From fun to fraught: marketing to kids and regulating “risky foods” in Canada

ABSTRACT

In an era of industrialized food production, ultra-processed foods, “Big Food” marketing, and growing obesity rates, food has come to be framed as an object of risk – and as an object of regulation. Such reframing has fascinating implications related to issues of responsibility and decision making, especially when it comes to children’s food. This article probes the relationship between representation, regulation and “risky” consumption with respect to children’s food. I examine how child-targeted foods become framed as “risky” and what counts as “risky” food messaging under Health Canada’s commitment to restrict the marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Detailing the tension between food as a risk object and food as a child object, I suggest how issues of semantic provisioning and the politics of the unseen work to complicate and destabilize the (seemingly) straightforward process of prohibiting unhealthy food marketing to children.     

Odorous childhoods and scented worlds of learning: a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives in Western Europe (1900s-1960s)

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives which featured (non-)formal schooling, analyzing these as belonging to (a) scented and more generally sensed world(s) of learning. Working with photographs as sensory objects of affect, and using as examples Belgian and Luxembourg open-air schools and associated sanitary and social welfare provisions, the paper explores issues that have gone under-researched in sensory scholarship internationally: those of precise educational purposes, methods, processes and effects of sensory engagement, particularly pertaining to “smell”. Sensory practices and experiences and uses of senses generally are thereby traced in/as “situated, embodied” movements inextricably “enmeshed” with symbolism. The paper argues that while the educational goals underpinning the initiatives investigated and the approaches and practices characterizing these have changed, some (un)intended effects still have an impact today, for instance through Forest School as given shape in the United Kingdom. The concept of “odorous”, or rather “sensuous childhoods”, is proposed to denote ways that particular target groups have come to be imagined as in need of explicitly sensorial health and outdoor education.     

Ordering tasting in a restaurant: experiencing,socializing, and processing food

Sometimes there are moments in which German speakers will state that something schmeckt gut [tastes good]. Focusing on a family celebration in a restaurant in Austria, the paper considers how in three schmeckt gut moments, participants variously order “tasting” as a process of experiencing, socializing, and processing. It is argued that while it is possible to analyse how a person simultaneously experiences sensual qualities inherent in a particular dish, socializes with others, and processes food, these aspects are not equally relevant for the people involved in the “tasting”. Different modes of ordering “tasting” can exist next to each other such that a “tasting together in difference” takes place. Following from this, this article calls for further investigation into the practical achievement of “tasting together in difference” and the enabling role of care in this process. By shedding light on how tasting is done in practices of dining out in Western Europe, it contributes to a growing set of ethnomethodologically oriented studies on how tasting and taste are done in practice.     

Tasting off-flavors: food science,sensory knowledge and the consumer sensorium

Abstract

In food science and technology, understanding off-flavors has a significance with both technical and commercial implications. In the food industry in the United States, it is a widely held truism that consumers will not buy a product if they do not like the way it tastes or if it contains unpleasant flavors. But how can science determine when food is off putting, and how do scientists learn to address bad tastes in their experimental and technical practice? Based on ethnographic work with food scientists in the United States, this paper is a reflexive account of learning to taste off-flavors, a form of sensory learning that utilizes the scientist’s own body as a kind of instrument. The paper argues that a particular understanding of the consumer sensorium emerges through food scientists’ approach to off-flavors. This is an image of the consumer as a chemically receptive sensory system that is highly sensitive to compounds at trace levels. By utilizing the sensitivity of their own senses, food scientists exploit the relationship between distaste, memory and sensory perception as a form of training to produce future aesthetic memories of off-flavors that can be deployed in a technical context.     

Delicious molecules: big food science,the chemosenses,and umami

Abstract

Since the closing decades of the twentieth century, molecular techniques of mapping chemosensation (the chemical senses of taste and smell) have been woven into a universalizing, evolutionary explanation for human eating behavior. In a prominent example, umami (translated from Japanese as “savory deliciousness”) has come to be understood as the “fifth basic taste sensation,” elicited by the common flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG) along with other amino acids and ribonucleotides. Meanwhile, socialized associations of food desirability, undesirability, pleasure, and disgust have likewise come to be interrogated on the molecular level – in the oral cavity, in the brain, and throughout the gastrointestinal tract. In this paper, I abridge this molecularization of sensuous eating with the provocation that the sensory is affective is molecular is political. This phrase signals the stakes with which taste and smell are ontologized as fundamentally embedded in memory (and thus in affect and in culture); as conducted in train with corporate food and beverage research and development; and effected at molecular sites of transduction (chemical reception). It is to say that, in recent decades, the sensory and affective domains have been made molecular. And in the context of food science, that molecular knowledge is interested. This paper conducts a brief, critical accounting of how chemosensation is made knowable and actionable, and for what purposes. It suggests that the most authoritative knowledge of how taste and smell mediate human health (the sensory) is shaped by the corporate imperative to determine what chemical compounds humans register as pleasurable (the affective), and thus what food products humans can be relied upon to buy (the political). As a result, a lack of scientific consensus on wider questions of metabolism – of glutamate, for instance – is built into chemosensory science, which has privileged the work of product design.     

