doing sensory ethnography in consumer research

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Doing sensory ethnography in consumer researchAnu Valtonen 1 , Vesa Markuksela 1 and Johanna Moisander 2 1 Department of Tourism and Business, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland 2 Aalto University, School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland Keywords Sensory ethnography, practice theories, consumer culture, cultural methodologies, sport fishing. Correspondence Anu Valtonen, Department of Tourism and Business, University of Lapland, P.O. Box 122, FIN-96101 Rovaniemi, Finland. E-mail: anu.valtonen@ulapland.fi doi: 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2010.00876.x Abstract This paper is a contribution to sensory-aware cultural consumer research. It suggests that while the audio-visual domain is unquestionably a crucial ingredient of contemporary consumer culture, there is a pressing need to explore the role of the other senses as well. The study works towards a practice-based culturalist approach to sensory ethnography,a perspective that allows consumer scholars to empirically account for the cultural aspects of the senses. Through an empirical case study on sport fishing, the paper scrutinizes the challenges and opportunities related to conducting sensory ethnography. In addition, it discusses the benefits of this approach in consumer research. Introduction In recent decades, ethnography has gained increasing popularity in the field of consumer research (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994; Fellman, 1999; Peñaloza, 2001; Elliott and Jankel-Elliott, 2003; Moisander and Valtonen, 2006), and scholars have also developed specific ethnographic forms, such as netnography (Kozinets, 2002) and visual ethnography (Peñaloza, 1998). The work of this scholarship convincingly demonstrates the potential of the ethno- graphic approach in offering rich and detailed understandings of consumption phenomena. However, the existing inquiries tend to rely extensively, or even exclusively, on the senses of sight and sound – at the expense of taste, touch and smell – in collecting ethnographic data and in building interpretations. This tendency reflects, and perpetuates, the audio-visual world view that has long dominated Western thought (Firat, 1995, p. 108). We argue in this paper that while the audio-visual domain is a crucial ingredient of contemporary culture and society, there is a need to explore the entire sensory domain in order to gain better insights into the contemporary forms of consumer culture. In the last few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the significance of the multi-sensory nature of consumption (e.g. Hol- brook and Hirschman, 1982; Joy and Sherry, 2003). Leaning on cognitive-psychology (Peck and Childers, 2003; Argo et al., 2006; Bosmans, 2006), environmental psychology (Kotler, 1973; Bitner, 1992; Turley and Milliman, 2000), phenomenology (Joy and Sherry, 2003) or physiology (Ferdenzi et al., 2008), these studies have produced valuable insights into the individual aspects of the senses. Nevertheless, the overwhelming determination of the indi- vidualistic and mentalist research approaches tends to void the way in which the senses, and the use of the senses, are not only individually but also culturally fabricated – as evidenced by a growing number of sensory scholars across various cultural disci- plines (Classen, 1993; Stroller, 1997; Howes, 2006). The work of this cultural scholarship demonstrates how all the senses – smell (Classen, 1993), touch (Stroller, 1997), hearing (Bull, 2004), sight (Banks, 2001) and taste (Lindstrom, 2005) – are invested with cultural values and meanings. It enables us to draw attention, for instance, to the ways in which identities and social relations are negotiated in a range of places and events from homes (Pink, 2009) to tourism encounters (Macnaghten and Urry, 2001; Crouch and Desforges, 2003), consumer artefacts and spaces are made meaningful (Bull, 2004), and products and brands are chosen (Lindstrom, 2005). Therefore, we suggest that a more explicit focus on the cultural – instead of the individual – aspects of the senses would enable consumer scholars to gain a better understanding of the many ways the senses play a part of contemporary consumer culture. This paper proposes one possible theoretical and methodological perspective that could help to achieve this goal. Drawing upon the emergent field of cultural studies on the senses – also referred to as the ‘sensorial turn’ – and upon practice literature (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2002; Warde, 2005), we set out to work towards a practice-based culturalist approach to the study of the sensory aspects of consumption and consumer culture. Such an approach enables us to direct detailed attention to the ways in which the senses are embedded in, and constitutive of, consumers’ actions. The approach we have developed is a culturalist one in the sense that social life is thought to be based upon collective, sociohistori- cally developing structures of knowledge, meanings and under- standings. Importantly, in this approach, the ‘cultural’ aspect is not located in the mind, interactions or discourses, but in ‘practices’ that are, hence, considered to form the basic unit of a cultural analysis (Reckwitz, 2002). International Journal of Consumer Studies ISSN 1470-6423 International Journal of Consumer Studies 34 (2010) 375–380 © The Authors Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 375

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Page 1: Doing sensory ethnography in consumer research

Doing sensory ethnography in consumer researchijcs_876 375..380

Anu Valtonen1, Vesa Markuksela1 and Johanna Moisander2

1Department of Tourism and Business, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland2Aalto University, School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

Keywords

Sensory ethnography, practice theories,consumer culture, cultural methodologies,sport fishing.

