Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (review)

David Howes's study of sensuality in social and cultural theory opens with a survey and critique of the textual—and therefore "disembodied"—turn in ethnography, in which anthropologists moved away from the experiential mode of sensing patterns in culture to reading and writing culture. Howes also explores in considerable detail the countertradition within the anthropology of the 1980s and 1990s, in which writers such as Paul Stoller, Nadia Seremetakis, and others rooted meaning in the medium of the body. Arguing that we need to see all sensory phenomena as culturally coded in order to have a full-bodied experience of social life, Howes constantly emphasizes the need to understand the cultural formation of the senses through the theories and practices developed within the society under study. We need, he suggests, to explore a "continual interplay between sensuality and sociality" (p. 56).

Having set the theoretical framework, Howes proceeds to examine Melanesian sensory formations. He begins with an analysis of the Kula Ring exchange system in Massim, Papua New Guinea, before discussing eating habits, speech, and body decoration. There is an intimate link between the exchange system and becoming the subject of speech in Massim, where food and eating have little to do with taste and much more to do with community. Food consumption is an act of interiorization, associated with sluggishness and darkness, and food taboos are central to identity formation. Howes suggests that bodies in Massim are seen to have an acoustic dimension, just as noise and mobility are features of the shell in Kula exchange. Howes also explores the ways in which Trobriand Islanders in Massim value the acoustic power of words and not just the expressive potential of language.

Howes then looks at "gustatory cannibalism" (pp. 95–123), wherein Kula valuables are exchanged for body parts. Massim food preferences are governed less by taste than by the food's likeness to humanity. Exploring this data, Howes argues that there is a clear connection between edibility and humanity for Trobriand Islanders. Studying the role of "things" in Massim culture, Howes contends that Kula objects are "bundles of sensory powers" and that objects do not have the same "objecthood" as in Western culture (p. 112). Adapting the theory of oral mentality, Howes suggests that primacy is accorded to sound, which Howes describes as "noise-force" in Massim culture (p. 121). Here, intellect is associated with hearing and knowledge must be cast in verbal formulas.

Turning to the Middle Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, specifically the Kwoma ethnic group, Howes begins with a short description of the geographical location and conditions of the Kwoma, noting that visibility is low in the valleys, the ground underfoot is always mushy, and the swamp swarms, oozes, and smells of rot. Howes suggests that the premium on "hardening" the skin—mainly through cicatrization—in Kwoma is rooted in this geographical context of threats to the human body from the environment. Periodically, the Kwoma also bleed the body to prevent stagnation, a condition of which they are afraid because the swamps around them are still, stagnant, and corrupt. Looking at harvest ceremonies, Howes analyzes the role of noise and music as well as the emphasis on form and color over meaning in the use of decoration. Howes notes that Kwoma culture relies on a control of geographic, social, and bodily boundaries, with a concomitant fear of boundary crossing. Howes concludes with a short comparison of the Massim and Middle Sepik ways of distinguishing and ordering the senses, arguing that while the former seek linkages among the islands, the latter seek disjunction from their swamps and geography.

In the penultimate chapter, Howes mounts a considered critique of Freudian theory via a study of Trobriand culture. Suggesting that Trobriand anxieties are not about castration but have to do with olfactory details—the memories of defecating on one's father during one's infancy, for example—Howes argues that Freud...