The Anthropology of the Senses and Sensations

Author(s): Jack Goody

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Source: La Ricerca Folklorica, No. 45, Antropologia delle sensazioni (Apr., 2002), pp. 17-28
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17
JACK GOODY The
Anthropology
of the Senses and Sensations
The senses have both a narrower and wider
reference. In
Europe
the narrow
meaning
refers to
the five senses
distinguished by
Aristotle
(what
for convenience I refer to as the basic
senses).
But there is a wider
usage
in which the senses
would
include,
for
example,
a sense of
humour,
of
justice,
of
duty,
of
colour,
of
rhythm.
And there
is a third and even broader
usage
in which the
term sense
(in
the
singular)
covers the
capacity
to
understand,
to make
sense,
to have common-
sense.
The basic senses are our windows on the
world.
Through
the senses we
acquire
informa-
tion as well as
sensations,
which are related to
the senses in a more than
etymological way.
The
stimulus for sensations or
feelings may
come
from the outside or from the inside. Indeed the
wider
meaning
of the word refers not
only
to the
range
of
feelings,
not
simply
to what we
experi-
ence
through
the senses but to the
range
of senti-
ments
surging
within
us,
and whose
presence
is
often included in the
concept
of 'mentalities'
employed by psychologically-minded historians,
for
example,
in
discussing
the distribution of the
sentiment or
feeling
of love
or,
more
directly
relat-
ed to the
senses,
of
beauty.
I shall
initially
confine
my
discussion to the
first of
these,
to the narrower
meanings
of the
words. But it will not be
altogether possible
to
keep
to that
resolution,
since
sense-impressions
constitute the
major way
in which we interact with
the world
(in
this sense
they
are
mediators,
involved in
representation)
and
thoughts
about
their status in this
capacity very
much affect our
understanding
of it. Later on the discussion is
extended to touch
upon
the
question
of senti-
ments, feelings,
mentalities.
All
experience
of the world outside is mediat-
ed
by
the
senses, including
aesthetic
experience
in the arts and
beyond.
The senses are the
means of
communication, operating
at both a
physiological
and at a cultural level.
Anthropolo-
gists
now deal
largely
with the latter and have
paid
little attention to the
physiological
senses.
But at the
beginning
of this
century,
and
earlier,
many
scholars as well as the
general public
considered that some
general
differences
between the mentalities of the members of so-
called advanced and
primitive
societies related to
physical
inheritance. The
philosopher Levy-Bruhl
wrote of
'primitive
mentalities' which he saw as
basically very
different from ours
regarding
perceptions,
at least
cognitively.
That
problemat-
ic continued to hold the
stage
at the
physiological
level as
well,
and
investigations
took
place
to
determine how far basic
sensory perceptions
differed in the
simpler
societies. One of the first
major expeditions
of scientists to a
'simple'
culture took
place
about one hundred
years ago,
in
1898, and was
organised by
the
zoologist,
A.C.
Haddon,
who recruited four doctors to assist
him,
W.H.R.
Rivers,
W.
McDougall,
C.
Seligman
and
C.S. Myers.
None of
them, including Haddon,
had
much
previous experience
of
anthropology,
certainly
not social
anthropology;
their interest
lay
in
psychology
of a
physiological
bent. Three of
them became the effective founders of
psycholo-
gy
in
Britain;
the
fourth, Seligman,
filled one of the
first Chairs of
Anthropology.
When Rivers arrived
in the islands of New
Guinea,
he established "a
small
psychological laboratory"
in the disused
missionary
house on
Murray
Island where the
team worked for four months. The
topics
investi-
gated
were
mostly
concerned with
possible
differ-
ences in
sensory capacities
between western
and
simpler societies, that is,
in
visual
activity
and
sensibility
to
light difference;
colour vision, including testing
for colour blindness,
colour nomenclature, the thresholds for different
colours, after-images, contrast, and the colour
vision of the
peripheral retina; binocular vision; line
18
GOODY
dividing;
visual illusions, some of which were inves-
tigated quantitatively; acuity
and
range
of
hearing;
discrimination of tone-difference; rhythm,
smell and
taste; tactile
acuity
and localization; sensibility
to
pain; temperature spots; discrimination of
weight
and illusions of
weight; reaction-time, including
auditory
and visual
simple
reaction-time and
choice-time; estimation of intervals of time; memo-
ry;
mental
fatigue
and
practice;
muscular
power
and motor
accuracy; drawing
and
writing;
blood
pressure changes
under various conditions, etc. 1
The
investigators
found
only
small differences
in the
physiological variables, though clearly
there
were some at the cultural
level,
for
example
in
colour
terminology
and in
drawing
and
writing,
subjects
that have remained of
continuing
inter-
est, though
these latter differences have little to
do
physiologically
with the senses or with sensa-
tions. Rivers concluded that at this level there
was little difference between societies with and
without
writing although
between individuals
there was. But that universalism is not the whole
story.
The classification of colour does differ
among
human societies in
interesting ways,
apparently developmentally,
in a cultural histori-
cal
sequence (Berlin
and
Kay 1969).
Those differ-
ences
may
affect our
understanding
of
colour,
for
example
the
English perception
of
orange may
be
influenced
by
the use of a fruit as a concrete
referent. On the other hand there is no indication
that the absence of a term
implies
an
inability
to
discriminate. The case of
writing
is somewhat
clearer,
not
regarding
the senses so much as the
sensations,
that
is, feelings
and emotions and
the
problem
of how these are elaborated in the
writing
is one I
pursue
later.
There are
certainly
some universal features
apart
from the
physiological
ones. Human soci-
eties in
general recognise
the same senses of
sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, as we do.
However, looking at the question more from the
standpoint of social or cultural anthropology,
there is little evidence that the recognition of
senses as a category, in particular of a group of
five senses, is a widespread conceptualisation
outside Europe and Asia. Indeed the oral cultures
of Africa, while the senses of sight and the others
are clearly recognized, do not appear to group
together of the senses of touch, sight, hearing,
etc. in
any
overall scheme, whether with five or
any
other number of components. Not
only is
there no
grouping together
but the
LoDagaa
of
northern Ghana have no collective word for the
senses. One can refer
generally
to
bodily feelings
in the
phrase
n id ba
num, my body
is not sweet
(nu5).
