Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
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November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
27
space’ (Chau 2008: 489). Degen (2004: 1) clearly explains that the ideologies behind urban
regeneration ‘aim to control disorder, impurity and exposure’ by regulating what citizens are
allowed to experience in a public space; she adds that ‘sensuous geographies are important
elements in the construction and maintenance of social order in place’ (Degen 2008: 67).
‘Meat Smells Like Corpses’
Smell has been often dismissed as an inferior sense (Bauman 1993, Classen et al 1994, Miller
1997), because it threatens ‘the abstract and impersonal regime of modernity by virtue of its
[...] boundary-transgressing propensities and its emotional potency’ (Classen et al. 1994: 5).
However, this sense more than others is associated with social order (Degen 2008), and is
definitely ‘a way of making sense of the world’ (Bubandt 1998: 48). In some ethnographies it
is the privileged sense, which together with taste, is seen as a marker of belonging and of
difference (Walmsley 2005). Herzfeld (2001) provides the example of how exotic cooking
smells can provoke strong reactions within neighbourhoods. In a recent article, Śliwa and
Riach (2012) analyse smell to understand the political transition in Poland and connect the
olfactory everyday experience to social distinction and stratification.
Places and smells are deeply interconnected (Brant 2008). When approaching La
Pescheria market from a distance, its smell reaches one’s nostrils well before one gets there. It
is very common to hear people complaining about La Pescheria: ‘The market stinks’; ‘The
smell of fish stays with you’; ‘I cannot go there, the smell is too persistent’. Smell is a
constant issue of contention at the market. Visitors often say that they do not like the smell of
La Pescheria; it lingers in the area day and night, despite earnest attempts by the municipality
to wash it out daily. It is a mix of water, meat and fish, as many trimmings end up on the
pavement and during the hot season they start putrefying.
According to Bauman (1993), smells are invasive and they can be unsettling for a
society obsessed with order. Urban interventions tend to ‘clean’ the public space of smells
which could be considered unpleasant, such as the stench of fish. The most pertinent
questions at this point would be, how does a smell that has been tolerated for centuries
become unpleasant? And, what kind of changes does this reflect?
The following extract from my field-notes illustrates remarkably well how people’s
attitude towards smells has changed, especially among the younger generations.
‘One day while I was chatting at Gaetano’s vegetables stall, a woman, holding her
little son’s hand, approached him and asked “Gaeta could you keep an eye on
him? He doesn’t want to see the meat stalls going down via Pardo. He doesn’t like
the view. It is disgusting to him”. The kid looked at me and explained “It is the
smell of meat. It smells of corpses”. I asked the 10-year old if he felt the same
way every time he sees meat. “No”, he replied, “in the supermarket it is different.
It is different also at the butchery in via Umberto, where we live. It is cleaner.
You don’t see blood or big chunks of meat and there is no smell. That is
disgusting. Have you seen the stalls here? With all the animals hanging”‘.
