Better Smelling Through Chemistry

In the talk I will focus on how olfactory training for chemistry students interested in studying the aroma of tropical fruits has occurred at different periods and across the classroom, the laboratory, and the industry in Colombia. I will highlight chemists' perceptions about the importance of this type of training for their research and work and how sensory training opportunities are made available locally. Discussing the role of the senses and sensory knowledge in chemistry will lead me to highlight some of the effects of learning how to smell for science and technology education. Keywords: Olfaction, Aroma, Chemistry, Sensory Skills, Science education

Nathan Pécout-Le Bras ∆ (School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada)
Making Brazilian Cocoa’s Excellence: Taste as Embodied Expertise along the Cocoa Coast in Southern Bahia, Brazil

How does one assess cocoa’s taste and its permanence once transformed into chocolate? In the wake of colonization and monoculture (Mintz, 1986; Glissant, 1990; Rosa, 2001; Sharpe, 2016), the renewed Brazilian cocoa sector gathers public and private entities to promote sustainability and become the world’s best producer. Based on sensorial training in a specialized laboratory in Southern Bahia, this presentation explores the taste expertise accompanying this development. The laboratory is ran by experts – mostly trained in biochemistry – whose practice consists in embodying knowledge (Csordas, 1990; Mol, 2008; Samudra, 2020) of cocoa’s fineness by refining their tasting abilities.
“[T]hat most fleeting and difficult to universalize sense” (Spang, 2001, 75), taste is in constant negotiation. Through sensorial engagement, experts acquire the authority to evaluate different cocoas. The qualities of each harvest are informed by various parameters: tree variety, soil composition, microbial flora, companion species, climate variations, harvesting method, fermentation, drying, etc. These parameters can be translated into biochemical formulas, but more importantly into a set of taste and aromatic qualities: acidity, bitterness, astringency, and various notes of fruits, flowers, nuts, and spices. Assessing these qualities in each cocoa lot, experts determine its fineness and influence retail prices on domestic and global markets.
Keywords: Brazil, taste, embodiment, cocoa, sensorial anthropology

Sarah Yems ∆ (Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada)

Why jump in the Saint Lawrence? The Identity Making Possibilities of Watery Immersion

Based on field work in Saint Lawrence River as it flows through Montreal, the paper explores how activities such as cold water swimming and river surfing rearticulate the senses to such an extent that a new riverine body, even a riverine persona, is created. That is, a new persona which perceives and responds to the environment differently is born through habitual exposure.
This exploratory paper will draw from Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics (2006), as well as the Anthropology of the Senses, to examine the identity-making possibilities of three immersive water activities - sea swimming, the related sub-discipline winter swimming, and surfing. Based on this analytical exploration it will then attend to the liberatory claims about such nature based practices and their limitations.
Through deep attention to the embodied action of immersion, this work seeks to follow the ethnographic practices of Waquant (2004), Throsby (2013) and Crawley (2022), who show how taking an anthropological approach to sporting activities can unseat mainstream narratives about the athletic body in motion and avoid merely merely textualising the body. In the context of dominant narratives of water based sports that focus on the male experience, and ‘bro culture’, this work seeks to foreground the female experience.
Keywords: identity, immersion, senses, somaesthetics, water