Correspondence

Anu Valtonen, Department of Tourism andBusiness, University of Lapland, P.O. Box122, FIN-96101 Rovaniemi, Finland.E-mail: [email protected]

doi: 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2010.00876.x

AbstractThis paper is a contribution to sensory-aware cultural consumer research. It suggests thatwhile the audio-visual domain is unquestionably a crucial ingredient of contemporaryconsumer culture, there is a pressing need to explore the role of the other senses as well.The study works towards a practice-based culturalist approach to sensory ethnography, aperspective that allows consumer scholars to empirically account for the cultural aspects ofthe senses. Through an empirical case study on sport fishing, the paper scrutinizes thechallenges and opportunities related to conducting sensory ethnography. In addition, itdiscusses the benefits of this approach in consumer research.

IntroductionIn recent decades, ethnography has gained increasing popularity inthe field of consumer research (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994;Fellman, 1999; Peñaloza, 2001; Elliott and Jankel-Elliott, 2003;Moisander and Valtonen, 2006), and scholars have also developedspecific ethnographic forms, such as netnography (Kozinets,2002) and visual ethnography (Peñaloza, 1998). The work of thisscholarship convincingly demonstrates the potential of the ethno-graphic approach in offering rich and detailed understandings ofconsumption phenomena. However, the existing inquiries tend torely extensively, or even exclusively, on the senses of sight andsound – at the expense of taste, touch and smell – in collectingethnographic data and in building interpretations. This tendencyreflects, and perpetuates, the audio-visual world view that has longdominated Western thought (Firat, 1995, p. 108).

We argue in this paper that while the audio-visual domain is acrucial ingredient of contemporary culture and society, there is aneed to explore the entire sensory domain in order to gain betterinsights into the contemporary forms of consumer culture. In thelast few decades, there has been a growing awareness of thesignificance of the multi-sensory nature of consumption (e.g. Hol-brook and Hirschman, 1982; Joy and Sherry, 2003). Leaning oncognitive-psychology (Peck and Childers, 2003; Argo et al., 2006;Bosmans, 2006), environmental psychology (Kotler, 1973; Bitner,1992; Turley and Milliman, 2000), phenomenology (Joy andSherry, 2003) or physiology (Ferdenzi et al., 2008), these studieshave produced valuable insights into the individual aspects of thesenses. Nevertheless, the overwhelming determination of the indi-vidualistic and mentalist research approaches tends to void theway in which the senses, and the use of the senses, are not onlyindividually but also culturally fabricated – as evidenced by a

growing number of sensory scholars across various cultural disci-plines (Classen, 1993; Stroller, 1997; Howes, 2006).

The work of this cultural scholarship demonstrates how all thesenses – smell (Classen, 1993), touch (Stroller, 1997), hearing(Bull, 2004), sight (Banks, 2001) and taste (Lindstrom, 2005) – areinvested with cultural values and meanings. It enables us to drawattention, for instance, to the ways in which identities and socialrelations are negotiated in a range of places and events from homes(Pink, 2009) to tourism encounters (Macnaghten and Urry, 2001;Crouch and Desforges, 2003), consumer artefacts and spaces aremade meaningful (Bull, 2004), and products and brands arechosen (Lindstrom, 2005).

