Home is experienced in a multitude of ways using our senses. Impressions of our past and present homes materialize from a familiar smell, sight, feeling, taste or sound. We all live in a multi-sensory environment, where we can use one or more of our senses on a daily basis to absorb our surroundings. However, it is easily arguable that although each sense can conjure up a memory, or imprint a grasp of where we live or lived, certain senses are stronger with the recollection or the feelings we have of our home. If we live in the same home as other people, some of us will associate a certain smell to the home, while others will not; or a sound, etc., that I would not associate with that home. I will be pursuing the reasons why we absorb our environments …show more content…
Every person uses their senses to experience their environment differently. It could be because of social and human agencies that influence how they can utilize their senses in a particular way, or it could be how their own personalized hierarchy of senses differs their perceptions in a multi-sensory situation. I want to start by defining what sensory ethnography is, as per Sarah Pink 's explanation found in the beginning chapter of her book "Sensory Ethnography". Pink describes it as an "ethnography to explicitly account for the senses" (Pink 2015 p. 7). It takes the traditional ethnographic approaches used by anthropologists such as participating, living, and qualitative examination and creates a "re-thought ethnography as gendered embodied, and more ... [i]n doing so it draws from the theories of human perception and …show more content…
I found that three out of five senses were difficult for me to go into detail about, and only two had strong connections to memories: smell, and taste. When writing about my present home, my ocular and auditory senses were easiest to research, while the others could not be easily connected. For touch, I couldn 't use present or past, and so I had to consider instead how touch is associated with what I think of my future. While I discussed my findings with the people I share my home with, as well as family I used to live with, my findings were completely different compared to their ideas. We all live(d) in the same environment, and experience roughly the same things at home, and yet, we all associated different things. Diego, my fiancé, who I share the house with along with his mother and sister, said that home sounded like his mom doing dishes. His mother said her home sounded like the creaking of an old house. I, on the other hand, recorded that the home sounded like screaming children from the daycare in the basement. I also compared my findings with my mum when looking at the past. I said that memories of home smelled like Christmas. She could not think of a scent, but disagreed that our home smelled like Christmas. We both agreed that the taste of tea was easily associated with home,
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process; basic sensations, perception, and the associations of memory (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a meaningful structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. There are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body and not by the mind (consciousness).
The first, which he refers to as the “weak view” (5), is that we simply perceive with different sense modalities (e.g. touch, taste, vision, etc.). But, this view appears inadequate in the face of physiological and experiential evidence. O’Callaghan points out that neurological pathways activate in unison, and that our perception appears to us as one continuous experience, rather than subdivided into individual experiences of each different sense. (6) O’Callaghan admits that the senses often outwardly appear to be unimodal, experience does not seem broken up into different senses but appears continuous. He then goes on to support this claim with evidence from psychological
Our five senses –sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch help the ways in which we perceive the world around us. And while they seem to work independently at time they can effect each other and the way we comprehend something. Seeing something pretty, touching something soft, eating something cold and smelling something rotten are the sense we use to connect with the world around us and will all effect how we move forward in that situation. When you look at the top picture say the color of the word not the word itself. It is harder than it seems and takes a little practice to do it efficiently. It is because we see the spelling we were taught not the color it was written in. It is hard to process it the other way, but not impossible. Take the bottom picture for another example is this a
Intervention strategies that enhance information processing, praxis, and engagement in daily life for individuals, populations and organizations
What is memory for and how does it work? Suppose that memory and conceptualization work in the service of perception and action. Conceptualization is the encoding of patterns of possible physical interaction with a three-dimensional world. These patterns are constrained by the structure of the environment, the structure of our bodies, and memory. Thus, how we perceive and conceive of the environment is determined by the types of bodies we have. Such ...
In the field of academia, ethnographic studies are often overlooked as a serious source and reviewed as literature for the mass populace. Because of the often common language, fluid writing styles, format, and production of typical ethnographies, it is much more appealing and attainable to popular culture than the research within a scholarly journal or anthology. Although, perhaps instead of deeming ethnographic work unworthy of a scholarly title due to the appeal it possess, historians should relish in this relativity new form of research for its popularity. Ethnographic studies provide readers with a rare and untarnished micro historic view of the customs of a particular culture or individuals within said culture. Opposing most academia, these studies can sometimes be void in political agenda and personal biases, providing the audience with more objective material. Ethnographies often allow readers to see private and intimate moments within the milieu of the subject which is not often reserved for public life, which is the typically sphere of scholarly study; because of this tendency, individuals and groups which lack a strong public voice are frequently the foci of ethnographic studies. Throughout history women have often been the victims of such marginalization, with a recent focus on Eastern and Islamic women. Considering the previous, Muslim women and gender have been the center of contemporary ethnographic studies, giving a voice to non-Westernized Muslim women and providing a natural research of gender relations with little bias or political agenda.
