The sense of smell in contemporary social sciences and human environment

Abstract

AbstractAcross the ages, attitudes towards particular senses and their hierarchization have shifted. The sense of smell is an element of almost every person's experience. Its impact is physical, psychological and social. Up to this day, smell has been an important element of social interactions, influencing social reception and the quality of interpersonal contacts. Although smell has not always been an object of researchers’ interests, and often its importance has been intentionally depreciated, the tension between disqualification and embrace of olfactory data has not stopped the development of osmological research, also in the social sciences. The first sociologist to pay attention to the important role of senses in the social process was Georg Simmel. Thanks to an innovative approach to senses as social entities, he changed not just the perspective on sensory events but also laid the foundations for the specialist area of the sociology of the senses. This text attempts at introducing the reader to the origins and evolution of the sociology of the senses, placing special attention on the sense of smell, as well as how the ongoing ‘aromatization of culture’ process is opening up a large field of sociological research.