That
adjective
is also used to describe indi-
vidual senses such as
taste,
a zier numo na, the
soup
is sweet
('tastes good'),
the
opposite
of
which would be tuo, bitter. Other senses
recog-
nized included touch
(fiil),
smell
(nyO0),
hearing,
sight,
but
they
are
usually
referred to
by
the verb
(action)
rather than
by
the abstract noun. More-
over the verbs for
hearing
and
smelling (as
well as
for
drinking
and
smoking) appear
to be the same,
though
the actions themselves are
certainly
distinguished
when this is
required.
Is the
grouping together
of the senses in a
specific
named
category,
with a fixed number of
elements and a
higher degree
of
abstraction,
encouraged by literacy?
Watt and I
argued
that writ-
ing promotes
the abstract as distinct from the
concrete, contextualised use of
language2.
That is
certainly
the case with the use of nouns
(Goody
1987).
The numerical
development
is
suggested by
the
dominating tendency
of the Chinese to
group
attributes and
persons
of all kinds
by numbers,
for
example,
the Four Gentlemen of
Flowers,
the
Gang
of Four. For the basic senses there seems relative-
ly
little difference in literate cultures at this
level;
the
number five is
widespread, possibly
for
physiologi-
cal
reasons, possibly
to do with the
spread
of writ-
ten
knowledge
3.
Important
differences in the
conceptualisation
of the senses do however lie at
the cultural level and relate to three main
areas,
firstly
the
place
of the senses in the total cultural
universe, secondly
the variable
emphasis placed
on
the different
senses, and
thirdly
the
evaluation,
indeed the
very credibility,
of sense
impressions,
of
sensory
data.
Regarding
the
relationship
between the sens-
es and the cultural
universe,
the formal side of
such
linkages
is illustrated
by
the case of the
Ayurvedic system
in
India,
which is characteristi-
cally a written form of medicine. The five senses,
as we know them, are grouped together under the
concept rasa. The senses are in turn linked
formally, in a manner typical of early written
cultures, with the five elements of the universe.
Rivers 1901-3: 1-12.
2
Goody
and Watt 1963.
3 In
early
modern
English
the five are the
five senses wits but the
concept
also
applies
to mental faculties more
widely,
for
example, 'witless'
(John Kerrigan).
Ether Sound
Air Sound and touch
Fire
Sound, touch and
sight
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND SENSATIONS 19
Water Sound, touch, sight
and taste
Earth
Sound, touch, sight,
taste and smell
Such a
systematisation
was not
primitive,
as
some structuralist writers have
thought,
but an
example
of
complex,
at least
early complex,
writ-
ten
graphic display4.
Regarding
the second
point,
the relative
importance
of the
senses,
the Chinese have
long
dwelt on this
topic
in
writing, recognizing
the
same five in a set as
Europeans
as
early
as the
third
century B.C.E., for
example
in the
writing
of
Xunzi
(Hsujn-tzu),
of
Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzi)
and of
late Zhou
(Chou) dynasty thinkers
5. In his work
'Concerning Heaven', Hsun-tzu writes of the five
senses each of which receive stimuli and cannot
be
interchanged;
these are the five senses - the
natural
(T'ien)
senses - which are controlled
by
the
heart,
their natural
(T'ien)
ruler6. The
Japan-
ese
appear
to have
adopted
the Chinese ideas,
probably
in the Nara or the
early
Heian
(794-
1185) period
since the writer's view of Confu-
cianism was favoured at the court.
But the
question
of
sight
has been
particular-
ly important
for Chinese
authors,
no doubt
because of the
importance given
to
painting,
an
activity
that was
closely
connected with the use
of the brush for
writing,
for
calligraphy7.
The
prolif-
eration of Chinese characters,
in the
logographic
system,
means that
special
attention has to be
paid
to small differences in
graphemes
which
have to be learnt
by
heart. Of course in
preliterate
societies,
men and women have to be aware of
different visual
clues,
for
example,
in
hunting
or
in
travelling
from
place
to
place.
But when
language
becomes visible it does demand contin-
uous, concentrated attention at
decipherment.
And in a wider
sense,
the
development
of visual
representations,
for
example,
in
perspective,
in
landscapes,
in anatomical
drawings,
in botanical
illustration,
does seem to have an affect of the
way
we
perceive
the world.
Such cultural influences are
yet
clearer for the
sense of taste. The elaboration of a
complex
or
haute
cuisine,
the
frequent
use of
spices,
the
emergence
of a culture of wine with its
profes-
sional
terminology,
these factors lead to a
greater
emphasis being placed upon
taste in
many
strat-
ified
post-Bronze Age
societies and at the same
time to a
development
of the
ability
to discrimi-
nate between flavours. In this
sense,
taste is
cultivated,
like flowers.
Perhaps
that is also true of the sense of
smell,
which is
closely
linked to taste and is often
applied
to
cooking
and to wine. There do seem to
be some broad differences related to cultural
elaboration of this kind of and it has been
suggested
to me that African societies do not for
example greatly
elaborate the discrimination of
smell
any
more than
they
do of
taste,
of
cuisine;
certainly
in both these cases the
vocabulary
seems somewhat limited in
comparison
to the
major
civilisations of Eurasia.
The Chinese case also raises the third
point
to which I
referred, since
significantly
the elabo-
rate cultivation of the senses
goes
hand in hand
with their
rejection, especially
in Buddhism 8.
Much neo-Confucian
thought
in both China, Japan
and Korea deals with 'human desire' versus
'heavenly principle',
the first
obviously
linked to
the senses and to the earth, but which,
as in
most
religions,
we must
eventually
leave for
another,
more
spiritual,
destination.
Sensuality
is
thus
opposed
to
spirituality, giving
rise to
dualist,
Manichaean, views of the world which
rejected
the flesh in favour of the
spirit.
Reliance on the
senses also raises a related
opposition, espe-
cially
in
Japan,
between the notion of
'duty'
and
the 'natural emotional instincts', though
to
get
round this
dichotomy,
some Chinese turned to
ritual,
some to classical
writing (for example, Dai
Zhen),
and others to notions of moral account-
ing9.
