Doing Sensory Ethnography

by Sarah Pink

This bold agenda-setting title continues to spearhead interdisciplinary, multisensory research into experience, knowledge and practice.

Drawing on an explosion of new, cutting edge research Sarah Pink uses real world examples to bring this innovative area of study to life. She encourages us to challenge, revise and rethink core components of ethnography including interviews, participant observation and doing research in a digital world. The book provides an important framework for thinking about sensory ethnography stressing the numerous ways that smell, taste, touch and vision can be interconnected and interrelated within research. Bursting with practical advice on how to effectively conduct and share sensory ethnography this is an important, original book, relevant to all branches of social sciences and humanities.

Genres: Anthropology, Research Methods, Academic, Nonfiction, Ethnography, Research

232 pages, ebook

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

Sarah Pink is Professor in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT.

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book. I have enjoyed Sarah Pink's work in the past. Chapter six on visual ethnography is the best material in this monograph: there is engagement with Gunther Kress's concept and theory of multimodality.

The foundational argument is straight forward. Ethnographers require a multi-sensory engagement with their research environment. There must be attention to sound, vision, olfactory and touch-derived data.

The underplayed element of this book is how to structure, moderate, manage and track diverse sensory data. In other words, how do researchers move from sensory experience to sensory expertise? Multimodality and media literacy theory would provide the scaffold and structure for this movement. That perhaps in the next book.

But if readers want to read a justification for ethnographers activating multiple senses for engagement - then this book can provide that justification. In keeping with Pink's expertise, visual media dominate this book. Aurality and orality is underplayed.

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as inspiring or practical as I had desired (sigh).

[Eliot Fiend · Rating 4 out of 5]

crucial if you are interested in the idea of sensory ethnography, or attending more to sensory experience in doing ethnography, or thinking critically about sensory experience in relation to ethnography (like--the privileging of visual experience, timelines and examples of ethnographic fieldwork, attending to the nonvisual in meaningful ways). i got a lot from this book but more from "a different kind of ethnography," probably.

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect for an advanced undergrad or grad seminar on ethnographic methods, sensory anthropology, and/or embodiment.

[Keri Swenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent, but needlessly verbose. I can't imagine what the second edition did for this book since all the studies, including the author's, were dated (the most recent were from the early 2010's).

[Lisa Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful book if you are looking for resources for a literature review pertaining to space, place, and ethnographic methods