The essences of multiculture: a sensory exploration of an inner-city street market

Abstract

This article applies methods and concepts derived from a ‘sensory turn’ within the social sciences to a street market, popular with migrants to East London, to explore the socio-sensory processes through which convivial metropolitan multiculture is produced. Arguing against critiques of ‘eating the other’ and reductive accounts of cross-cultural interaction (assimilation, acculturation, boutique cosmopolitanism, etc.), this article hones a sensory attention on the market place and reveals the ways urbanites come to live with difference and, between them, develop metropolitan multicultures.

Keywords:

• smell
• multiculture
• race
• taste
• street markets
• urban

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alex Rhys-Taylor

ALEX RHYS-TAYLOR is a Lecturer and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London.