Abstract
For the last 15 years, sensory science has frequently been recommended to industrial actors to monitor odours, assess the quality of the environment and improve their factories’ functioning. Resident “sniffing teams” have been put in place in different contexts to assess odorous pollution. These teams are groups of local residents living in the neighbourhoods of industrial facilities, who have been trained to report pollution emissions. This article describes these teams as sensory devices and argues that their functioning relies on the consent of the residents to allow themselves to “be affected differently” by smells – from annoyance to interest and curiosity about odour recognition and reporting activity. This consent, which is based on an ‘ethic’ of sensing, centered on the sniffers’ own feelings, is delicate, tense and reversible, given the emotionally-loaded contexts of odorous pollution.
Highlights
Over the past 15 years in France, measuring odours has become a requirement for any industrial plant whose activities generate foul-smelling emanations likely to strongly disturb the neighbourhood
In view of the “discomfort” caused by these emanations, setting up ‘resident sniffing teams’ has been one of the managerial tools to comply with the odourneutral standards (Charvolin et al, 2015; Rémy and Estades, 2007)
These teams are groups of local residents living in the neighbourhood of industrial facilities, who have been trained to report odorous pollution emissions
Summary
Over the past 15 years in France, measuring odours has become a requirement for any industrial plant whose activities generate foul-smelling emanations likely to strongly disturb the neighbourhood. The second part of this article gives a detailed analysis of sniffing teams in action, by focusing successively on the construction of the collective, the setting up of the olfactory language, the dynamics of odour reporting and the operativity of this sensory science.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
