Nosenography

Abstract

Nosenography is a theoretical and methodological commitment to uncover the presences and practices of smell, an often-ignored sensory feature of market and consumption spaces. Drawing on prior social science theorizations of smell as well as contemporary sensory marketing practices, we develop a framework to understand how smell features in spatial assemblages of bodies, locations and experiences. Extending theorizations of product smells and ambient smells, we show how this framework can guide knowledge of the sensing, practice and management of smell and space. We explain that smell is a dynamic and unruly force that (i) encodes spaces with meaning, (ii) identifies bodies with spaces, and (iii) punctuates the temporal experience of space as it changes. Nosenography reaffirms that spaces of consumption are multisensory and that this quality should be further acknowledged in figuring market spaces as dynamic and contested assemblages of heterogeneous constituents.

Using Ambient Scent to Enhance Well-Being in the Multisensory Built Environment

“…The range of scents that are typically experienced outdoors are likely capable of exerting both a positive and negative effect on our well-being, depending on their specific identity, and our beliefs concerning their origins (Day, 2007;Gorman, 2017). Separately, there is growing interest in the scenting of public transport, such as, for example, trains and airports (e.g., Haehner et al, 2017;Canniford et al, 2018;Girard et al, 2019a,b).…”

From flesh to food: Exploring consumers’ fluctuations in hysteresis

“…As the heads continued to twist and turn in the flames–becoming increasingly charred–the smell of burning flesh surfaced. Reflecting how smell can be powerfully evocative in consumption experiences (Canniford et al, 2018), this created a particularly emotional response in Anna, emphasising smell’s strong links to memory (ibid; Henshaw et al, 2016). Given the temporality of habitus, where the past irrupts into the present when navigating current situations (Maton, 2012), the echoes of a past provocative case of habitus-field disjuncture for a teenage girl previously unaware of the dangers of food restriction, layered onto her unsettled habitus at the farm to further intensify Anna’s hysteresis:What was that smell?…”

Landing in affective atmospheres

“…Non-representational theory (NRT) (Thrift, 2008) has been instrumental in paving the way for less deterministic ways of capturing affective atmospheres. This has allowed consumer theorists to account for both the affective and sensual in human and non-human actors, forces and entities (Hill et al, 2014, 2021), capturing ‘unrepresentable phenomena’ (Hill, 2016: 157) such as immaterial forces (Patterson and Larsen, 2019; Canniford et al, 2018), agentic material objects (Epp and Price, 2010) and previously overlooked embodied practices (Molander & Hartmann, 2018; Scott and Uncles, 2018; Stevens et al, 2019). This body of work affords insight into how atmospheres ‘touch, invade and permeate people’s bodies’ (Biehl-Missal and Saren, 2012: 170), exploring how marketers can or cannot purify, prescribe and manage affective atmospheres (Hill, 2016).…”

“…In line with the affective turn in the social sciences, we have seen a surge in interest in the study of affect in consumer research, most notably in managing the affective atmospheres of consumption spaces (Biehl-Missal and Saren, 2012; Hill, 2016; Hill et al, 2014; Hill et al, 2021; Cheetham et al, 2018; Higgins and Hamilton, 2019; Linnet, 2013; Steadman et al, 2020; Yakhlef, 2015). This has provided an extensive ontological and epistemological upheaval, allowing us to examine aspects of life that have hitherto been missed (Lorimer, 2005) and expanding our ways of sensing the world by taking into account non-representational and embodied perspectives (Canniford et al, 2018; Patterson and Larsen, 2019; Scott and Uncles, 2018; Stevens et al, 2019). Despite the plethora of work on affect theory and atmospheres, the way in which subjects land in affective atmospheres has yet to be fully theorised.…”