The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses

Tay Wilson is an associate professor of psychology at Laurentian
University.

Though it purports to be something much more grand, this is a loose
collection of papers dealing with the role of different sensory
modalities across different cultures. The quality and readworthiness of
the articles varies greatly; furthermore, it is not recommended that the
reader spend much time on the introduction to the book. In many of the
articles, what on first impression appears to be a powerful abundance of
supportive detail disintegrates, on consideration, into structures much
too flimsy for the contentions being made. However, in Part 1,
Synnott’s article reviewing philosophers’ struggles to comprehend
the senses is useful. In Part 2, the contrast in quality between
Feld’s solid attempt to describe the Kaluli Drum sound experience and
Daniel’s trivial hopscotch treatment of the pulse in Siddha medicine
could hardly be greater. I also felt myself to be on relatively solid
ground with Kuiper’s discussion of taste in Weyewa. In Part 3,
Griffen’s notes on the Moroccan sensorium appear to provide a solid
base on which to build without making a series of shaky conclusions. It
is to be hoped that further work in the area will build on the solidity
of the above-mentioned articles and eschew the poorer examples of facile
speculation based on insufficient data and poor and uncritical
scientific method that characterize too much of the rest of the book.