Therefore, we suggest that a more explicit focus on the cultural– instead of the individual – aspects of the senses would enableconsumer scholars to gain a better understanding of the manyways the senses play a part of contemporary consumer culture.This paper proposes one possible theoretical and methodologicalperspective that could help to achieve this goal. Drawing upon theemergent field of cultural studies on the senses – also referred toas the ‘sensorial turn’ – and upon practice literature (Reckwitz,2002; Schatzki, 2002; Warde, 2005), we set out to work towards apractice-based culturalist approach to the study of the sensoryaspects of consumption and consumer culture. Such an approachenables us to direct detailed attention to the ways in which thesenses are embedded in, and constitutive of, consumers’ actions.The approach we have developed is a culturalist one in the sensethat social life is thought to be based upon collective, sociohistori-cally developing structures of knowledge, meanings and under-standings. Importantly, in this approach, the ‘cultural’ aspect is notlocated in the mind, interactions or discourses, but in ‘practices’that are, hence, considered to form the basic unit of a culturalanalysis (Reckwitz, 2002).

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The specific aim of this paper is to scrutinize the possibilitiesafforded by such a theoretical approach to an ethnographic explo-ration of the senses. Drawing upon existing ethnographic con-sumer research (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994; Peñaloza, 1998,2001; Moisander and Valtonen, 2006) and upon the work ofpioneer sensory ethnographers (Classen, 1993; Stroller, 1997;Howes, 2006; Pink, 2009), we work towards a methodologicalapproach called sensory ethnography that allows scholars toempirically explore the sensory aspects of consumer culture.

To illustrate this approach, we offer an empirical example ofsensory ethnography in the context of sport fishing conducted byone of the authors, in Finnish Lapland. Sport fishing, troll-fishingbeing the specific form of the fishing under study, offers a rich casefor the study of consumption, as sport fishers typically investconsiderable sums of money in the range of material artifacts,technical equipment and services needed for the activity (see sta-tistics of Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2002).Moreover, they actively employ a range of online and offlinemedia to form social links and to build hobby-related communi-ties. Most importantly, sport fishing offers a fertile ground fortheorizing the ways in which the senses have a fundamental rolein the enactment of consumption. Namely, the given activity islargely based on the very idea of appropriating, orchestrating andusing the senses in a competent manner, and the outdoor environ-ment represents a distinctive sensory world in itself (cf. Arnouldet al., 1998). Through this case we will discuss the advantages andchallenges related to the fieldwork of sensory ethnography. Toclose, we also discuss the consumer research potential of thisapproach.

Practice-based culturalist approach tosensory ethnographyIn this paper, we present a form of sensory ethnography that isbased on the culturalist, practice-based perspective on consumerresearch. This perspective enables one to empirically investigatethe senses in action in the immediate settings within which theactivity propagates.

Let us first introduce our setting: troll-fishing tournaments rep-resenting one form of sport fishing whose participators are com-mitted hobbyists (Markuksela, 2009). Troll-fishing is a method offishing in which a bait of some type is drawn on a line through thewater from a moving vessel with from two to four crew membersin it (see Fig. 1). Tournament fishing, in turn, refers to ‘organizedevents in which a group of anglers fish for inducements – awards,prizes, or public recognition – in addition to experiencing thesatisfaction of catching fish’ (Schramm et al., 1991, p. 4). Here,the focus is on Lapland Cup tournaments. During summers 2007–2009, the researcher took part in a series of head-to-head compe-titions, as an angler among other club members of the RovaniemiTroll-fishing Club, the biggest Lappish association specialized introll fishing. The researcher participated in 22 competitions thatlasted from 8 to 24 h and took place in different bodies of water(lakes, artificial lakes, rivers, estuaries), each featuring specificsensory environments. The fieldwork was informed by practicethought.

Recently, practice thought has gained an increasing interest insocial and cultural research (Schatzki et al., 2001), and it has beenvividly employed in consumer research as well (Shove and

Pantzar, 2005; Warde, 2005; Schau et al., 2009). Practice thoughtrepresents a type of cultural theory founded upon a specific wayof explaining and understanding social action and social order(Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2002). By and large, it minimizes theanalytic importance of individuality and turns the attention topractices that organize and shape individual action. Practice mightbe conceived as ‘routinized type of behavior consisting of severalelements interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities,forms of mental activities, “things” and their use, backgroundknowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states ofemotion, and motivational knowledge’ (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249).Consumption is thus viewed as part of an organized constellationsof activity in social life, as something that occurs within and is partof the field of practices, and as a constitutive element of differenteveryday tasks and projects (Schatzki, 2002; Warde, 2005).

