Smells and Bells

      Coming fresh out of a pandemic, I believe one of the most important claims in the books we have read is Classen's in which she describes the importance of touch and tangible experience. Why do humans see concerts in person, when they could stream the same music online without spending nearly as much money or time? The answer is obvious —we are willing to pay a price to be part of a shared, tangible experience or to connect to someone special.       You might not think that for students as stubborn to participate and uninterested in learning as us that being in a classroom is preferred over zoom. Actually, upon coming back to campus, I heard endless remarks of those being happy just to be back in the classroom setting. They couldn't figure out why. Agreeing with Classen, it's because we need this tangible experience to learn effectively. You've probably heard about the "zoom fatigue" experienced by many during this time, and I have to agree. The r...

      There is nothing a people person loves more than an unplanned reunion with a friend from long ago. Or seeing a loved one after a long period of no holidays. For humans, the sight of a loved one, to be in their presence, is essential. Diana Eck argues that in Hinduism,  Darśan is a type of communion between deities and worshippers; seeing in this way must be essential for Hindus to reconnect with their beloved gods. Eck also mentions that Darśan is never solely a visual experience but rather involves all senses. The communication between worshipper and deity provides an experience beyond the five senses, reaching into the sixth...     David Abram argues that humans have lost their touch with the living earth, resulting in devastation of our natural word. While some consider the gift of  shamans and sorcerers to be a supernatural one, connecting our human world to another dimension, Abrams argues that their power lies within their ability to c...

      People try to appeal to others' sense of sound in a variety of ways. Music is a key aspect of most cultural traditions, religions, and lifestyles in general. People speak at sermons, at vigils, at weddings, formal events, informal events, and more, all to convey different messages and evoke different responses from their audiences. Rasmussen describes the varying intentions of music and Qur'an recitation in Arabic and Indonesian cultures, and she also notes the different intentions involved with these sensory experiences between both Arabic and Indonesian practices of Islam.       A new genre of hearing has recently come about, although it has existed in similar forms for centuries. This genre is ASMR –autonomous sensory meridian response. Okay, but what the heck does that mean? Well, ASMR involves creating sounds that induce a subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" on the listener, for example, when someone taps gently on a glass vase, th...

     The most shocking part of Pérez's account of cooking for the deities in the Yoruba religion for me was the ironies involved, especially in the constituents' positive attitudes towards servitude. As this community has experienced the abuse of slavery in its history and undoubtedly still feels the effects of this injustice today, this positive attitude confused me. In fact, laborers ensured that their "masters" could eat, turning the most bland and boring ingredients into something actually palatable, yet their masters have completely whitewashed them and depicted them as lacking culture. Talk about the irony in that!       When Pérez details the rites of passage that initiates had to take, doing the dirty work of gutting animals, it becomes apparent that this custom – almost like the act of hazing – is actually viewed in a positive light in the ilé. Completing these undesirable trials is recognized as an act of becoming part of the larger comm...

Ackerman and Green both make the same claims about the importance of scent in our daily lives, depicting our difficulty in describing smells to others without making a reference to something else, and arguing that studying smell is just as important in understanding culture as studying sociology and anthropology. As a natural scientist, I was skeptical about Green’s arguments—how could smell, something unable to be measured or quantified, be as important as objective, scientific theory? But as I read further, I began to resonate with this argument; scent’s subjective nature means that we cannot recover past articles of it. Our difficulty in describing them makes understanding their connotations difficult, especially when the only archaeological evidence we have are containers and jars for perfumes and topical oils. What did certain scents mean to ancient civilizations? Are there any patterns between how we react to smells and how they reacted to those same smells? Answering these quest...

     Ackerman makes it apparent that our skin, the largest organ of the body, is the only part of us that makes contact with the outside world. We spend countless hours and contribute hundreds of dollars throughout our lives making our skin soft, smooth, covered with art, even pierced or stretched. It is the extension of our personalities, a way to express ourselves visually to others. For me and around 50% of the global population, the skin is covered with rough patches and small bumps particularly on the upper arms and thighs, though it can also cover the cheeks and the rear. It’s the result of a harmless skin condition called keratosis pilaris and can be considered a common variant of skin type.       It doesn’t bother me much other than the way it looks to others. The bumps are dark-ish red, mostly flush to the skin, and appear as thousands of evenly dotted circles. They’re caused by the excess production of keratin by the body, which blocks hair f...

     Reading about how different cultures assign different meanings to objects and words, it had never occurred to me that we assign meanings to smells as well. After reading the section from Ackerman on smell, I realized that different cultures assign different meanings to scents, and these meanings vary among cultures. For instance, in the reading it is mentioned that while some cultures like to use animal feces as hair masks, Western cultures view this scent as repulsive and dirty. Yet, children don't learn that these smells are "bad" until they are taught (a point Ackerman makes).       Additionally, while the scents may stay the same, timeless in their ways, the meanings we assign to these scents change over time. Even our memories of smells connected to people we love or times we are fond of may change as we experience the scent in new settings, such as in the reading when the smell of eucalyptus and menthol triggered the author's earlier memory ...