ABSTRACT

The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography reviews and expands the field and scope of sensory ethnography by fostering new links among sensory, affective, more-than-human, non-representational, and multimodal sensory research traditions and composition styles. From writing and film to performance and sonic documentation, the handbook reimagines the boundaries of sensory ethnography and posits new possibilities for scholarship conducted through the senses and for the senses. 

Sensory ethnography is a transdisciplinary research methodology focused on the significance of all the senses in perceiving, creating, and conveying meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of strategies that involve the senses as a means of inquiry, objects of study, and forms of expression, sensory ethnography has played a fundamental role in the contemporary evolution of ethnography writ large as a reflexive, embodied, situated, and multimodal form of scholarship. The handbook dwells on subjects like the genealogy of sensory ethnography, the implications of race in ethnographic inquiry, opening up ethnographic practice to simulate the future, using participatory sensory ethnography for disability studies, the untapped potential of digital touch, and much more.

This is the most definitive reference text available on the market and is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in anthropology, sociology, and the social sciences, and will serve as a state-of-the-art resource for sensory ethnographers worldwide.

chapter 1|20 pages

The Qualities of the “New” Sensory Ethnography

An introduction

part 1|74 pages

Sensory ethnography

chapter 2|9 pages

The Rise of Sense-Based Social Inquiry

A genealogy of sensory ethnography

chapter 6|13 pages

Sensory Degradation and Somatic Labor

Critical sensory ethnography for hypermodern times

chapter 7|13 pages

Sensory Futures Ethnography

Sensing at the edge of the future

part 2|75 pages

The practice of sensory ethnography

chapter 8|11 pages

Awareness, Focus, and Nuance

Reflexivity and reflective embodiment in sensory ethnography

chapter 9|12 pages

Sensing the City

Multisensory participant observation and urban ethnography

chapter 10|13 pages

Talking About Felt Spaces

On vagueness and clarity in interviews

chapter 11|14 pages

Participatory Sensory Ethnography

A collaborative methodology for understanding everyday journeys of disabled people

chapter 12|11 pages

Sensory Explorations of Digital Touch

Tactile apprenticeship with new industrial robots

chapter 13|12 pages

Political, Economic, and Relational Production of Sense

Negotiating sensory inequality and access in research on cochlear implantation in India

part 3|63 pages

Sensuous and atmospheric ethnography

chapter 14|9 pages

Re-Sensing the Sensory

Evoking senses in a troubled world

chapter 15|11 pages

Elemental

chapter 16|11 pages

Sensuous Ethnographies of Running

Comparing running with walking

chapter 17|11 pages

Constellations of (Sensual) Relations

Space, atmosphere, and sensory design

chapter 18|10 pages

Feeling Helium

chapter 19|9 pages

Playful Sensuous Pedagogies

Observations and reflections on teaching sensual ethnography

part 4|77 pages

More-than-human sensory ethnography

chapter 21|15 pages

Sensing the Cloud

Research-creation as sensory anthropology

chapter 22|11 pages

Beyond the Human

A sensory ethnographer's gaze on sportfishing practice

chapter 23|13 pages

Sensing Dirty Matter

Sensory ethnography as a more-than-human approach to urban inequalities

chapter 24|13 pages

Resonance

Engaging with the more-than-human through Ladakhi soundworlds

chapter 25|12 pages

Sensory Engagements With Lively Data

Attuning to the convivialities of more-than-human worlds

part 5|71 pages

Non-representational sensory ethnography

chapter 26|5 pages

Sound Walks

chapter 27|12 pages

Defamiliarizing the Sensory

chapter 28|13 pages

Sensing the Afterlife

Multisensorial ethnography and injured minds

chapter 29|13 pages

Staging Unmemorials, Being Haunted

The grievability of Japanese sex workers in the transpacific underground

chapter 30|14 pages

Non-Representational Sensory Ethnography

Creation, attention, and correspondence

chapter 31|12 pages

Sensing Scenes

Doing sensory ethnography in queer space and time

part 6|89 pages

Multimodal sensory ethnography

chapter 33|13 pages

The Sound Remains

Archiving the senses

chapter 34|13 pages

Multisensory Storytelling

Inciting polyvocal polemics in applied ethnography

chapter 35|16 pages

Reframing Deafness

Vision as fieldwork method and documentary art

chapter 36|11 pages

Representing Sensory Culture, Enacting Community

“The Full English”

chapter 37|12 pages

Sensory Verité

The intersection of sensory ethnography, sensory biophilia, and cinéma vérité

chapter 38|8 pages

Epilogue

Surface tensions