I have
suggested
that one finds the roots of
this
opposition
in human
society generally,
but
that it becomes more
explicit,
more 'intellectu-
alised', when faced with the
reflexivity
of
writing.
That dilemma relates
very directly
to the
ques-
tion of aesthetics and the appreciation of beauty.
With each sense a discrimination may be made
on a scale running between positive (good) and
negative (bad) impressions, between the beauti-
ful and the ugly when dealing with sight, but with
similar evaluations (of a kind +/-) for the others.
Beauty, delight, pleasure are all associated with
the positive sensations. Tastes too range from
good to bad, so too with smell (though in English
4 I am indebted to Asha Sarabhai for
help.
5 See
University
of
Chicago
thesis on
'The Senses in
Early
China'.
6
The Works of
Hsijn-tzu,
trans. H.H.
Dubs, London 1928, pp. 175-6; Fung
Yu-lan,
A
History
of Chinese Philoso-
phy,
vol. I., The Period of the Philoso-
phers,
trans.
by
D. Bodde, Princeton,
1952
p.
304. I am indebted to David
McMullen for these references.
7 Clunas 1981.
8
T. Brook 1998.
9
I am much indebted to Dr J. McDer-
mott for
help
with this section. See
Chow
Kaiwing 1994, and Dai
Zhen,
commenting
on Mencius, Yale 199X and
C.
Brokaw, Moral
Ledger Books, Prince-
ton, 1990.
20
GOODY
separate
words are also
involved),
a
pleasant
and an
unpleasant (or disturbing) sound; with
touch,
which is
marginal
in this
respect,
the skin
receives both
painful
and
pleasant sensations,
such as fire and heat. A
variety
of terms are used
to describe
points
on this
range
of
experiences
but in most
languages,
as in
English
or
LoDagaa,
the terms
good
and bad could
probably
be
applied
across the whole
range
of senses.
However the scale between
good
and bad relates
in a more
profound way
to the evaluation of sense
data,
of
sensation,
of aesthetic
experience
and of
emotion,
on which we have touched.
For aesthetics carries with it the notion of anti-
aestheticism,
of the
rejection
of an interest in
what other
societies,
other
peoples,
or other
times consider to be
important categories
of
experience.
This is not
simply
a matter of differ-
ence in
taste,
for
example
in
painting
or in flow-
ers. There is also a definite
rejection
of these
activities which
may
take several forms.
When I was
working
on the culture of
flowers,
I was struck
by
the
great
variations in their use
and
appreciation,
differences that were
partly
related to aesthetic choices. Flowers are often
seen as
having
a
particular appeal
to the senses
of
sight
and
smell,
and it was
commonly
stated in
the literature that the love of flowers was univer-
sal, related to the
physical
attractions of bees to
colourful and scented flowers
(and
hence to their
propagation).
One was led to assume that these
universal features were
represented
in the
aesthetic
preferences
of humans for
physiologi-
cal reasons.
But humans turn out to be more
complicated.
In certain circumstances
they
subvert
supposed-
ly biological
universals. What struck me in
looking
at sub-Saharan Africa was the fact that flowers
were
very
little used in rituals or for
decoration;
they
had never been domesticated
(as
in
Eurasia)
and even wild species held little attraction, at
least as plucked flowers. I interpreted this
neglect, even rejection, as resulting from the
overwhelming preference for edible crops and to
the knowledge that flowers were harbingers of
fruit or berries and should not therefore be gath-
ered for other purposes which elsewhere would
be deemed aesthetic.
The cultivation of flowers and gardens, and
with it perhaps the cultivation of a sense of their
beauty, seems first to have been elaborated at
courts and among aristocracies, at centres of
written culture. That is not so very different from
the cultivation of taste, for haute
(grande)
cuisine
and for the
appreciation
of rare wines, or indeed
from much artistic and craft
activity
which often
originated
as
luxury
activities. It was in this
way
that the formal theatre
developed,
a fact that
constituted one of the
objections
to the
stage
in
the
eighteenth century
and earlier. The same was
true of secular collections of art; they
were seen
as
products
of the
luxury,
of 'leisure time', of
catering
for the elite, as class-based, until
they
were neutralised
by being placed
in
public
muse-
ums. So it was not
only
a
question
of Africa
being
without flowers but even in
Eurasia,
where the
luxury
cultures in
China,
India and the Near East
had
encouraged
their domestication and cultiva-
tion,
there too one found situations and
periods
in which their use was
greatly
diminished if not
altogether rejected
and forbidden.
Take for instance at the
example
of Jewish
and Islamic cemeteries. No flowers are ever
grown
or offered in these
places.
One
major
reason is that
any
such
offering
could be viewed
as an
attempt
to influence the dead into
looking
after the
living,
whereas in these
strongly
monotheistic
religions only
God holds the reins of
power.
Such
hesitation,
and even
ambivalence,
regarding
the use of what in other situations
might
be a desirable
offering, appealing
to the
various
senses,
is true of flowers but it is
espe-
cially
true of the
representations
of flowers. Like
other
figurative representations
these
disap-
peared
from
early
Christian culture as
they
did
from Jewish and Muslim ones. The reasons was
partly religious (in representing nature, one was
attempting
to recreate what
only
the Creator
could
create)
and
partly
secular
(which
related
closely
to
problems regarding luxury
but also to
the
validity
of sense
impressions
in
general,
at
least of their
representations).
For
Plato, an
image
was a
lie,
never the
thing
itself. So too
were
objects,
since
reality lay beyond appearance
in the idea of a flower or table. One could not trust
the data of one's senses which
depended upon
representation and could not recognize the real,
the pure, thing. And if the representation was
also a luxury, the problem was further aggravat-
ed. In other words the perception of sense data
was strongly influenced not only by individual
differences, by specific cultures (and their hierar-
chies) but was also qualified by a more general
factor marking some human cultures at some
periods, a certain distrust of that data, especial-
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND SENSATIONS 21
ly
when associated with
'luxury'
and with
beauty,
and an ambivalence about
attempts
to
re-present
it in what others think about as desirable
ways.
