Page 112 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 12(2) (2024)

of non-original fragrances due to the legal void. nated communities studied, we have evidence
The main chapters of the Anthropology of Smell of representations of women associated with
also cover smell treatment in marketing, sexual- bad smells. Bad smell is associated with wom-
ity and eroticism, and smell in cultural heritage an’s morality, with ‘premarital virginity’ or ‘liv-
and museology. The book concludes with a final ing in sin’, and thus only attributed to her mor-
conclusion or last gasp. Numerous tables comple- al depravity, etc. The sexual dichotomy of odours
ment the book’s content, schematic illustrations between men and women reflects the social pow-
of typologies and conceptualisations of smell, er of one and the other and attributes to them
and photographs of numerous representations of odours with negative or positive labels.
smell and olfactory capacities, e.g. in sculpture Also important for anthropological episte-
and fine art and material objects from cultural mology are the descriptions of the results of the
heritage. The monograph is also accompanied by main studies of cultural odours in a global con-
112 a comprehensive index and a list of sources and text and the dismantling of fragmentary and
references, enabling readers to explore the olfac- partial references to odours in Slovenian ethnol-
tory theme’s various aspects further. ogy, cultural anthropology and cultural histo-
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 12 (2024), številka 2 / volume 12 (2024), number 2
The epistemological side of the book un- ry. The scientific monograph Anthropology of
doubtedly attracts particular attention in an- Smell thus focuses on (a) anthropological pres-
thropological reading, where the anthropology entations of linguistic-semiotic analyses of olfac-
of the senses and its research scope are presented, tory concepts; (b) anthropological comparisons
covering the study of the physical and cultural of different cultural meanings of smell between
aspects of smell and the role of smell in the sen- individual cultures and societies; (c) treatment
sorium, the system of all five human senses. The
anthropology of the senses studies the historical- of (sexual) behaviour and (religious) rituals in
ly culture-specific and contextual dimensions of which smell plays an important role; (d) the role
sensory perceptions, which are significantly re- of the manipulation of ambient smells in con-
lated to memories, emotions, experiences and sumer societies; and (e) the possibilities of ma-
cognition. In this book, the author focuses on nipulating smells in the representation of cultur-
the neurophysiological dimension of smell and al heritage in museological practice, in gallery
olfaction. She focuses on the mental concepts of and museum artefacts and performances.
different sensory orders in diverse cultures and The scholarly monograph also brings to-
the importance of the senses in everyday life. The gether the findings of major studies on the cul-
book highlights culturally specific variations of ture of smell, including references to the physical
senses and sensations, such as the highly cultur- and sensory characteristics of the people studied
ally specific case of the Malaysian hunter-gather- outside Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.
er Batek Negrito people, who, in their cosmol- The latter, in particular, reveals insights into the
ogy of the world, attribute smell to everything, colonial superiority of Europeans, the racialisa-
including celestial bodies, e.g. an unpleasant car- tion of peoples to whom pseudo-scientists attrib-
nal smell to the sun and a pleasant floral smell to uted intellectual inferiority and who were clas-
the moon. The mental concepts also address gen- sified into different racial typologies linked to a
der divisions: e.g. in Papua New Guinea, wom- greater ability to perceive smells, which consti-
en’s interiors are conceptualised as dark, juicy, tuted a particular aspect of alleged mental de-
and smelly, while men’s interiors are white, hard generation. Of course, these generalisations also
and odourless. The perception of odours attrib- applied to the lower social classes in European
uted to women according to the olfactory imagi- societies. Undoubtedly, these studies on the di-
nary depends on the power attributed to women mensions of power are of paramount importance
in a particular society. In many female-domi- for the exploration of a wide range of sensory do-