Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
33
apparently extending the myth of our forever-young bodies to our cities and to our food.
Death, ageing and decomposition are removed from sight. The aim seems to be to construct a
clean, almost clinical and aseptic relationship to place; a relationship in which differences of
age, gender and ethnicity struggle to find expression. The sensory geographies of cities can
contribute to enrich the debate around these issues. I do not believe that there is a call for an
anthropology of the senses, but I do believe that our ethnographies can benefit from a
perspective that does not relegate the senses to the subjective but recognises their belonging to
the social sphere and to the way we engage with the material world in the everyday practice.