Some
early
Christian fathers like Clement
rejected
the
giving
of flowers at funerals
preferring
instead to
give
to the
poor.
That had also been a
theme of the Roman
moralists,
later taken
up by
Christians.
They expressed
concern about the use
of luxuries in their own
culture,
in
particular
those
luxuries like
perfumes
and
silks,
the
very objects
of
aesthetic preferences
in terms of smell and touch,
that were
imported
at
great expense
from abroad
to
gratify
the senses. The true Roman
ideally
required
none of
this;
like the
early Germans,
he
needed
only
a crown of
grass,
not of
precious
metal. Such
questioning
was
widespread
in the
classical world and the Near East in both secular
and
religious
contexts. But it also occurred in other
major
civilisations. The Chinese
philosopher
Mencius worried about the
legitimacy
of such
expenditure,
such efforts for
purely
aesthetic ends,
when the
poor
were
starving.
I
suggest
that this critical attitude towards
luxury emerges
as an intrinsic
part
of its
appear-
ance
(and
therefore of much related aesthetic
and sense
experience), especially
where
repre-
sentations are concerned. In other words certain
associated
experiences,
in
particular
in
post-
Bronze
Age
cultures where rich and
poor
exist
side
by
side but with
highly
differentiated
styles
of
life, promote
their own
critique.
This reaction is
found
especially
in the
writings
of
philosophers
like
Mencius,
of moralists like
Pliny,
of satirists
like
Juvenal,
and it constitutes a
critique
of civili-
sation itself. But it does not
stop
with the written
word nor in the minds of
specialists.
I have
argued
that there is an inevitable
prob-
lem
(a contradiction)
not
only
with
luxury
but with
representation
itself since this fundamental
human
activity
intrinsic to
language (which
is
mediated
by
the sense of
hearing) may
raise
doubts about the
validity
of the
process
of re-
presenting
the
world, 'reality'
and ideas. That
problem
is intrinsic to Plato's exclusion of
poets
from his
Republic
-
painters too,
because
they
represented what to him was already a represen-
tation of the world of reality embodied in ideas.
What they created was never the thing itself, but
since it made claims in that direction, it was
therefore a lie.
A similar notion arises with sculpture and
theatre. One of the most profound facts about the
culture of Medieval Europe is the way that conti-
nent
virtually rejected
these two
great
achieve-
ments of its own classical aesthetic
heritage.
Sculpture,
one of the
major glories
of Greek civil-
isation that
provides
the centre
piece
of the
Louvre and
many
other
great museums, practi-
cally disappeared
for centuries in its three dimen-
sional
form, until the
early years
of the Italian
Renaissance.
So too did the formal
theatre,
another
major
glory
of Greece and
Rome;
even at the
popular
level dramatic
performance
was often under
pres-
sure from the church even after the rise of reli-
gious plays.
That
disappearance
was not
only
due
to the fall of the Roman
Empire
nor
yet
the decline
in the
economy, though
these factors
played
their
part.
It was
ideological (and ideologically
econom-
ic).
Theatres were
actually destroyed
as well as
allowed to fall into
disrepair.
These
rejections applied
to
representations,
to the
arts, which,
to their detractors, did not
present reality
as much as
misrepresent
it. What
appealed
to the senses of some was
rejected by
others,
and at some
periods by
all. Similar
objec-
tions are made
against
'real'
objects
such as
flowers,
which once
again
had a
great appeal
to
the senses for some but were mistrusted
by
others because of their association with
luxury,
or
because the senses to which
they appealed
were
suspect
on wider
metaphysical grounds,
as re-
presenting
and therefore as
possibly mispre-
senting
the world outside.
In a
religious
context this distrust of the sens-
es was found in
Buddhism,
in
early Christianity,
and elsewhere; Puritanism indeed
may perhaps
result from a universal
tendency
in
luxury
cultures
towards
puritanism
in a wider sense. We are
accustomed to the idea that different societies
have different
concepts
of
beauty,
for
example,
of
women. That is an instrinsic
part
of the contem-
porary
commitment to cultural relativism. But in
fact the difference between cultures and
periods
extends much further and is structured
by
wide
comparative factors,
such as the domestication
of flowers in
post-Bronze Age
societies. Flowers
provide a good example. In actuality, we do not
find a universal sensation of beauty towards flow-
ers; as sense data they are experienced differ-
ently. But the differences in perception go deep-
er. Doubts may also be felt about the validity of
sensory perception as such, giving rise to a lack
of trust in the senses, a deliberate setting aside
of pleasure, of beauty, which can be seen as
leading mankind astray from the proper path. The
22
GOODY
senses are distrusted as means of
attaining
the
truth,
at least the ultimate truth. And those
doubts are connected on the one hand with a
dualistic, manichean, Cathar,
view of the
world,
which is
unworthy
of our attention since
reality,
spiritual reality,
lies
beyond.
The flesh is
bad,
the
spirit good.
Not all
components
of all societies
display
this
tendency
all the time; groups
and
cultures
change
their orientation over time. That
view was one
component
of
early Christianity
as
well as of later Puritanism. There is also an
impor-
tant
component
of Buddhism that distrusted the
senses,
while another
component
made
great
use of them.
Those were the
religious approaches.
But
there was also the secular view of
philosophers
and moralists, expressed
most
clearly by Bishop
Berkeley
in the
eighteenth century
who distrusted
sense data as a means of
learning
about the
outside world and even threw doubt
upon
the
existence of one's self as well as the Other. Such
an
approach questioned
the
very
nature of
expe-
rience whereas the
religious
belief had rather to
do with the content - that
is,
sense
impressions
were not
ways
to God but distractions; that was
the view of the Cistercian, Bernard of Clairvaux
which ran
very
much counter to that of Archbish-
op Suger,
the
promoter
of the
Abbey
Church of St
Denis,
with its abundance of
stained glass
whose
beauty
was held to be an
opening
to the
super-
natural.