Of particular interest here are integrative practices: complexforms of practices such as education, cooking and shopping thatentail a mesh of social and material arrangements, sequences ofactions, skills and shared understandings (Schatzki et al., 2001,p. 88). We treat sport fishing as a practice of this kind: it representsrecognizable and organized nexuses of action pervaded by collec-tive structures of knowledge enabling fishermen to act, interactand use equipment intelligibly. Integrative practices consist of abundle of bodily doings and sayings. Hence, a fishing activity,such as plying and landing a fish, is something fishermen do aspart of the practice, with their sensing and moving bodies (Howes,2006). Sayings, in turn, are doings that communicate somethingeither through language or through kinaesthetic means; waving thehand, for instance, is a means to communicate something.

Doings and sayings are organized into four phenomena: practi-cal understanding, rules, teleoaffective structures and generalunderstandings. Practical understanding refers to certain abilitiesand skills that pertain to actions, such as handling a fish. Rulesrefer to explicit practice-specific instructions, guidelines andrequirements that direct people to perform specific actions. Forexample, in a fishing competition, there are explicit rules concern-ing the handling of fish. A teleoaffective structure, in turn, refersto an array of ends, projects and tasks that are acceptable orprescribed for participants in a practice. The fourth component of

Figure 1 Troll-fishers in the Lappi Cup fishing tournament.

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the practice organization is general understandings, that is, under-standings that are not unique to the practice of question, forexample, the sense of community in this case. Hence, ‘a practiceis a temporally evolving, open-ended set of doings and sayingslinked by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structure,and general understandings’ (Schatzki et al., 2001, p. 87).

To exemplify, the teleoaffective structure of sport fishing –including such ends as winning, gaining prestige among otherfishermen and a variety of skilful tasks pursued to these ends – islinked to the historically constructed notion of ‘game’ or ‘compe-tition’. The very idea of a competition is that it is a contest oversomething, somewhere, for something’s sake, and againstsomeone (Huizinga, 1950). According to Caillois (2001, p. 17),competition, agôn, finds its perfect form in legitimately competi-tive games and sports, those involving feats of prowess (e.g.hunting and fishing). In them, champions are involved in a cease-less and diffuse competition, deploying resources, skills, musclesand intelligence without directly confronting each other. Impor-tantly, the elements of chance and cheating are characteristic fea-tures of all competitions. A fishing competition is hence a goodexample of agôn: it is a rule-governed game of skill intertwinedwith the elements of chance, uncertainty and tension about failureand cheating (in the form of tall stories in particular). This culturallogic of recreational competition organizes the ends, tasks andprojects of fishing, guiding also the acceptability of actions and theexpression of emotions.

Furthermore, the practice of sport fishing requires an under-standing of the way practices are collectively executed by compe-tent agents oriented to each other (Barnes, 2001). Fishing is notunderstood as the mere routine enactment of a practice, but asits knowledgeable, informed and goal-directed enactment thatinvolves different manifestations and combinations of skills andcompetences requiring practice-specific training (Warde, 2005).Attention is also directed to the skilful manners through whichfishermen orchestrate and modify their doings and sayings in orderto remain in coordination with each other in the ever-changingconditions and circumstances of fishing.

We hence analyse sport fishing as an integrative practice thatorganizes the way in which fishing is performed. That is, we treatit as a coherent pattern of activity that is organized around aninherent logic and a shared background understanding of what isappropriate, understandable and desired. The practice-based per-spective therefore offers conceptual tools that enable us to inves-tigate the senses in action and the way this action is structured andorganized through practices. In other words, it becomes possible todraw detailed attention to how the senses are immersed in thedoings and sayings of fishermen, how embodied sensory know-how is employed in the different episodes of the fishing practice,how artefacts and material arrangements are used to extend thesenses, and how the senses play a role in coordinating activities.

Sensory ethnographySensory ethnography is a form of ethnography that has emergedby and large as a critique against the audio-visual hegemonythat characterizes much of contemporary ethnographic research(Stroller, 1997; Howes, 2006; Pink, 2009). Basically, sensory eth-nography follows traditional ethnographic principles and proce-dures: it is grounded in sustained fieldwork that enables the

researcher to study the activities of people in their everyday set-tings and to offer detailed ethnographic accounts (Arnould andWallendorf, 1994; Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). It also appliesthe traditional ethnographic methods of fieldwork, such as obser-vation, interviews and visual methods. A specific feature ofsensory ethnography – in the form that we discuss it here – is thatit directs epistemic attention to practices instead of individualexperiences. Hence, it directs epistemic attention to the ways inwhich the senses play a part in the performance and coordinationof practices and in the subsequent interaction with the social andmaterial world.

