Urban landscapes are usually thought of first and foremost as engineered formations designed for functionality. It is quite clear, however, that cities and towns are sites of social structure, scenes of diversity, and hotbeds of transgressions. They are also sources of satisfying social relationships, settings for actions negotiated on an everyday basis, and opportunities for kinesthetic and aesthetic experiences. Within these processes, the senses mediate engagement with the optimism of urban growth, the comfort of urban traditions, and a consciousness of the diverse relationships that embellish urban living, but also with the repellent sights and sounds that invade zones of comfort.
This book examines how qualities of place and their sensuous reorganisation elucidate particular sociocultural expressions and practices in urban life. The collection illuminates how urban environments are distinguished, valued, or reconfigured with the senses as media for evaluating authentic spaces and places that endure and change over time.
List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes about the contributors Sensory Urbanities: Excursions in the City (KELVIN E.Y. LOW AND DEVORAH KALEKIN-FISHMAN) PART I Sensory Inequalities 1. Climatic Environmental Bubbles and Social Inequalities (ERIK COHEN) 2. The Politics of Sensible Milieu: Sense, Deception and Charisma in Urban India (ROHAN KALYAN) 3. Senses of Distinction: Social Differentiation, Metro-Mobility and Daily Life in Ho Chi Minh City (CATHERINE EARL) PART II: Sensing Urban Space through Movement 4. Walking to the Beat: (Re)producing Locality through Walking Days (JULIA BENNETT) 5. Hearing Sonic Textures: A Fountain's Reciprocity with Sound, Embodied Spaces and Placemaking (ESTEFANIA ACOSTA AND GENEVIEVE DUVAL) 6. The Senses of the Interactional Self in the Uses of Pershing Square, Los Angeles (NATHALIE BOUCHER) PART III Delineating Sensescapes and Boundaries 7. Atmospheric Affinities: Olfactory Accounts of Aero-pollution between Smokers and Non-Smokers in Singapore (QIANHUI TAN) 8. Hybrid Noise: Peacock Wars and Sonic Imaginations of Palos Verdes (NED WEIDNER) 9. A Framework of Analysis for Urban Sensory Aesthetics: Looking at Sensescapes as `Brush Strokes' of an Urban Canvas (ALEXANDRA GOMES) PART IV Sensing Diversity in Social Relations 10. Sensory Disruptions in Creative City Planning (EMMA FELTON) 11. Trucking in Tastes and Smells: Adelaide's Street Food and the Politics of Urban `Vibrancy' (JEAN DURUZ) 12. Companion Species and a Multisensory Urbanism (HAMISH WIN) 13. Music and Ideology: Political Uses of Soundscapes (DEVORAH KALEKIN-FISHMAN) Expanding the Scope of a Sociology of the Senses (DEVORAH KALEKIN-FISHMAN AND KELVIN E.Y. LOW) Index
Kelvin E.Y. Low is Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, emerita, is a Senior Researcher in the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel.