In other words there have been two
opposing
views which have been stressed at different
times and
places
but which
may
often exist
contemporaneously
and
give
rise to contradic-
tions,
sometimes even in the same
person
and
producing ambivalence,
not
simply
about the re-
presentation
of sense data but about the
very
validity
of these data themselves. Mankind is at
once highly dependent upon the senses for infor-
mation about the outside world (and in a way
about his internal states) but may also distrust
what they tell him. Is that the truth or is it a lie?
We are back at the Platonic problem regarding
representations and the arts. For even the sens-
es are re-presenting to us something they claim
and we assume is out there. These rejectionist
notions emerge from time to time as explicit
ideologies. However there is always present in
the human situation the possibility of doubt about
the way the senses work, about the way they
relay information to us and act as mediators with
the world around us.
The
problematic
is somewhat different when
we are
dealing
with
images
where one can
compare
the
representation
with the
represent-
ed, except
in the Platonic schema where the
image
falsifies not the surface
reality
but the idea
behind it. That is the same with sense data where
the contrast between internal
representation
and
external
'reality'
can never in fact be
made;
one
can never
place
them side
by
side to
compare.
Hence doubts about the
validity
of sense data
seem less
widespread
than those about
repre-
sentation of the iconic kind.
in
an earlier
publication
on
Representations
and Contradictions
(1997)
I
argued
that doubts
not
only
about
images
but other forms of
repre-
sentation were found at least
implicitly
in oral
cultures. These doubts were often
brought
to the
surface
by writing, encouraging reflexivity,
as in
Plato's case. Do we also find
implicit
doubts
about the
validity
of sense data in oral cultures?
That is a
subject
on which I am
unclear, partly
because of the difficulties mentioned above and
partly
because until one
gets
written
categorisa-
tions of basic
senses,
as in the Aristotelian case,
the boundaries between the senses
(as
with the
LoDagaa concepts
of
hearing/smelling)
and
between what we would
regard
as
mystical, spir-
itual, experiences beyond
the
purvue
of the sens-
es are much less clear-cut. The see-er is also a
seer, discovering
the future; the hearer is also a
hearer of 'voices' or of the music of the
spheres.
Within the framework of these broader
categories
of
perception through
the
senses,
there is
perhaps
less cause to
doubt;
since there is no
limitation to the
physical,
the
empirical,
doubt in
a sense is built-in.
Let me turn to the linked
concept
of sensations
which are
clearly
related not
only etymologically
with the senses but on the one hand to
physical
experience (feelings 1)
and on the other to
emotions, sentiments and
passions (feelings 2).
As
physical experience,
the sensation of heat is
more
specific,
less
abstract,
than the sense of
touch, so that sensations are not
numerically
cate-
gorized in the same way as the (five) basic senses.
Nor is it easy to find translations into non-European
languages (especially non-written ones) for gener-
al concepts like sensation, feeling, emotion, etc.,
even though some particular emotions are recog-
nised, for example, love and hate. But the emotion-
al sides of sensations (feelings 2) are clearly much
more difficult to classify and specify than the sens-
es; they refer not only to the media by which we
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND SENSATIONS 23
experience
the outside world but also to the inward
states to which those
experiences,
or internal
reflection
upon
the
experiences, give
rise. In
English
there is a lexical
typology
of senses but is
there one of
sensations,
emotions or
passions,
either
explicit
or
implicit?
I doubt if we are
dealing
with a set defined either
by
the actors or
by
the
observers. In his extensive
study
of emotions
Harr6
(1986)
includes
'hope',
which would not be
part
of
many listings.
The term 'emotion' first came
into
English
at the end of the sixteenth
century
in
the now obsolete sense of 'a
political
or social
agitation'; only
in the
following century (1660)
was
it used
figuratively
for an
agitation
of the mind. Its
psychological
use for a mental
feeling
became
current
only
in the nineteenth
century,
where
'emotion recollected in
tranquility'
is the
equivalent
of mental
feeling,
a state of consciousness as
opposed
to the
cognitive.
Aristotle offers an informal
listing,
in which
love and hate are central to the
feelings
that are
accompanied by pleasure
and
pain.
Cicero
reduces them to four fundamental
passions,
distress and
pleasure,
fear and desire'o. Augus-
tine saw all four as
species
of love.
Aquinas
reverted to the Aristotelian traditions and
discerned eleven basic
passions.
Emotions are
clearly yet
more influenced
by
specific
cultural factors than the basic senses
but
despite
these influences there is a core of
commonality
across cultures
(a commonality
that
is transcultural but still
cultural),
embodied for
example
in notions of
reciprocity (and
its senti-
mental concomitant, amity)
and its
opposite,
negative reciprocity,
that is
revenge (with
its senti-
mental concomitant, enmity).
These emotions
are
apparent throughout
social life and literature,
from feuds
among
African tribes to the
revenge
theme in Renaissance drama.
Passions were at the centre of interest for
seventeenth
century philosophers,
both to natur-
al
philosophy
for
understanding
them and to
moral
philosophy
for
controlling
them. "Passions
...
are
generally
understood to be
thoughts
or
states of the soul which
represent things
as
good
or evil for us". These evaluations involve
'emotions that move us and guide our actions'.
Moreover passions have instrinsic physical mani-
festations which bridge emotion and action and
are written on the body
.
From a scientific
standpoint
the modern
study
of emotions
goes
back to Darwin's account of
The
Expression
of Emotions in Man and Animals
(1872).
He was
essentially
concerned to docu-
ment his
evolutionary hypothesis put
forward so
successfully
in The
Origin
of
Species. By showing
not
simply
the transcultural nature of such
expression
but also its
trans-specific character,
he countered the creationist view of the insur-
mountable
gap
between man and
animals,
and
indeed between animal
species; by trying
to show
a
universality
in their
expression
not
only among
humans but
among
the whole of the animal
king-
dom. The smile is a smile wherever found. He
saw some
continuity
between all
these, any
differ-
ences
evolving
as the result of an accumulation
of
adaptive changes.
This notion he reinforced in
the
study
of emotions
Influenced
by
Darwin whose work he edited in
1998,
Ekman set out to test the
universality
thesis in a series of studies which were
brought
together
in a book,
Darwin and Facial
Expression.
