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An initial impulse towards a sociology of the senses was proposed by Georg Simmel in his 1907 essay ‘Sociology of the senses’) (1997 [1907]). Simmel’s agenda was not to establish a subdiscipline of a sociology of the senses. Rather, as part of an argument about the importance of a micro-sociology (1997 [1907]: 109) he focused on, as he puts it, ‘the meanings that mutual sensory perception and influencing have for the social life of human beings, their coexistence, cooperation and opposition’ (1997 [1907]: 110). He suggested that our sensory perception of others plays two key roles in human interaction. First, our ‘sensory impression’ of another person invokes emotional or physical responses in us. Second, ‘sense impression’ becomes ‘a route of knowledge of the other’ (1997 [1907): 111). Although Simmel concluded by proposing that ‘One will no longer be able to consider as unworthy of attention the delicate, invisible threads that are spun from one person to another’ (1997 [1907]: 120) it was a century later that sociologists began to engage seriously with this question. In part Simmel’s legacy encouraged sociologists to focus on a sensory sociology of human interaction. When I wrote the first edition of Doing Sensory Ethnography, published in 2009, coinciding with my own rather frustrated search for sociological research about the senses, Kelvin Low had recently confirmed the earlier assessment of Gail Largey and Rod Watson (2006 [1972]: 39) in his observation that ‘sociologists have seldom researched the senses’ (Low, 2005: 399). Nevertheless, some significant sociological work on the senses has since emerged, including that of Low himself, discussed below.

Although Simmel saw the ‘lower senses’ to be of secondary sociological significance to vision and hearing (1997 [1907]: 117), he suggested that ‘smelling a person’s body odour is the most intimate perception of them’ since ‘they penetrate, so to speak in a gaseous form into our most sensory inner being’ (1997 [1907]: 119). This interest in smell and social interaction has continued in the sociology of the senses. Largey and Watson’s essay entitled ‘The Sociology of Odors’ (2006 [1972]) also extends the sociological interest in social interaction to propose that ‘Much moral symbolism relevant to interaction is expressed in terms of olfactory imagery’ (2006 [1972]: 29). They stress the ‘real’ consequences that might follow from this (2006 [1972]: 30). For instance, they note how ‘odors are often referred to as the insurmountable barrier to close interracial and/or interclass interaction’ (2006 [1972]: 32) as well as being associated with intimacy amongst an ‘in-group’ (2006 [1972]: 34). Also, with reference to social interaction, Largey and Watson see odour as a form of ‘impression management’ by which individuals try ‘to avoid moral stigmatization’ and present an appropriate/approved ‘olfactory identity’ (2006 [1972]: 35). Low (who proposes that this approach might be extended to other senses (2005: 411)) also examines the role of smell in social interaction. He argues that

smell functions as a social medium employed by social actors towards formulating constructions/judgements of race-d, class-ed and gender-ed others, operating on polemic/categorical constructions (and also, other nuances between polarities) which may involve a process of othering. (2005: 405)

As such he suggests that ‘the differentiation of smell stands as that which involves not only an identification of “us” vs “them” or “you” vs “me”, but, also, processes of judgement and ranking of social others’ (2005: 405). Building on Simmel’s ideas Low’s study of smell (which involved ethnographic research) ‘attempts to move beyond “absolutely supra-individual total structures” (Simmel, 1997: 110) towards individual, lived experiences where smell may be utilized as a social medium in the (re) construction of social realities’ (Low, 2005: 398).