive critical engagement with generations of scholarship. It is essential reading for students and scholars of the history and anthropology of the senses, the psychology of sensation, and socio-legal studies.
David Howes is Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at McGill University. His most recent publications include A Cultural History of the Senses in the Modern Age, 1920 -2000 and The Sensory Studies Manifesto.
"Sensorial Investigations is a timely, exciting, and vitally important contribution to the interdisciplinary field of sensory studies, especially sensory anthropology and sensory history. Erudite and wide-ranging in scholarship, it is inventive in its argument and written in lively, engrossing prose by a leading light in the field." -Peter Denney, coeditor of Transcultural Ecocriticism: Global, Romantic and Decolonial Perspectives "Sublime and magisterial, Sensorial Investigations is a critical assemblage and rereading of Wittgenstein, Arendt, Simmel, and many others. At once provocative, accessible, and poignant, Howes deftly charts the intellectual trajectory of the senses anew and pronounces nuanced and interdisciplinary approaches that both make and unmake the senses. A must-read for researchers and students of sensory inquiry." -Kelvin E. Y. Low, author of Remembering the Samsui Women: Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China