芝加哥舞女、中国洗衣工与北平囚犯:都市中的陌生人

本文指出，受齐美尔“陌生人”命题启发的“边缘人”概念，体现了形式社会学与美国实用主义在芝加哥学派理论中的交融，并催生了以考察个体生命史为核心的研究方法。通过比较二十世纪初芝加哥学派的学者运用生命史的视角对三类都市陌生人（芝加哥舞女、中国洗衣工与北平囚犯）的研究，本文考察不同人群的新旧历程及其进入都市新生活的不同状态。研究发现，无论是身处异国的中国洗衣工，还是背井离乡进入城市生活并沦为罪犯的中国农民，都不能以“边缘人”抛弃乡土与家族的个体化方式进入都市生活。文章最后尝试以帕克对“文明”的讨论来解释现代个体进入都市生活时呈现的不同状态。     

A touch of luck and a “real taste of Vegas”: a sensory ethnography of the Montreal Casino

ABSTRACT

In recent years, there has been an explosion of “experiential design” in casinos, driven in part by research suggesting that curating gambling sensescapes can lure patrons to spend more time – and money – inside the casino. Building on the promise of existing casino ethnographies, this paper argues that a sensory ethnographic approach to the study of gambling environments can offer valuable insight into the experiential design and mood management of the casino. We use sensory ethnography to explore the ambiance of the Montreal Casino, particularly during the casino’s “Vegas Nights” promotion. How does the casino feel (and how does it touch back)? What rhythms flow through its neon labyrinth? What does “getting a real taste of Vegas,” well … taste like? Moreover, we position this ambiance at the center of the casino’s “push-and-pull” approach to problem gambling – where this government-affiliated sensory extravaganza must toe a tenuous line between attraction and responsibilisation. In addition, we examine how the ambiance of the casino is co-produced by patrons and employees. Ultimately, we argue that the casino floor is unlike a sensory research laboratory – for here, sensations mix and mingle, and it takes a sensory ethnographer to quite literally “make sense” of the casino ambiance and its impact on visitor experience.     

Why Aesthetic Patterns Matter: Art and a “Qualitative” Social Theory

This paper argues that an explanation of the role of aesthetic patterning in human action needs to be part of any “qualitative” social theory. It urges the social sciences to move beyond contextualism and to see art as visual, acoustic and other media that lead to heightened sensory perception and the coordination of feelings through symbols. The article surveys the argument that art provides a basic model of how the self learns to interact with external environments; and the complementary thesis that art could be seen as integral to the emergence of systems of human knowledge, communication and economy. Ornamentation and stylization are advanced as two concrete devices through which human attention is captured and experience is ordered through aesthetic patterns. The conclusion is drawn that art offers the social sciences a meaningful account of the perceptual or “qualitative” dimensions of social interactions; and that this is much needed today.     

乡土社会“中心个人”的文化生产与当代转型--以河南省路村调查为例

从差序格局入手,讨论并澄清“中心个人”的概念与内涵;以河南省路村的田野调查资料为例,阐释了成功“中心个人”所需具备的文化特质：会做人、公平公正、为集体利益考虑。这三个特质形成递进结构,一起建构了“中心个人”的文化生产。在后集体时代的当下,文化生产的结构发生了根本变化,公平公正与为集体利益考虑日益为个人利益合理化所替代,“中心个人”呈现出痞子型人物的趋势;借助克里斯玛权威概念,分析了“中心个人”具有的草根权威特征,进而深化对乡土社会地方政治的理解。     

