Scent and Scent-sibilities

Scent and Scent-sibilities
Author: Kelvin E. Y. Low
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2008-12-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1443803065

Smells are distinct and ubiquitous. They envelope us, enter our bodies, and emanate from us. Yet, they remain relegated to the background of everyday life experiences. This book attempts to highlight the social salience of smell in social actors’ day-to-day encounters where issues involving morality and social othering, presentation of self, and personhood intertwine with analyses of smell as a social conduit. These encounters include the experiences of anosmic individuals, which capture non-olfactive social worlds that are rarely addressed hitherto. Further deliberations on olfaction in relation to social memberships of race, class, and gender, elucidate upon social boundaries of inclusion and exclusion constructed vis-à-vis smell as a social marker. Olfactive adjudications of race and class are then expanded upon through the author’s discussion of various smellscapes in the context of Singapore. Olfaction, sanitary discipline, and olfactive simulacra are also expounded upon, thereby underscoring the control and manipulation of scents in the contexts of modernity and postmodernity. Smells therefore offer insights into the workings of social relations and power structures in society. By predicating analyses on empirical data procured from Singapore, along with case studies from the region and beyond, this study draws much needed attention on smell which has been a neglected sense in the wider literature. In addition, the concurrent employment of the other senses will also be explicated, which therefore demonstrates the social character of smell and other sensory modalities through historical and contemporary milieux. This book is a pioneering effort in offering sociocultural interpretations of scents based on primary and secondary data analysed using the trajectory of sociology of everyday life.

Scented Visions

Scented Visions
Author: Christina Bradstreet
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2022-06-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0271092572

Smell loomed large in cultural discourse in the late nineteenth century, thanks to the midcentury fear of miasma, the drive for sanitation reform, and the rise in artificial perfumery. Meanwhile, the science of olfaction remained largely mysterious, prompting an impulse to “see smell” and inspiring some artists to picture scent in order to better know and control it. This book recovers the substantive role of the olfactory in Pre-Raphaelite art and Aestheticism. Christina Bradstreet examines the iconography and symbolism of scent in nineteenth-century art and visual culture. Fragrant imagery in the work of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, George Frederic Watts, Edward Burne-Jones, and others set the trend for the preoccupation with scent that informed swaths of British, European, and American art and design. Bradstreet’s rich analyses of paintings, perfume posters, and other works of visual culture demonstrate how artworks mirrored the “period nose” and intersected with the most clamorous debates of the day, including evolution, civilization, race, urban morality, mental health, faith, and the “woman question.” Beautifully illustrated and grounded in current practices in sensory history, Scented Visions presents both fresh readings of major works of art and a deeper understanding of the cultural history of nineteenth-century scent.

Scent and Chemistry

Scent and Chemistry
Author: Günther Ohloff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 654
Release: 2022-07-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3527829989

Scent and Chemistry Odor impressions have cast a spell over mankind since the dim and distant past. But even today, we are –consciously or subconsciously– guided by our sense of smell and the chemistry behind it. The prominent fragrance chemists Günther Ohloff, Wilhelm Pickenhagen and Philip Kraft convey the scientist, the perfumer, and the interested layman with a vivid and up-to-date picture of the chemistry of odorants and the research in odor perception. In this second thoroughly revised and updated edition they are joined by creative perfumer Fanny Grau, a rising master in this métier, who complements the scientific treatise by a concise introduction to the art of perfumery and its composition techniques. Besides this new chapter on the creative aspects of perfumery, the book details on the molecular basis of olfaction, olfactory characterization of perfumery materials, structure–odor relationships, the chemical synthesis of odorants, and the chemistry of essential oils and odorants from the animal kingdom, backed up by many perfume examples and historical aspects. It will serve as a thorough introductory text for everyone interested in the molecular world of odors.

Essence and Alchemy

Essence and Alchemy
Author: Mandy Aftel
Publisher: North Point Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1429936126

An artisan perfumer reveals a lost art and its mysterious, sensual history. For centuries, people have taken what seems to be an instinctive pleasure in rubbing scents into their skin. Perfume has helped them to pray, to heal, and to make love. And as long as there has been perfume, there have been perfumers, or rather the priests, shamans, and apothecaries who were their predecessors. Yet, in many ways, perfumery is a lost art, its creative and sensual possibilities eclipsed by the synthetic ingredients of which contemporary perfumes are composed, which have none of the subtlety and complexity of essences derived from natural substances, nor their lush histories. Essence and Alchemy resurrects the social and metaphysical legacy that is entwined with the evolution of perfumery, from the dramas of the spice trade to the quests of the alchemists to whom today's perfumers owe a philosophical as well as a practical debt. Mandy Aftel tracks scent through the boudoir and the bath and into the sanctums of worship, offering insights on the relationship of scent to sex, solitude, and the soul. Along the way, she imparts instruction in the art of perfume compositions, complete with recipes, guiding the reader in a process of transformation of materials that continues to follow the alchemical dictum solve et coagula (dissolve and combine) and is itself aesthetically and spiritually transforming.

