Scent-orship and Scent-iments on the Scent-ual: the Relational Geographies of Smoke/Smell between Smokers and Non-Smokers in Singapore

Abstract

Building on nascent conceptualizations of a sensory citizenship, I hope to extend the existing scholarship by bringing tobacco research into a productive conversation with emerging debates in sensory studies. Given that the senses mediate mundane social exchanges – I explore how the pungent stench of smoke that lingers on smoking bodies disrupts normative social scripts of being a neutral smelling, civic-minded individual – thus potentially rendering the smoker out of place in many non-smoking public places. By employing qualitative research methods, I investigate how olfactory similarity and difference can have repercussions on how smokers and non-smokers’ negotiate their citizenship subjectivities. In this regard, I argue that such divisions of difference that run along sensory lines have become a means of sorting out undesirable citizens from desirable ones as well as those that belong to the broader geo-body of the nation and those who do not.

Keywords:

• sensory citizenship
• smoking
• smell
• olfaction
• abject embodiment
• sensory relations

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qian Hui Tan

Tan Qian Hui is a socio-cultural geographer who studied at the National University of Singapore. Her work explores the mutual constitution of sensory subjectivities and corporeal spaces. She has published in Gender Place and Culture, Urban Studies and Social & Cultural Geography. [email protected]