Abstract
The world of leisure is a sensual reality, especially strong with the odours of what the French cultural historian Alain Corbin gave the name ‘the foul and the fragrant’, and their emotional affects. Yet, when it comes to unpacking leisure in a critical way the significance and complexity of the olfactory system of institutions and norms is largely overlooked in leisure studies. What is more, although smell is something that shapes our leisure and which we all instinctively recognise it buckles under the pressure of leisure studies obsession with the visual and the verbal. It is with this in mind that this paper, drawing on my own ethnographic research, offers a critical assessment of the ways in which the olfactory system emerges in a form of leisure known as urban exploration. One important way of defining urban exploration would be to say that its adherents have the need for authentic leisure experience which is, for the most part, unmediated by deodorisation. As well as being viewed as ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘heterotopic’ - and because of this - urban exploration takes advantage of the olfactory system as it is used to stimulate fears, pleasures and the broader imagination as a different ‘taste’ of life is experienced. Following an introductory episode that draws the reader into the world of a group of urban explorers that is oozing with the earthy smells of decay and the honey tang of piss, the first section of this paper employs the seminal work of Corbin to unpack how modernity, which never ceases to evolve and transform, continues to have a powerful influence on social space and the olfactory system. What emerges from this discussion, though, is the suggestion that it is the other side of modernity (the one that operates under a certain poetics of putrefaction) that is also the perfect breeding ground for inflaming both the magical and painful feelings of nostalgia by exploiting this olfactory system. Thereafter, using Tony Blackshaw’s concept of the mundane and spectacular, the paper goes on to expand this idea by arguing that ‘the foul and the fragrant’ play a crucial role in the creation of heterotopic social space and its essential performativity.
Highlights
In this article, I am interested in exploring the idea that setting our focus on the senses can be useful when it comes to unpacking and understanding ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘heterotopic’ forms of leisure
It is important to note from the offset that this article is not suggesting that leisure scholars who employ ethnographies fail to explore and unpack how social space is produced, or that they do not examine how ‘radicalised’ and ‘deviant’ identities are established and reinforced through processes of spatialisation
I go on to expound an aspect of olfaction that seems to evade discussion in any serious depth in the field of leisure studies; I draw out the importance of smell in the way it contributes to a collective task of interpretation between a group of urban explorers
Summary
I am interested in exploring the idea that setting our focus on the senses can be useful when it comes to unpacking and understanding ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘heterotopic’ forms of leisure. To approach this task, I first take into account the historical influence of smell vis-à-vis the modern era and take note of how it continues to have an impact on social space in a contemporary leisure world. I go on to expound an aspect of olfaction that seems to evade discussion in any serious depth in the field of leisure studies; I draw out the importance of smell in the way it contributes to a collective task of interpretation between a group of urban explorers. What this means is that this interpretation accepts there are two levels to olfaction. My study was centred around a group of urban explorers who are known collectively as WildBoyz.
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