The fieldwork process

In sensory ethnography, as in ‘regular’ ethnography, the fieldworkprocess takes on different forms depending on whether theresearcher is familiar with or a stranger to the field under study(Atkinson et al., 2001). Here, the researcher is an active hobbyistangler. The challenge of the fieldwork was hence not to get accus-tomed to the ways in which the senses are engaged in otherpeople’s fishing practices; rather, the issue was to gradually cul-tivate a distance to ‘the others’ and to turn them into ‘data’ worthobserving. How do we study – or even identify – routinized andembodied doings and sayings, especially when the researcherhimself is a competent performer?

During the 3-year, multi-site fieldwork entailing simultaneousreading of theoretical literature, a sensory awareness graduallyevolved and an in-depth understanding of the integral role ofthe senses in the practice of sport fishing was developed. Theresearcher began to realize the essential role of olfaction andtactile play in fishing activity and the way in which fishermen maydefine a space more likely through smell than sight. The fieldworkalso offered insights into the fact that unpleasant body odoursresulting from fishing were not masked; on the contrary, the aromaof fish was interpreted as a sign of success and helped develop asense of communion – the smell is tolerable for those who areaccustomed to it. The fishermen also habitually sniffed the airbefore deciding what sorts of lures to use; they even added fra-grances to the lures to increase their appeal. The researcher alsofound out that the symbolic power of hands is evident in thispractice as well; the touch of other fishermen or the fish might bea sign of communal friendship, or contamination.

Actually, it became evident that the very idea of fishing lies onthe appropriate use of the senses: an angler tries to interpret the‘sensorial cues’ of nature and attach them to an existing body ofsensory knowledge. This implies, for instance, interpreting thecolour of the water, weather conditions, wind direction, waves,clouds, air odour and temperature, as well as observing the doingsand sayings of other anglers. The aim of all these activities is toenable the angler to find a lure with the colours, movement orodours that might best appeal to the senses of the fish. In otherwords, the angler aims to emulate the senses of the fish.

Data and method

Participating in and recording of the social settings in whichpeople under a study live is a defining characteristic of ethnogra-phy. Another characteristic involves incorporating multiplesources of data so as to generate varying perspectives on the

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context of interest. Also in this study, various types of data weresystematically gathered using different methods: observations(written down in the form of field notes and field diaries),interviews/conversations, visual materials (photographs, visualessays, videotapes) and autobiographical narratives. The goal wasto obtain rich data that would allow us to analyse the culturallyspecific ways in which the senses are engaged in the practice offishing. To achieve this goal, we shall next scrutinize the potentialsand challenges of varied forms of data.

The historically constructed nature of the senses poses chal-lenges to their empirical investigation. The Western hierarchy ofthe senses offers a basic frame of intelligibility within which we,as members of culture and as researchers, face the world. Thedominant audio-visual orientation may inhibit a researcher fromnoticing the role of the other senses in a setting under study. Theprevalent ethnographic practices and fieldwork training alsosustain this orientation. Namely, the key ethnographic method,observation, implies an emphasis on vision, and ethnographicscholars are also commonly trained to write down ‘what they seeand hear’ (e.g. Emerson et al., 1995, p. xiii). The nature of tech-nical devices used in data collection – only sounds and sights canbe currently recorded – further sustains the reliance on ‘either theeye or the ear’ (Howes, 2006, p. 7).

Yet, the task of a sensory ethnographer is to observe and registerall sense-related aspects, including the scents, savours, tempera-tures and textures involved in a context. Multi-sensory observationrequires, actually, a new kind of analytic orientation that brings tothe fore the sensory aspects that commonly go unnoticed. Thismeans, for instance, that a researcher pays attention to the aromasthat surround people, although the people may not be consciouslyaware of the cultural significance of odours. Moreover, the role ofthe body is vital in delineating the way in which the senses areobserved and registered in the field. It is, after all, the body thatenters into a specific sensory, semiotic and social environment andis the medium through which practices are performed. Consider,for instance, cold hands touching slimy fish, aching buttocks aftersitting in a boat in a windy weather, the touch of a warm wind onthe skin, or splashes of cold water on the face. Furthermore, thesport in question is based on motion and activity: the vessel is inconstant motion through the water and the crew is active in car-rying out specific practices – they are handling the fishing gear,manoeuvring the boat, keeping a close watch on the changingenvironment, constantly controlling and adjusting their bodymovements in rough water, and receiving and sending kinaestheticmessages to other bodies. The mastery and orchestration of par-ticular body techniques and the orchestration of the senses areprerequisites to the collective accomplishment of fishing practices.Therefore, the bodies of the researcher and the researched wereaccorded a primary role in the observational work.

