Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 22 January 2020

Abstract and Keywords

The researcher’s body and sensory faculties are both experientially involved in interactional field settings. Drawing on their research, the authors sketch out three sensory encounters informed by theoretical and methodological debates pertaining to subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Dealing with issues of race, gender, and heritage, the authors demonstrate how their bodies as researchers go through processes of sensory learning and calibration. Data are collectively generated along with respondents during fieldwork. In the discussion, the authors provide a lens through which corporeal and sensory experiences can be deployed as an important methodological tool in the generation and theorization of data in ethnographic research.

Keywords: sensory knowledge, corporeality, qualitative methods, experience, researcher positionality

Kelvin E.Y. Low

Kelvin E.Y. Low is Associate Professor and Deputy Head at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. His research interests include sensory studies, migration and transnationalism, social memory and heritage, and food and foodways. Recent authored/edited books include Senses in Cities: Experiences of Urban Settings (Routledge 2017) and Remembering the Samsui Women: Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China (UBC Press 2014; NUS Press 2015). Other articles have appeared in such journals as Pacific Affairs, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Historical Sociology, and The Sociological Review.

Noorman Abdullah

Noorman Abdullah is Senior Lecturer at the Departments of Sociology and Malay Studies, National University of Singapore. His core research interests are religion and society, particularly in relation to spirit possession and everyday religiosity; deviance and social control; and sensory studies. He is also Secretary-Treasurer of TG07 Senses and Society, International Sociological Association (ISA) since 2012.

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.