“Precedent” in the Narrative of Chinese Legal History

中国法律史叙事中，以西方概念体系为基本框架的填充式方法，值得深入反思。中外学者关注的“判例”堪为典型。这一近代概念很可能来自日文汉字，用以迻译西文。回顾西欧英、法两国的历史和现实，判例作为以个案方式凝聚法律群体共识、指引未来案件裁决的形式，始终具有重要作用。这一功能，与中国古代法中的相关制度有部分共通之处，可以成为构建普适理论体系的基础之一；同时，中国的相关制度具有特定的体制背景和功能。将普适功能与特定功能相结合，“双向功能主义”可能可以避免西方中心和概念纠结，转向功能性问题的探讨和解释，以逐步构建中国法律史叙事的新框架。

关键词: 法律史学方法论?判例?功能主义

The traditional way of describing the history of Chinese law, i.e., fitting Chinese historical materials into the basic framework of the Western conceptual system needs to be thoroughly reconsidered. “Precedent” or “判例” (panli), which has attracted academic attention both in China and abroad, can serve as an example in this regard. The concept “判例,” which may have originated from Japanese kanji in the nineteenth century, was used to translate its Western counterpart. A review of the historical and modern practice of the Western European countries of England and France shows that precedent has always played an important role in achieving consensus in the legal community and guiding future rulings by means of case law. This function, which has something in common with the relevant portions of ancient Chinese legal institutions, can serve as a foundation for constructing a universal theoretical system. At the same time, the relevant Chinese institutions had specific institutional contexts and functions. By combining universal and specific functional analysis, “two‐way functionalism” may be able to avoid the Western‐centric approach and futile conceptual discrimination and turn towards the exploration and elucidation of functional issues, so as to eventually establish a new framework for the narrative of Chinese legal history.     

An Analysis of Japan’s Interpretation of History over the Seven Postwar Decades

During the seven decades since the war ended, Japan has undergone “changes of direction” involving group expressions of regret, accompanied by the intellectual “soul-searching” of quite a few academics. Ultimately, however, the country has been unable to complete the “transformation” of its political values. Its consciousness of superiority, dating back to the Meiji era, and its dream of being restored to the status of a “normal country” have distorted Japan’s idea of the war and its interpretation of history. As a result, at the critical postwar moment when Japan most needed to develop a truthful view of its history, its national will expressed itself in the rejection of this possibility. Japan has manufactured Sino-Japanese friction and manipulated the United States, on the pretext of a supposed “China threat” into relaxing the constraints upon Japan, and has attempted to abandon the thought and deeds of the postwar international order. Not only has this repeatedly subverted the standards by which the international “left” and “right” assess Japan; it has also once again placed the Asia-Pacific region in a precarious position.     

Methodological naturalism,saturation, and Psychology's failure to save the phenomena

Many scientists and philosophers of science have argued that metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism represent distinct and separable philosophical commitments. This claim is true in the sense that metaphysics and epistemology reflect different philosophical projects. The major question of interest to psychologists, however, is whether at the pragmatic level of research designed to discover the psychological sphere in which we live our lives, the metaphysical and the methodological realms are so tightly interwoven that some important aspects of our humanity cannot be faithfully revealed without distortion, or even missed altogether. This paper argues that, in light of its intellectual origins, methodological naturalism is informed by metaphysical naturalism at the level of its formulation, and, thereby, is by its nature more apt to reveal phenomena of certain ontological types and less apt to faithfully reveal phenomena of other ontological types. In this sense, metaphysical naturalism cannot help but subtly shape psychological investigation and thus insert itself to some degree into our understanding of many important psychological phenomena. The work of the French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion, particularly his concept of “saturated phenomena,” is briefly discussed by way of a call for greater methodological openness in psychological research – an openness that will permit psychological scientists to better “save the phenomena” in their accounts of human experience.     

Acoustic Cocooning

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, car manufacturers increasingly underline their cars' interior tranquility. Both this acoustic condition and the availability of car audio sets enable drivers to transform their car into a highly personal, controlled and relaxing sonic bubble.

Yet how could the car, once a noisy contraction, evolve into such a space for acoustic cocooning? This article studies the introduction of car radio and interior car sound design in Europe between the 1920s and the 1990s. The car radio's meaning shifted from an artifact that brought companionship to lonely drivers, to an instrument that helped drivers to mentally block out their fellows on the road. At the same time, listening to engine sounds changed from a drivers' skill to a practice drivers had to de-learn. Moreover, car sound construction shifted from reducing noise to creating target sounds for specific consumer groups.

This article employs three forms of cultural analysis to understand these shifts: an “archeology of corporate culturology,” the symbolism of sound, and Gerhard schulze's theory on the experience society. Finally, by analyzing the rise of acoustic cocooning in the car, it aims to contribute to the study of “techno-cocooning”: the use of technology for creating sensory privacy.     