Ethnography is a research method used to explore different cultures from a personal view. Many anthropologists have sought to use ethnography as their main study method because of its specificity and opportunity to get hands on. Those that participate in ethnographies are expected to accurately record detailed accounts of the society in which they are staying, but at the same time maintain a critical distance.
Cognitive mapping are imaging of the attributes of our environment, according to Edward Tolman, (1948). Tolman, suggested that cognitive mapping are also a mental picture or image of a person’s physical environment. For example, my best friend moved away to Texas ten years ago. Nonetheless, we were college roommates back some twenty years ago. When, I decided to celebrate my 50th birthday five years ago, she decided to come back and celebrate my birthday with me. When, she got off the train, I gave her precise directions because of my cognitive mapping which were the images of the important streets that she should follow to be able to come directly to my house without getting lost. My cognitive mapping skills allowed me to create a mental
Without the combined use of perception, emotion, logic, and language, my ability to pursue knowledge and gain an understanding of the world around me is limited. For me, measuring the success of the pursuit of knowledge is based on the fact that I am able to comprehend knowledge from multiple viewpoints, and not be restricted to a certain way of thinking. In Maslow’s quote, being only restricted to one tool, or way of knowing, is an issue for me to pursue knowledge because of the restrictions and barriers that exist when my focus is only on one way of knowing. In the case of sense perception, I am incapable of processing knowledge when other ways of knowing are neglected. Through this, I propose the following knowledge issue: To what extent is perception a restrictive factor on an individual’s ability to comprehend and pursue knowledge? Because the use of perception is so interlocked with other ways of knowing, such as emotion and logic, the problem exists in the fact that perception is a tool that is dependent on other tools.
Across the room is Immanuel Kant. At certain times of the conference he shakes his head in agreement; but in others he gives a quizzical, almost uncertain look, and gently shakes his head sideways. Many in the conference are neglecting to discuss the topic of sensory impressions, seemingly taking their beliefs for granted. Kant, on the other hand, like Hume, believes that sensory impressions are how we understand the world. However, unlike Hume, our mind shapes the world with these impressions; the mind arranges the sensations, transforms them into objects. After all, sensations cannot arrange themselves, yet humans constantly see a variety of sensory impressions as physical objects.
It all comes down to the mechanics of our senses and nature of our awareness. The self and the mind constitute a superposition of possibilities. The mind has many instruments with which to perceive, interact with, and interpret the world. The profound potential of these instruments are often exceeded by their limitations. The capacity of these instruments, and accuracy with which they interpret the world, to the mind, depend on the cognitive development and mindfulness of the individual; as well as that which is being observed. This constant input of data, happens at a conscious and subconscious level. This information informs emotions, behaviors, and world views. This system is analogous to a computer with many peripherals; necessarily limited, but sufficient to solve the average problem. Like the computer, our peripherals are governed by software; the sophistication of which, would appear to have many iterations, if observed at different points in history. Furthermore, this range of sophistication can also be observed within the lifetime of the individual. It is the neural sophistication of the human brain, which allows for, and institutes, the compartmentalization of this cavalcade of information, to help the individual navigate this reality. The brain both instructs and learns from its instruments. Our eyes distinguish light, determine depth, and assign color to the world. Our sense of smell allows for us to further identify and associate with our world. Ad to these, our hearing and sense of touch, and what we have is an experience; an ongoing image of
We as human beings utilize the five senses to process information about our surroundings. These senses help keep us safe. For example, we use our sense of touch to avoid picking up a hot pan, while our senses of smell and taste prevent us from cooking any rotten food in the pan. Our sense of sight allows us to see an oncoming train, while our sense of sound makes it possible to hear the train’s horn.
Scientists used to believe that a different part of the brain processed each of the five senses. As explained by Jennifer Groh, a neurobiologist,
Sensory systems are essential to a mammal’s survival and for providing important information concerning their internal and external environment (Hill et al., 2011). Sensory systems depend on specialized sensory receptor cells that respond to stimuli, either from the mammals’ internal or external environment (2011). One form of sensory is electroreception, which is the detection of electrical currents or fields in aquatic mammals and mechanoreceptors are specialized to respond to different types of mechanical stimuli, such as touch, taste, smell, etc. (2011). The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) exhibits electroreception with the help of mechanoreceptors to detect prey item while submerged in water.
As humans, we interact with the world around us in five main discernible ways: seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling. Appropriately, they are known together as the five senses, five clearly distinguishable ways we could familiarize ourselves with an environment or recognize a new situation which we have not encountered before. As discussed in class, they help the brain perceive the world around us in a way where we can understand and react to everything which is happening around us. It is not just humans who have these abilities either, as almost all animals rely on at least one sharpened sense to help them avoid danger on a day to day basis and survive in whatever environment they live in. While none of our sensory abilities may be the strongest ones individually compared to certain ones in certain other animals, what makes humans unique as a species is that we possess an ability to input the information all of