During the fieldwork process, it became apparent that it is ratherchallenging to try to focus on all the senses simultaneously duringan entire fishing event. Therefore, a decision was made to focus onone sense at a time, yet paying attention to the ways in which theother senses relate to it. The choice of the focal sense was basedon the rapidly changing and often unanticipated conditions ofthe fishing event. For instance, a very strong wind emphasizesthe significance of bodily balance, whereas the sense of smellor sound may appear significant when anticipating changes inweather conditions. This strategy allows the researcher to docu-

ment the ways in which the significance of the different sensesvaries during the course of an activity and the ways in which thesenses are interrelated (Pink, 2009).

An equally challenging task is to transform these sensory obser-vations into written or visual field notes. As Emerson et al. (1995)argue, what is actually written down in field notes is a critical stagein an ethnographic inquiry. In the present study, the researcher firstmade mental ‘headnotes’, which were then jotted down into keywords and phrases straight after each fishing competition. Theexcerpt below offers jottings concerning one episode of the fishingpractice, the handling of the fish, from the perspective of the senseof touch. In this case, the rules of the fishing competition prescribethat the competitors strand the fish during a designated time periodand that the received catch be handled properly according to theguidelines.

. . . It is hard to keep balance in the wavelets. Have to be onmy knees. I can’t see when the next wave hits. ‘Feel and hearthe boat’. Long break, feeling rusty. Hard to keep balance andgut at same time. Knife; Mr R. ‘Lad, be careful’ after I cutmyself ‘I told you to be careful’. . . .Afterwards, more elaborate field notes, field diaries and auto-

ethnographical narratives were written. Because of long and oftenexhausting fieldwork sessions, the actual writing – based on jot-tings – usually took place on the following day. Writing out jot-tings is not a straightforward process of remembering and filling inthe gaps; rather, it is an active process of constructing coherentsequences of action and evocations of the scene. The fieldworkeris, actually, already engaged in a preliminary analysis by arrangingpractices in a specific order and by deciding what to include andwhat to leave out, as Emerson et al. (1995, pp. 31–32) point out.In this particular case, the process raised problems related toconducting sensory ethnography. How do we decipher the senseswhen a sophisticated vocabulary on the senses is missing? Thefollowing excerpt exemplifies a more elaborate field diary writtenin a narrative form. It is based on a series of jottings and inspiredby the theoretical understanding of the sense of touch that mainlyconsists of tactile elements as well as inner bodily elements suchas pain, bodily balance and kinaesthetic movements that are allinvolved in the coordinated actions taking place when a fish iscaught.

. . . Mr R’s body moves mostly side-to-side whereas my bodyswings forwards and backwards, like a swing. Also our headsbobble in these directions. He says: ‘Lad, be careful’ andhands out the fillet knife to me, handle forward. I open thehatch of the vessel’s in-built live fish tank, which is filledwith cold water form the lake. Fumbling, I try to get a grip ofone of the pikes residing there. My skin turns into goosebumps because of the coldness. There, I get a grip. I lift thefish, holding it, gently but firmly, upside-down – it willstruggle less. It is difficult due to the slipperiness of the pro-tective slime on the pike. A tangy smell fills the cabin. I stunthe fish with the blow of a cudgel. It is time to cut the gillsand bleed the fish. Suddenly, a big wave hits, a roller coaster,turning the boat sidewise. In consequence of this unexpectedmovement, the blade of the knife hits my forefinger, not thefish. Forgot to pay attention to the waves. Deep cut, hurts likehell. ‘I told you to be careful’. . .The researcher’s skills in documenting sensory realities were

sharpened by placing explicit, self-conscious attention to the

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process of transforming sensory observations into texts and bycritically re-reading the field notes so as to reveal potential per-ceptual gazes. The notes and diaries worked hence as a catalyst forself-reflexivity that fostered the development of more sensory-oriented observation practices.