Norms and rationality. Is moral behavior a form of rational action?

This article addresses major arguments in the controversy about the “rationality” of moral behavior: can moral behavior be explained by rational choice theory (RCT)? The two positions discussed are the incentives thesis (norms are incentives as any other costs and benefits) and the autonomy thesis claiming that moral behavior has nothing to do with utility. The article analyses arguments for the autonomy thesis by J. Elster, A. Etzioni, and J. G. March and J. P. Olsen. Finally, the general claim is discussed whether norm following and norm emergence are utility maximizing. The conclusion is that the autonomy thesis is not tenable if one applies a wide subjectivist, social psychological version of RCT that includes the assumption of “bounded rationality.” The autonomy thesis is only compatible with a narrow version of RCT that excludes internal outcomes and that refers to norms that do not have external outcomes. It is argued that such a narrow version is not capable of explaining many forms of behavior social scientists are interested in.     

Designing flavors for mass consumption

Abstract

In the increasingly competitive market for processed foods after the Second World War, flavor assumed new importance in product design and development as companies struggled to gain advantage and entice repeat buyers. This paper examines the flavor profile, a novel sensory evaluation method developed by chemists at Arthur D. Little, Inc. (ADL), the storied Cambridge, MA consulting firm. Introduced in 1949, the flavor profile claimed to offer a reliable way of measuring and describing the subjective sensory qualities of products. Drawing extensively on archival material, I document the circumstances surrounding the development of the flavor profile at ADL, examine its uses, and consider the conditions that led to its widespread adoption by the food industry. By considering the flavor profile as both a scientific instrument for flavor measurement, and a practical tool for flavor design and development, I hope to illuminate a dark corner in the history of food industrialization: the values, ideologies, and contingencies that shaped how foods were made to taste in the postwar period.     

城里的“飘飘”：成都本地同性恋身份的形成和变迁

中国当代社会和经济的变迁，促进了同性恋身份及其身份社区的出现。本文根据在成都市所进行的田野调查，从建构主义的视角，考察了本地语境下三种男同性恋身份——“飘飘”、“同志”和gay的形成和变迁。尽管今天成都的男同性恋者在日常生活中交替使用上述三个身份称谓，但是三个称谓隐含了不同的文化参照和政治内涵。笔者认为“飘飘”身份在本地的同性恋历史传统和现代同性恋身份之间起到了一个承上启下的作用，而“同志”身份则极大地推动了中国当代同性恋者的表现形式从行为向身份的转变，促进了同性恋社区的形成和壮大。     

Manchester through the Ears

ABSTRACT

As part of a wider sensory ethnography on the development of place attachments and situated knowledge amongst international newcomers to a city (Manchester, England), this article tells the story of my collaboration with Phoebe, a student of acoustics from bandung, Indonesia. Using a participatory sensory ethnographic method, Phoebe was encouraged to devise her own contribution to my project, which was modeled around her own sensory preferences and technological expertise. Our work together took place over a period of 4–5 months and yielded a series of soundscape compositions and accompanying narrative texts, all of which conveyed Phoebe's newly acquired sound-based knowledge, or acoustemology, of Manchester. Using narrative textual accompaniments to her recordings, Phoebe ascribes qualities to her surroundings that overlap with her own personal qualities, in effect showing how much she blends with her new city. As Phoebe and I subsequently listened to and “talked over” her soundscape compositions, they evoked sound marks, or sensory memories, of the landscape, sounds and music that Phoebe left behind in Indonesia. these sound-elicited interviews added further layers of emplaced knowledge to both of our constructions of the city.     

Taste™

ABSTRACT

Developments in intellectual property law (and its interpretation) have opened the door for new claims to “ownership” in the domain of food. From the copyrighting of recipes to the trademarking of the “cylindrical configuration” of the Cinnabon cinnamon bun, food and its sensory properties appears to be increasingly governed, channeled, and transformed by commercial demands and concerns over competition. The unique role of color in this phenomenon has yet to be explored, and this article traces how food, color, and the law intersect—as well as the significance of the overlap. Specifically, the article examines the varied and complex ways in which color tints our edibles, probing attempts at color control and the sometimes contested nature of the process. This exploration of food and color will reveal the central and often fraught role of the law in bolstering—and also shaping—the semiotic, symbolic, and cultural meaning of food and hue.