Stoller, Paul. 2022. O gosto das coisas etnográficas: Os sentidos na antropologia. Translated by Marcelo Moura Mello. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Papéis Selvagens Edições.

Description:

Paul Stoller’s The Taste of Ethnographic Things heralded a “sensory revolution” in anthropology. By fostering a cultural approach to the study of the sensory and a sensory approach to the study of culture, he constituted the senses as both an object of study and a mode of inquiry. The book is replete with sensory awakenings. For example, Stoller records an incident in which a Songhai sorcerer ( sorko ) master rebuked him for being unable to discern the sound of a sick patient’s wandering soul as the master freed it from a heap of straw. The sorko observed, “You look, but you do not see. You touch, but you do not feel. You hear, but you do not listen. Without sight or touch, one can learn a great deal. But you must learn how to listen, or you will learn little of our ways.” The many sensations—colorful, sonorous, and aromatic, as well as delicious and disgusting—that Stoller evokes in the chapters of this book have inspired a legion of other anthropologists to engage in sensory-based social inquiry, or “sensory ethnography.” This book is sure to whet readers’ appetites for more “sensory studies.”

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