The observation process was twofold in the sense that theresearcher both experienced and observed his and other people’sco-participation in the ethnographic scene (Tedlock, 2003, p. 180).Hence, the researcher recorded direct observations of the fellowanglers’ doings and sayings, and, as an angler, made observationsof his own doings and sayings. For example, the researcher kept asensory diary in order to immerse himself into the sensory par-ticularities of the practice and to collect field material for reflexivepurposes (Pink, 2009). Having produced a primary understandingby relying on his own senses, he sought to elicit the general waysin which the senses operate in the practice under study. This kindof participant observation that incorporates reflexivity does notregard the researcher as the primary focus of research. Instead,participant observation focuses on the workings of a practicecarried out by various agents, be they researchers or fellow par-ticipants. This approach connects the autoethnographic impulsewith the ethnographic impulse (Wallendorf and Brucks, 1993).

Visual methods can also be fruitfully used for directing attentionto the multi-sensorial manifestations of consumption (see, e.g.Peñaloza, 1998; Pink, 2009), and they were used in the presentcase as well. Still and moving visuals fix the moments of naturallyoccurring doings and sayings, thereby enabling the researcher toreflect on them later. Here, they turned out to be valuable materialsfor gaining an understanding of the embodied nature of doings infishing practices; they helped in eliciting different postures, kin-aesthetic expressions and bodily coordinations. The culturally sig-nificant moments of the practice can also be captured with the helpof pictures: pictures related to the distribution of prizes or thememorable moments of posing with the catch encode meaningsand emotions that are considered valuable by the practitioners(Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994). Therefore, they allow theresearcher to gain insights into the ends and affective elementsstructuring the practice (e.g. the expression of joy and the sense ofcommunity).

The visual materials were also combined with interviews andconversations (Moisander and Valtonen, 2006; Moisander et al.,2009). The autodriving technique (Heisley and Levy, 1991) wasused to animate talk on the senses. Accordingly, photographs takenby participants during the practice of fishing were used to producecultural talk that offers access to the way participants categorize,rationalize and use expressions of the senses (Pink, 2009) as partof their practice-specific sayings. This technique proved to beuseful in the present case because fishermen may find it difficult orembarrassing to draw attention to and explicate the senses in themasculine context of fishing – the ‘lower senses’ such as smell andtouch are often considered to be primitive and/or associated withexotics, animalism or sexuality (Howes, 2006). However, theirown pictures offered a way to talk about the senses in an accept-able manner, for instance, to say that a bright, fresh spring day hasa particular smell to it and that different fishing sites have theirown scents.

All in all, these sorts of data enable us to identify the mesh ofdoings and sayings within the fishing practice and the way inwhich the senses are immersed in them. It also allows us to

identify and elaborate the collective background understanding orknowledge scheme that ties all these activities together and under-pins the inherent logic of the practice – thus, making the activityunderstandable and appropriate for the social context.

ConclusionIn this paper, we have set out to work towards a practice-basedculturalist approach to sensory ethnography so as to account morefully for the sensory aspects of consumption and consumerculture. By way of using sport fishing as an empirical illustrativecase, we have scrutinized the challenges and opportunities broughtabout by such an approach. To close, we discuss its potentialbenefits for the study of consumption.

The case of sport fishing illustrates, in particular, how thesensory ethnographic approach draws attention to aspects thatare not fully acknowledged in existing accounts that aim atunderstanding the ways in which consumers act in differentenvironments. It helps, in other words, to develop the notionsof servicescape (Bitner, 1992) and wilderness servicescapes(Arnould et al., 1998) by adding the cultural dimension of thesenses to these conceptualizations.

As such, sensory ethnography contributes to the growing corpusof qualitative and cultural methodologies in consumer research(Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). The specific form we proposehere also contributes to sensory ethnographic research (Pink,2009) in the sense that it offers a non-individualistic account ofthe senses and that it is explicitly concerned with consumptionphenomena.

In terms of future research, we encourage scholars to furtherinvestigate the multiple forms consumer sensuousness may take inthe diverse settings of consumer culture and to develop methodsfor their adequate exploration. Moreover, we encourage scholarsto critically explore the ways in which the unwarranted assump-tions of Western audio-visual thought are embedded in and per-petuate the present knowledge-generation practices within thediscipline.

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