ABSTRACT
Some time ago anthropology came to its senses. With attention to thicker living, thick description has encountered additional possibilities and of course some limits. The common tasks-accounting for patterns of behavior, normative standards and modes of thought, the interpretation of signs and symbolic communications, mapping modes of survival and strategies for daily life-are overwhelming. Still, examining and describing not only the content and ‘structure’ (Williams 1977) of human feelings and sensations, but coming to terms with local practices of feelings seem doable, and hosts of conceptual orientations have been marshaled in order to make sense of the lived experiences and the habitus of others. From natural sensation to perceptible ‘empires’ (Howes 2005), anthropologists cannot be accused of giving up on the senses as sources of ethnographic insight in our quest for understanding and explaining human diversity. The works of Howes (1991, 2005: 4), Stoller (1989, 1997), Bourdieu (1977, 1990), Classen (1993), and numerous others have gone very far towards providing examples to work from and frameworks to work within for an anthropology of ‘social ideologies conveyed through sensory values and practices’ (Howes 2005: 4).