There he comes down on the side of
universals,
using
the
phrase
'affect
program'
to describe the
'innate basis of universal
expressions' (p. 386).
For this account he was
strongly
criticized
by
the
anthropologist Margaret
Mead who for
political
reasons,
she
explains,
had become
very wary
of
biological determinism, especially
in the form of
social Darwinism,
when it was taken
up by
the
Nazis.
The
biological
account of emotions has
always
been
heavily politicised,
in
particular
in
the assertion of the
continuity
of
genetic
control
over behaviour. A
high degree
of such control
obviously
reduces the element of
malleability,
of
intentionality,
of
possible
socio-cultural interven-
tion. The former leads to a reliance on
physical
interference as a
way
of
ameliorating
the lot of
(sections of) mankind, as in the
eugenic
doctrines of the
1930s,
in Nazi
attempts
to elim-
inate 'lower races' or indeed in much 'racist'
thinking.
The alternative is an
approach
that
emphasizes
other
possibilities
for
improvement,
educational, socio-cultural and
political,
and was
strongly held by many socialists, even to the
extent, as with Lysenko in the Soviet Union, of
arguing for the possible inheritance of acquired
characteristics. Mead was in the midst of such
controversies.
Ekman's data do indeed show that there is a
tendency for facial expressions to be interpreted
in a transcultural fashion. But such trends are not
10
Many
modern
philosophers separate
emotion from
desire,
seen as the
antecedent of action
(James 1997:7).
11 James 1997:4.
24
GOODY
12
Ekman 1998.
universal in that we do find the situation affected
by
cultural
differences;
for
example Japanese
students follow
'display
rules' in
masking nega-
tive emotions in the
presence
of
authority,
but if
no
authority
is
present,
he
argues, they
show
their true colours.
Despite
criticisms from anthro-
pologists
and
linguists
the author concludes that
"most scientists consider the
universality
of
facial
expression
of emotion to be well estab-
lished"
(p. 390).
However he
agrees
that this
applies only
to a limited
range
of emotions or
expressions;
in
pre-literate
cultures for
example
"fear and
surprise
were not differentiated".
Only
in the case of "certain
strong emotions",
when
people
make no
attempt
to mask what
they feel,
"the
expressions
will be the same
regardless
of
age, race, culture,
sex or education"
(p. 391).
On
the other hand there are
clearly
a number of
expressions
that do
vary
with these factors.
There are other
problems
with this discussion
of emotions and their
expression.
Ekman and
Darwin deal
largely
not with emotions
per
se but
with facial
expressions
which are a
sub-category
of
gesture; yet
Darwin himself
recognized
"that
most
symbolic gestures
are learned". There are
many ways
of
expressing
emotions other than
facial or even
gestural ones,
the most
important
of which are
linguistic,
and these are
definitely
learned. There are obvious difficulties in transla-
tion in
dealing
with the
comparative study
of what
is said
(and
in some cultures
written)
in
express-
ing emotions;
elaborations
go
a
long way beyond
their crude
expression
or communication
by phys-
ical means. These elaborations
immediately
introduce an element of
discontinuity
in the evolu-
tionary process,
a
discontinuity
that is at the root
not
only
of earlier anti-Darwinian
jokes
about men
and
monkeys
but also of the more serious
discomfort
many
feel in the wholesale
application
of animal
biology
to
humans,
in for
example
socio-biology
or
genetic
determinism. We can
surely agree
that
biological
considerations are
important (hence rejecting
the
rejectionism
of
Margaret
Mead and of cultural relativists
gener-
ally)
without also
accepting
that the
universality
of
emotional expression means anything more than
that certain facial expressions are widely distrib-
uted but may be modified culturally.
Ekman's interest in the expression of
emotions concentrates on the physical, espe-
cially the face; and such physical features are
considered to be expressions in a second sense,
that is of underlying emotions. They were not
simply
communicative devices but had an inter-
nal
origin
in similar emotions. Darwin's thesis
has been criticized on
just
this
point by
relativists
and others. The universalist
hypothesis
seems
tenuous because the link between external
'expressions'
and internal states is not
easy
to
establish. While there is a limited measure of
continuity
at the level of
gesture,
there are also
major differences, especially
if one considers
that our emotions are
expressed
not
only
in
gestures
but in words which in his
highly pro-
Darwinian edition of The Emotions Ekman admits
may
be relevant: "Are words
required
for such an
awareness and consideration of emotional feel-
ings?"
- a rhetorical
question
to which he
gives
no answer12. For if he
did,
that would threaten his
universalistic
assumptions.
In the human
context,
how would we conceiv-
ably express
emotions without words? The
phys-
ical
expression
alone would not
get
us far. For
words not
only express emotions, they
elaborate
them and in some instances
may actually
be said
to create them. To make this
point
is not to
adopt
the extreme relativist
position,
which Ekman
right-
ly
criticizes. On the other
hand,
it is to insist that
universalism
pure
and
simple
is insufficient to
account for what we observe. In
considering
the
modes of human communication we
recognize
similarities and continuities but we also have to
acknowledge
discontinuities as well. One of
these was
certainly
the advent of
language (of
words).
Another was that of
writing (of
visible
words).
As Ekman remarks the "lack of emotion
words can
change
emotional
experience"
(p. 392)
and more
controversially,
that
languages
differ in "the extent to which a word
gives
subtle
nuances or combines emotions or tells us what
caused the emotion"
(p. 393).
I do not wish to fall
into a nominalistic
fallacy here,
common in
linguistic analysis;
the
paucety
of basic colour
terms does not mean that Africans cannot
perceive
other
differences,
nor create
patterns
with thread and
yarn
of a
greater variety
of
colours,
but their absence does limit their
power
to
manipulate
their
conceptuality.
The same is
true of emotions.
We return here to those debates that see
language (for Chomsky) or classification (in Fiel's
work) as wired in to the human species and there-
fore subject to genetic laws, as distinct from
other linguists who see natural languages as
highly differentiated and subject to cultural learn-
ing. Undoubtedly there are universal features that
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND SENSATIONS 25
13 Such cultural variabili-
ty
has
recently
been
considered
by
Harr6
(ed.)
