Socio-Sensory Practice and its Potential for Identity, Plurality and Dissonance

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the consideration of sensory embodied practice offers a route to unraveling subtle and nuanced placemaking practices of multicultural communities, revealing the physical, cultural and social interplay of everyday interactions. While a sensorial epistemological approach has been a relatively recent development in the humanities and social sciences, the ‘body’ has been theorised extensively. Even so, this has been of a generic body that is typically white, male and middle class. The embodied practices I present here affirm that bodies are social, sensorial and multiplicitous. Drawing from fieldwork in the multicultural Melbourne suburb of Footscray, I discuss the socio-sensory, through two types of sociality encountered on site; firstly, around economic activities, and the other around small groups of individuals, appearing unplanned and leisurely. I discuss the significance of these embodied acts in defining identity and validating presence in the urban landscape, demonstrating the sensescapes they create, informed by culturally specific sensory orders carry the potential to challenge – permeating and confronting, implicitly providing a means of expression and dissonance. I argue, consideration of the socio-sensory dimension provides an alternative framework of analysis that expands vocabulary and recalibrates sensibilities, providing insight into other ways of making and occupying space.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiculturalism
• difference
• socio-sensory
• placemaking
• Footscray
• Vietnamese immigrants

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the editorial team and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this manuscript. Special thanks to Professor Anoma Pieris for her support and mentorship.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Kelum Palipane is Lecturer in Architectural Design at the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. Her PhD by Creative Works involved developing a design framework that would help retain and foster the diverse place-making practices of multicultural communities in neighbourhood regeneration projects. Through her research and teaching Kelum investigates how multimodal mapping and creative ethnographic methods can inform design in demographically complex urban conditions.

Notes

1 The ‘sensescapes’ in this article mean the ‘sensory landscapes’ of smells, tastes, sounds and other sensorial registers produced by cultures. The two words are used interchangeably throughout the article.

2 This article follows Gibson’s theorizing of ‘senses’ as perceptual systems; inseparable as modalities, and not the popular Western division into five separate entities historically attributed to Aristotle. The main reasons for this are that these groupings are constantly changing and being reconceived in scientific and philosophical theory and also because of the interconnectedness of the senses and the impossibility of separating sensory knowledge by modality Gibson (1977).

3 The sensory order or sensorium is described as ‘ … societies embodied cultural models consisting of the “sensibilities that are exhibited by people who have grown up within that tradition.”’ Geurts (2002).

4 Collins (1990); hooks (1981); Minh-Ha (1989).

5 Based on 2011 Census data, “Maribyrnong City Community Profile,” profile.id.com.au, accessed August 10, 2014. http://profile.id.com.au/maribyrnong?WebID=110.

6 “Footscray Birthplace,” profile.id.com.au, accessed 15 August, 2015, http://profile.id.com.au/maribyrnong/birthplace?WebID=110.

7 This is surmised from the fact that some of the largest recent immigrant groups originated from Vietnam, China, India and Bangladesh where the majority of the population are from rural backgrounds or are recent migrants to cities.

8 This study considered the experience of local residents of, and regular visitors to, selected urban spaces in Footscray, though in a limited way extends to casual visitors in so far as they have impact on these main focal groups. The study spots were identified based on popular routes people take as they move through Footscray starting from the station precinct to popular destinations.

9 I situated myself in specific spots along these routes and sensory rhythms associated with the occupation of space were identified and recorded, observing how they fluctuated over time across a period of 12hrs in each spot. To supplement the identified rhythms, ethnographic methods provided varying sources of information through different perceptual modes. These included both ‘non-participant observation’ and ‘participant observation’ methods. Non-participant observation involved photographic and video documentation as well as sound recordings to support the evidence of the identified sensory rhythms. Behaviour tracing or anthropological tracking was used to investigate traces of behaviour patterns left behind as evidence in the built environment (Thwaites and Simkins, 2007). In addition to this, written notes and sketches recorded impressions and insights. Participant observation involved joining others in embodied activities such as eating, walking, sitting and talking as opportunities arose, as well as sensory video tours (Pink 2009). Here, users introduced the sensory environment and sensory embodied practices while the researcher and users collaborated to explore a particular environment or everyday activity. For expanded details on methodology see article, ‘Multimodal Mapping – A Methodological Framework (Palipane 2019).

10 Click link for example of mapping diagram: https://www.dropbox.com/home/Multimedia_Intercultural%20Studies

11 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Aihwa Ong.

12 The discussion of which is deemed outside the scope of this paper.

13 Design implications for architecture and urban design are discussed in (deleted for peer review).

14 The layout of the text, photographs and links to multimedia follow the concept of ‘vertical montage’ as proposed by filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. It entails juxtaposing different modalities so that they are perceived as a unified whole. Adopting this method allowed me to retain the interrelationship between the different modes of sensory data collected on site. It also allowed the element of time to be represented.

15 An 'epistemic’ space is defined here as a space that is created by alternative epistemologies (of knowing, being and communicating) comparable to 'black feminist epistemology' as theorized by Collins (2000). I say these spaces are created by cultures through their sensory embodied activity and have the potential to challenge Eurocentric positivistic knowledge.