Introduction to<i>Accounting for Taste</i>

Lahne, Jacob; Spackman, Christy

doi:10.1080/17458927.2018.1427361

Cited by 15 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Recently, we oversaw a special issue of the journal Senses & Society that examined how the twentieth century upended what it means to taste (Lahne and Spackman 2018). In articles on the practices of those within the food industry who create flavor-sensory scientists (Lahne 2018; Butler 2018), flavor chemists (Spackman 2018;Tracy 2018), and flavorists (Ulloa 2018)-we worked to trouble the scientization of taste, arguing that the food industry "erases the active labor of the sensing body [emphasis in the original]" (Lahne and Spackman 2018, 3) in attempting to develop objective measures of flavor.…”

Section: Making Sensing Into Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the way that these ethnographic accounts highlight unexpected patterns of similarity and difference in sensory labor across production systems, it is notable that industrial food production-characterized by extensive mechanization, the de-skilling of labor, and the production of undifferentiated commodity foods-officially treats individuals' sensory apparatuses and impressions as alienable commodities. This is in analogy to the foods being tasted: the value of sensory information concerning these types of foods depends on how well that information can be treated as a commodity (Lahne 2016(Lahne , 2018Lahne and Spackman 2018). Meanwhile, in systems of craft-or artisan-food production the role of sensory labor is quite different-for example, consider the role sensory judgment functions in the creation of value for wine (Phillips 2016;Shapin 2016), where anonymous expertise is essentially worthless-we do not value consensus judgments of wine quality.…”

Section: Making Sensing Into Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sensory labor: considering the work of taste in the food system

Spackman

Lahne

2019

Food, Culture & Society

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The taste of foodstuffs has shaped entire economic systems. Yet many scholars have understood how one tastes as only a matter of aesthetics. New forms of doing work through the senses, associated with twentieth-century industrialized food production, have made it clear that the sensations produced by mouths and noses do more than mark class-they carry economic value. It seems that it is time we attend more closely to this sensory labor and its place in the food system. Recognizing perception as a form of labor mobilized throughout the food system offers to dissolve the apparent dichotomy between a focus on food as an object of consumption, evaluated on its aesthetic principles, and of production, evaluated on its ethical implications. Sustained examination of sensing as found in the essays in this issue demonstrates that the types and modes of sensory labor mobilized in the provisioning, making, and eating of food are not neutral-rather they coproduce modes of food production. In doing so, these essays not only open the door for valuing otherwise unacknowledged work, but also point towards opportunities for critical intervention in how we talk about and practice taste and, in the process, make society.

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Section: Making Sensing Into Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Making Sensing Into Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensory labor: considering the work of taste in the food system

Spackman

Lahne

2019

Food, Culture & Society

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“…TON, and its more recent replacement, Flavor Profile Analysis – adapted in the early 1980s from the food industry, which itself had since the mid-1940s sought to replace connoisseurship with expert judgment (Lahne and Spackman, 2018) – furthered the gap between scientific analysis of aesthetic contaminants and consumer judgment by increasing the ability of water workers to find and eliminate the causes of undesirable tastes and odors (e.g. Bartels et al, 1986; Bruchet, 1999; Suffet et al, 1988).…”

Section: Dividing Sensory Labor Into Analytic and Aesthetic Modesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensory politics: The tug-of-war between potability and palatability in municipal water production

Spackman

Burlingame

2018

Soc Stud Sci

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Sensory information signaled the acceptability of water for consumption for lay and professional people into the early twentieth century. Yet as the twentieth century progressed, professional efforts to standardize water-testing methods have increasingly excluded aesthetic information, preferring to rely on the objectivity of analytic information. Despite some highly publicized exceptions, consumer complaints remain peripheral to the making and regulating of drinking water. This exclusion is often attributed to the unreliability of the human senses in detecting danger. However, technical discussions among water professionals during the twentieth century suggest that this exclusion is actually due to sensory politics, the institutional and regulatory practices of inclusion or exclusion of sensory knowledge from systems of action. Water workers developed and turned to standardized analytical methods for detecting chemical and microbiological contaminants, and more recently sensory contaminants, a process that attempted to mitigate the unevenness of human sensing. In so doing, they created regimes of perception that categorized consumer sensory knowledge as aesthetic. By siloing consumers' sensory knowledge about water quality into the realm of the aesthetic instead of accommodating it in the analytic, the regimes of perception implemented during the twentieth century to preserve health have marginalized subjective experiences. Discounting the human experience with municipal water as irrelevant to its quality, control and regulation is out of touch with its intended use as an ingestible, and calls for new practices that engage consumers as valuable participants.

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“Eau de cookie dough”: Gourmand fragrances, negotiating nostalgia, and inedible food cultures

Bunschoten

2024

Food and Foodways

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Introduction toAccounting for Taste

Cited by 15 publications

References 20 publications

Sensory labor: considering the work of taste in the food system

Sensory labor: considering the work of taste in the food system

Sensory politics: The tug-of-war between potability and palatability in municipal water production

“Eau de cookie dough”: Gourmand fragrances, negotiating nostalgia, and inedible food cultures

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