1986, by
Lutz 1988 and
1986, by
Wierzbicka
1995 and
by
Turner
(forthcoming).
may
or
may
not be
genetically controlled;
there
are also
many
cultural variations in the
expres-
sion of emotions 13. Amity, cathexis, is
obviously
as
widespread
as the feuds and
enmity
to which
we have referred and the basis of a considerable
range
of social
life; kinship,
Fortes
maintained,
embodies "the axiom of
amity". Amity, friendship,
is a diluted form of
love;
or love an intensified
form of
amity.
That is
especially
so with sexual
love,
whether between the same or
opposite sex,
which is discussed under various
headings,
passionate, romantic, conjugal
and more recent-
ly congruent.
A dominant view of
Europeans
is
that their continent invented this
sentiment,
or at
least that of romantic love. De
Rougement
and
many others, including
the
great
medievalist
George Duby,
have seen it as
emerging
in twelfth
century
France at the time of the troubadours. In
my
view this contention
gives
insufficient
weight
to the Islamic influences on
Spain
from which the
troubadours drew so
extensively.
A much later
beginning,
still
European,
is
envisaged by
modern
historians like Lawrence Stone and
following
him
by sociologists
like
Anthony
Giddens who have
seen the
development
of love as
taking place
during
the
eighteenth century, predominantly
in
England, along
with
capitalism, industrialisation,
'modernisation' and the nuclear
family.
Romantic
love has been
regarded
as a characteristic
aspect
of the unrestricted choice of
partners,
when this
process
was freed from
parental
constraints. It came to mark not
only
the relations
between the
couple
but those with their children
as well, giving
rise to the 'affective
family'
of
modernity.
Such a
periodisation
of the
history
of the
sentiment of love has not been
accepted by
all.
Other
historians,
like Paul
Veyne
on
Rome,
have
seen these discussions as
being thoroughly
ethnocentric,
or rather chronocentric.
Certainly,
in
the domain of
literature, there were
expressions
of love of all varieties in the work of
Sapho
as in
that of
Ovid,
not to
speak
of the records of Roman
Egypt analysed by
Keith
Hopkins.
And if one looks
at Indian
literature, including
Sanskritic love
poet-
ry and the books of instruction in love-making like
the Kama Sutra, and further east too at the
anthologies of Chinese poetry that date from well
before the Greeks had developed their alphabet,
one has evidence of similar sensations,
emotions and sentiments in Asia.
Each of those societies possessed writing
and developed a discourse and sentiment of love
in
literature,
in the written word.
Significantly
one
finds little elaboration of the discourse of love in
the oral cultures of Africa, except
in those areas
where
Islam,
with its written love
poetry
and
epic,
has made an
impact.
Elsewhere
certainly
the
conception
of
amity
and of
loving relationships
exists. Not all is
pure
lust and sex as some Euro-
peans,
whose own interaction in that continent
may
have been
virtually
limited to the commercial
or
exploitive, suppose.
Indeed the Africans
may
have had reason to take a similar view of Euro-
peans
when one recalls their demands on the
population,
much less events in West Africa as
recounted in the life of Trader Horn where a local
woman was locked in a
cage
with a
monkey
to
amuse the
onlookers,
not to
speak
of the innu-
merable crudities and cruelties of
slavery
and the
slave trade. But what we do not find in Africa
South of the
Sahara,
in
my experience,
is
any
extensive verbalisation of those sentiments in
oral forms
(in song,
in
folktale,
in
mythical
recita-
tions)
and
perhaps
in
ordinary speech
itself. What
an elaboration of the sentiment of love
requires
is a measure of
separation
and idealisation that
writing (which permits
verbal communication at a
distance) encourages.
As with the kind of exten-
sive
love-play
found in Indian and Chinese
sources,
it was also assisted
(like writing) by
the
existence of a leisure class who could
freely
engage
in such elaboration. In this
respect
it is
significant
that the
particular
cultures to
develop
these sentiments to a
high degree
were
post-
Bronze
Age
ones
possessing writing.
Even the
periods chosen, wrongly
I
think,
as
marking
the
origin
of love in
Europe,
were ones where the use
of the written word
greatly expanded,
in the
twelfth
century
at the time of the
troubadours,
at
the Renaissance with the
acquisition
of
printing,
in the
eighteenth century
with the
expansion
of
the
reading public
and the
development
of the
novel, and for
'congruent
love' with the mass
circulation of
newspapers
and
magazines
that
have further
opened up
and elaborated the
subject
for a wider audience.
In other words while the basic sentiments
(feelings, sensations) of love and hate are univer-
sal (and in this context I find Fortes' anthropo-
logical universalism more intellectually satisfying
than the historian's ethnocentric particularism),
their elaboration is a feature of written cultures,
not necessarily of all, and it occurs in different
ways at different times, so that practices differ
somewhat in France and in England. Nor can this
26
GOODY
'" Burke 1998: 198.
15
Burke 1998: 198.
elaboration
(and
these
differences)
be consid-
ered a
superficial,
external matter because it
takes
place
in
writing;
the written is externalised
thought
which is in turn
reflexively
interiorised
by
the reader and indeed
by
the writer. For
example,
the written
expressions
of others are
incorporat-
ed into our own
system
of
feelings.
The line
"my
love is like a red red rose" becomes
part
of our
own
perceptions
of the nature of the
relationship;
that is one of the functions of
poetry
and
why
we
turn so
readily
to Robert Burns or to John Donne
or to
Shakespeare
when we are in love.
That
suggestion
seems
strongly
reinforced
by
Peter Burke's comments on the discourse of love
in the
European
Renaissance. A social
practice
through
which the Renaissance entered
every day
life,
he
claims,
was
writing verses, expecially
sonnets about love in the manner of Petrarch to
Laura. "The
praises
of the
lady
in terms of
roses,
lilies,
coral and
alabaster,
and the
paradoxes
of
the beloved a 'dear
enemy',
the lovers' 'sweet
torment'
(dolce tormento)
and the
'icy
fire' all
passed
into the
language
of love" 14. "To speak
or
write in this
way
was a kind of
game".