The Secret of Scent

The Secret of Scent
Author: Luca Turin
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2007-10-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0061133841

One man's passion for perfume leads him to explore one of the most intriguing scientific mysteries: What makes one molecule smell of garlic while another smells of rose? In this witty, engrossing, and wildly original volume, author Luca Turin explores the two competing theories of smell. Is scent determined by molecular shape or molecular vibrations? Turin describes in fascinating detail the science, the evidence, and the often contentious debate—from the beginnings of organic chemistry to the present day—and pays homage to the scientists who went before. With its uniquely accessible and captivating approach to science via art, The Secret of Scent will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered about the most mysterious of the five senses.

The Smell of Slavery

The Smell of Slavery
Author: Andrew Kettler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2020-05-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108490735

Slavery, capitalism, and colonialism were understood as racially justified through false olfactory perceptions of African bodies throughout the Atlantic World.

Smell and History

Smell and History
Author: Mark M. Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2019-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9781946684684

Smell and History collects many of the most important recent essays on the history of scent, aromas, perfumes, and ways of smelling. With an introduction by Mark M. Smith--one of the leading social and cultural historians at work today and the preeminent champion in the United States of the emerging field of sensory history--the volume introduces to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to historians of all fields the richness, relevance, and insightfulness of the olfactory to historical study. Ranging from antiquity to the present, these ten essays, most of them published since 2003, consider how olfaction and scent have shaped the history of medicine, gender, race-making, class formation, religion, urbanization, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization; how habits and practices of smelling informed ideas about the Enlightenment, modernity, and memory; how smell shaped perceptions of progress and civilization; and how people throughout history have used smell as a way to organize categories and inform worldviews.

The Little Book of Perfumes

The Little Book of Perfumes
Author: Luca Turin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 110154533X

The quintessential guide to the one hundred most glorious perfumes in the world. When Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez published Perfumes: The Guide in 2008, it was hailed as "ravishingly entertaining" by John Lanchester in The New Yorker, "witty and knowledgeable" on Style.com, and "provocative and hugely entertaining" by the Times Literary Supplement. The Little Book of Perfumes focuses on just one hundred masterpieces of perfume: ninety-six five-star perfumes from the original book, as well as four "museum" perfumes-legendary scents that are preserved in the Versailles Osmothèque. This stunningly produced petite volume offers lovers of perfume the best of the best-a perfect gift book for anyone looking either for a brilliant fragrance or an intelligent, witty read.

Scent and Soul: The Extraordinary Power of the Sense of Smell

Scent and Soul: The Extraordinary Power of the Sense of Smell
Author: Rohanna Goodwin Smith
Publisher: Prominence Publishing
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2021-09-08
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9781988925806

For millennia, aromas have intoxicated, uplifted, warned, healed and seduced. Scent and Soul explores humanity's enduring connection with the fragrances of the natural world prior to their displacement with synthetic scents in the modern era. The book weaves alchemy, botany, psychology, sensuality, spirituality, perfumery and politics into the author's personal aromatic journey. Our innate and invaluable sense of smell is becoming compromised and it's time to reclaim it, celebrate its revival and thrive. About the Author Rohanna Goodwin Smith Throughout her career as a registered nurse, Rohanna Goodwin Smith pursued an interest in alternative health therapies. On her discovery of the art and science of aromatherapy in the early 1990's, she knew she'd found her niche. She went on to practice aromatherapy and natural perfumery, become an educator in both modalities, and continues to be a tireless advocate for the healing benefits of the sense of smell in partnership with the aromas of nature.

SMELL

SMELL
Author: Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Publisher: University of Westminster Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2023-12-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1915445124

Although somewhat marginal in relation to the other senses, smell is the most potent way of anchoring ourselves to the world. We subconsciously find our place in it by sniffing our body, the body of the one next to us, the room in which we are, the culture with which we are familiar. There is an incessant olfactory flow consisting of bodies, human and nonhuman, that are agents of generation, consumption, diffusion, reproduction and dissolution of odours. As they move or pause, as they cluster with others or try to move away, these bodies constantly partake in this olfactory flow, this dense planetary swirl that leaves nothing outside. The law aims at presenting itself as rational and objective. Smell, on the other hand, is one of the least integrated senses in the legal edifice, in comparison to, say, seeing and hearing. This can be attributed mainly to the fact that sense-making of smell and law are different, even antithetical. Smell operates undercurrent, tickling the olfactory antennas of individual and collective bodies while habitually hiding behind other sensory volumes. Law, on the other hand, has an interest in appearing present, universal, constant. Olfactory sense-making relies on its elusiveness; legal sense-making invests in its obviousness. Yet, the two can interact in most unexpected ways, as this volume amply shows. If anything, smell airs the way in which law conceptualises and contextualises its own actuality. Smell brings law forth by allowing it to show its underbelly, its elusive sense-making that is invariably sacrificed in preference to the necessity of legal impressions of constancy. However, smell’s fragmentary, discontinuous and unstable nature, despite all the ordering that goes to it, poses a peculiar challenge to the law. This volume sets out to investigate this juncture.