During a busy week of work, family and school related activities, Pink\u2019s book \u201cDoing Sensory Ethnography\u201d was an insightful read. The adage, \u201cDon\u2019t judge a book by its cover!\u201d did not stand a chance because from the onset. I was immediately impressed by the green, red, coffee brown, pink, ice cream picture on the front cover and the lips in the extreme upper left corner. What great aesthetics!<\/p>\n
The reading had already solicited sensory visual appetite which would soon be confronted by one argument in the book which suggested:<\/p>\n
\u2026that the assumption that vision is necessarily a dominant and objectifying sense is incorrect.\u201d Why one might inquirer? The \u201c\u2026.assumption was brought about because instead of asking, \u2018How do we see the environment around us? \u2026.instead philosophical critics of visualism\u2019 presuppose that \u2018to see is to reduce the environment to objects that are to be grasped and appropriated as representations in the mind. [1]<\/a><\/p>\n I wondered as to whether this might explain why some people might ask for permission to look at an item while reaching out to touch or feel it at the same even when she or his visual ability is intact.<\/p>\n For some people, seeing is believing, indeed and perhaps many are eventually led to the expansive notion of \u201cskilled visions\u201d[2]<\/a>; which Pink describes as \u201cembedded in multi-sensory practices, where look is coordinated with skilled movement, with rapidly changing points of view, or with other senses such s touch.\u201d[3]<\/a> All the above effects are brought to bear by the presence of ethnographers. It is clear from the material that sensory ethnography applies to a wide variety of contexts in which its practice can yield a vast array of research data. However, ethnographers seem to play a major role in influencing the outcomes of the subject at hand. Pink points out that \u201cearlier sensory ethnographies focused almost exclusively on cultures that were strictly different from that where the ethnographer had originated.\u201d[4]<\/a> This has direct implication for the kind of images that emerge and photographers who venture to into cross-culture ethnography need to have a certain degree of cultural intelligence, if they are visiting a host culture on a short-term basis.<\/p>\n I have worked with a number of relief organizations and imagery has been a key part on how short-term volunteers and staff have sought to narrate their experiences overseas. While a genuine photograph may tale a thousand words, I have often wondered to what extent most of the photos are manipulated and adulterated to shoot a particular interest even at the expense of people\u2019s snap realities.<\/p>\n In contrast, the author mentions:<\/p>\n Anthropological studies that attend to the senses have been done \u2018at home\u2019, or at least in modern western culture included a focus on everyday practices such as housework, laundry, and gardening, leisure practices such as walking and climbing, clinical work practices. \u201cSuch sensory ethnographies both attend to and interpret the experiential, individual, idiosyncratic and contextual nature of research participants\u2019 sensory practices and also seek to comprehend the culturally specific categories, conventions, moralities and knowledge that informs how people understand their experiences.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n Unlike the previous ethnographical focus on culture, a sensory approach provides a viewer with more opinions for human interaction. Firstly, his or her\u2019 \u201csensory impression\u2019 of another person invokes emotional or physical responses. Secondly, \u201csense impression becomes \u2018a route of knowledge of other\u201d.[6]<\/a> It was confirmatory for me to learn that sensory ethnography can positively shape the world of image. When a sensory ethnographic outlook towards culture along with other ethical principles guide the practice of photography, I wonder what impact such a disposition would produce. What would it mean for relief, humanitarian and mission\u2019s agencies to represent the \u201csensory learning of \u2018being there\u201d[7]<\/a> instead of the conventional methods aimed at shocking people with pictures of poverty and death from the \u201cthird world\u201d?<\/p>\n Pink introduces a reader to the many facets of the interconnected senses and sensory and I was intrigued by the idea of \u201cwalking with other\u201d[8]<\/a> as corrective and formidable points of view in ethnography.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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