The
writing
of
letters, especially love-letters,
was another
practice
which owes much to classical and Italian
models. Like
sonnets,
letters were
supposed
to
be an
elegant expression
of
commonplaces,
a
new
permutation
and combination of items
already
familiar. Model love-letters formed a
genre
of their own. "The charms of the loved one
were described in a formalistic
manner",
in the
manner of Petrarch
1'.
Does the same
happen
with other
emotions,
feelings, sentiments, sensations? Are
any
of
the other emotions
similarly
'stretched' in writ-
ten communications? In situations of
ingrati-
tude we
may
well have recourse to the words of
Lear's
daughter
Cordelia or in the moments of
impotence
to those of Lear
himself:-"As
flies to
wanton
boys
are we to the
gods".
Shake-
speare's
words
govern
our
feelings.
Harold
Bloom has
recently
elaborated this idea of the
dramatist's influence on our emotions and our
attitudes to life. Nor is
poetry
the
only
source of
elaboration, though the concentrated,
metaphoric quality of its 'memorable speech'
makes it particularly repeatable. The Bible can
serve a similar purpose, whether the Song of
Songs, Ecclesiastices, or injunctions to charity.
Basically this process of incorporation is an
aspect of the reflexivity of writing, all the more
significant when we are dealing with great liter-
ature. It is not so much literature
reflecting
life
as life literature.
At the most
general level, writing encourages
reflexivity
and meditation. Indeed such reflection
is intrinsic to
writing
in a
quite
mechanical
way,
since the
activity
of
writing,
and above all of read-
ing,
call for a measure of
separation
from the
other activities of social life in order to
get
the
task done. Silence is
(optimally) required;
the
dialogue
has to
stop.
However
reading
the elabo-
rated
thoughts
of
others, transforms,
as Burke
indicates,
one's own
expression
of emotions.
These
suggestions attempt
at once to
recog-
nise universal and
particular
elements in senti-
ments and
sensations,
like
jealousy, shame,
anger,
and to draw attention to their elaboration
in
writing,
I am
suggesting
a mechanism for the
development
of certain cultural
differences, one
that
may
well
explain
that old chestnut of shame
and
guilt cultures,
the first
being oral,
the latter
written. This is a far
cry
either from notions of the
incomparability
of
cultures, popular
with
post-
modernists,
or from those of
'mentalities', popu-
lar with some historians. I shall not elaborate on
the first since
my analysis
of love would
place
limits on
particularism
and
incomparability.
But
the notion of
mentality might
seen closer to
my
position.
It is
not;
as G.
Lloyd
has
argued
it is a
crude notion that is often
applied
in a
highly
ethnocentric manner. Take the
paradigmatic
case
of
Aries'
study
of
changing
attitudes to
childhood,
which he locates in sixteenth
century Europe,
but
which is now
largely
discredited.
Accordingly
to
him,
and the thesis is
adopted
and
supported by
Lawrence Stone for
England,
the shift in senti-
ments, described in even broader terms as a shift
in
mentalities, occurred when the rates of infant
mortality
were reduced and when
parents
no
longer
saw their children as
temporary
visitors to
this world but as more
permanent
denizens on
whom one could lavish affection without
experi-
encing
an almost inevitable
disappointment,
disil-
lusionment,
indeed
rejection,
as the result of
their
premature
death. After that
shift,
children
had toys, were no longer just little adults, but
were part of a whole construction of childhood.
Factually Aries is simply wrong about earlier and
other cultures. At that time the difference in
mortality between Europe and Asia was not all
that great and in any case there were many ways
of coping with loss. Other societies certainly had
a concept of childhood; other children had toys,
games and some life of their own. There were
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND SENSATIONS 27
differences between cultures and
epochs
but not
at the broad level
implied.
Children were almost
invariably
cherished
by
their
parents
and their
deaths were
always
mourned.
What is also
wrong
with the
concept
of 'mental-
ity'
in this context is that it is
given
an ethnocentric
twist; 'they'
do not have the same
capacities
for
sentiment as 'we' have. And that
deficiency
is
projected
into the whole mental
make-up, just
as
L6vy-Bruhl
did in his discussion of Primitive Mental-
ity,
which was based on the kind of
assumption
about differences that Rivers was
trying
to test at
the
physiological
level. One doesn't need to be an
extreme cultural relativist to see this as an inade-
quate response
to difference.
In
conclusion, physiologically
the activities of
the senses are characteristic of the human
species,
and little
average
difference is
apparent,
though
individual ones are. But
culturally
the
senses are
differently
conceived and
emphasized
in various
cultures,
with the
conceptual
inter-rela-
tionships being especially
elaborated in written
ones. As with
images
and other forms of
repre-
sentation,
at various times and
places
human
cultures have
expressed
doubts about the validi-
ty
of sense data as a means of
knowing
about the
world. Such doubts seem less
prevalent
in oral
cultures, perhaps
because
they
have not devel-
oped
the more
precise categorisation
of sense
experience
that we find in written cultures
(for
example,
the
Aristotelian);
and in
any
case
writing
always
tends to make the
implicit
more
explicit.
The
important
influence of
literacy
is
yet
more
apparent
with
sensations,
in the form of
feelings,
emotions or sentiments. While there are
many
similarities across cultures, and while there are
specific
societal interests and
conceptions,
one
main difference comes about with the invention
of
writing,
the
reflexivity
of which
promotes
the
elaboration of sentiments and of sensation. The
written mode of communication stimulates such
reflexivity, encouraging
a concern with the sens-
es,
sensations and
sentiments,
but both
posi-
tively
and
negatively.
That is to
say,
it
may
promote
both their
recognition
and their
rejec-
tion;
the emotions
may
have to be controlled in
the interests of social intercourse or indeed of
social
differentiation,
restraint for
example
some-
times
marking
the
high
from the
low;
at the same
time the senses
may
be
suspect
as a
way
of
knowing
the world. At times one element of this
polarity may
be stressed, at times another. But in
considering
the
senses,
we have to take into
account the
widespread
human worries about the
validity
of the data we receive
through
them and
those doubts
may
well affect the sensations and
sentiments that result from and
govern
our inter-
action with the external world.
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