Asia. An ethnography of fragrance: The perfumery arts of ‘Adan/Lahj By Dinah Jung Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. 284. Maps, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Appendices, Index.

Abstract

An ethnography of fragrance: The perfumery arts of 'Adan/Lahj By DINAH JUNG Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. 284. Maps, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Appendices, Index. doi:10.1017/S0022463414000654 This interesting and theoretically engaged ethnography is valuable and relevant in several respects. First, in poststructural and postmodern anthropological and ethnographic analysis there has been a critical awareness of culture-bound limitations of social science paradigms based on the privileging of the visual in knowledge construction, meaning interpretation, and social practice. This bias derives from Enlightenment and positivist traditions in the Western sciences and humanities, and until recently has influenced both choice of research topic and method of analysis. In the wake of ethnographic critique over the past twenty-five years (James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing culture, 1986; James Clifford, The predicament of culture, 1988; Susan Rasmussen, 'Making better scents in anthropology', Anthropological Quarterly, 1999; Paul Stoller, The taste of ethnographic things, 1989, Sensuous scholarship, 1997), many scholars now recognise that additional sense modalities, for example olfaction, are highly elaborated in many cultures where sense modalities are given diverse meanings and uses in various contexts, and change in meaning over time. In Europe, scent formed part of the medicine cabinet, but later became part of cosmetics, and acquired more frivolous associations, despite its partial resurgence in aromatherapy (Constance Classen 1997, 'Foundations for an anthropology of the senses', International Social Science Journal, 'Engendering perception', Body and Society, 1997; Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma, 1994; Alain Corbin, The foul and the fragrant, 1986). In many parts of the world today, scent or aroma is a culturally-elaborated medium of communication and mode of aesthetic creativity. Dinah Jung's fascinating study of the cultural, aesthetic, social, and ritual meanings and uses of perfumery in South Arabia and southern Yemen, specifically in 'Adan/Lahj, shows how the elaboration of 'natural' scents into cultural perfumes, incense, and other aromatic forms enjoys much prestige, and carries complex meanings transcending art and pleasure (though these, too, are important). This ethnography contributes to efforts in cultural studies, Middle Eastern studies, and socio-cultural anthropology to better understand diverse aesthetic and philosophical worlds, specifically, attitudes toward scent in diverse cultural settings and changes in these attitudes over time. Jung discusses current meanings and uses of scent and the art of perfumery, and also traces transformations in this practice (as affected by changes in gendered constructs, the political economy, new environmental concerns, and popular tastes) under the successive impacts of British colonialism, postcolonial relationships in Yemen, and globalisation. Jung's research is also timely, given the general tendency to emphasise politics, violence, and conflict in Middle Eastern studies in recent years; there is a need for more truly cultural studies of Arab-speaking and Muslim societies, in particular, their artistic and symbolic traditions. This study provides rich insights into the manufacture, uses, roles, and meanings of local perfumery (including what in English would be classified as both 'incense' and oil-based 'liquids'--though these labels do not do justice to the intricacy and vast array of local aromatic categories) in historical and contemporary perspective, and more: this author also relates perfumery culture and aesthetics to religion and ritual, gender, social stratification, politics, and globalisation, and traces perfumery transformations (in its manufacture, uses, changing forms, materials, and tastes) over different eras and in response to wider events. …