1 - From the Senses to Sensing in Interaction

Summary

The model of the five senses is persistent through Western culture since Aristotle. This chapter explores the contemporary debates that animate the study of the senses across disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. It also locates the specific approach of sensoriality developed in this book within this interdisciplinary landscape, insisting on the importance of language, the body and action. Grounded on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the book proposes a novel conceptual and analytical approach, focusing on sensing (rather than the senses) in social interaction, and insisting on the way sensing is embedded in situated actions and activities, and more specifically within social interaction. This provides for a conception of sensoriality that is social, praxeological, and intersubjective, based on the way people engage in sensorial practices mobilizing their body and talk, as well as the way these actions acquire their intelligible, accountable and normative character in and through social interaction.