Exploring Atmospheres Ethnographically

Exploring Atmospheres Ethnographically
Author: Sara Asu Schroer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2017-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317137493

The notion of atmosphere has always been part of academic discourse, but often refers to something vague and diffuse - a phenomenon connected with our affective engagement with the world that is difficult to grasp. This volume develops and refines the concept of atmosphere, seeking to render it productive for anthropological and social scientific research by bringing together a range of original ethnographic studies in combination with investigation of the use of the term in language. The chapters examine dimensions of atmosphere through topics of interdisciplinary concern, such as learning and the acquisition of skills, the experience of place, affect and mood, multi-species relations and the perception of weather and environment - whether in natural landscapes, medical and educational settings, homes or creative contexts - Exploring Atmospheres Ethnographically analyses the relational and transformational processes through which people perceive, experience and live in a moving atmospheric world. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, geography and cultural studies with interests in space and place, sensory ethnography and affect.

Atmosphere in Urban Design

Atmosphere in Urban Design
Author: Anette Stenslund
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2022-09-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1000776859

This book offers an ethnographic exploration of the role that atmosphere plays in work processes undertaken within an urban design studio. It provides understandings of how architectural practices are fuelled with atmosphere in various configurations throughout different design phases of selected projects for construction. From the outside architectural practices commonly appear well-ordered and carefully considered, established by proof and rationally justified. This book though poaches on architects’ preserves in order to draw attention to features of unpredictability and uncertainty within the design phases. By opening up into the ‘machinery room’ of urban designers, the goal is not to spoil the plaster saint cover of a ‘starchitect’ business, but to remind about the crucial value that pockets of doubt issuing questions rather than answers, open-mindedness instead of single-mindedness, play to the processes of design production and creativity. The book identifies these pockets as atmospheres enveloping the architectural practice.

Music as Atmosphere

Music as Atmosphere
Author: Friedlind Riedel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2019-11-25
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0429631626

This book explores the atmospheric dimensions of music and sound. With multidisciplinary insights from music studies, sound studies, philosophy and media studies, chapters investigate music and sound as shared environmental feelings. This book probes into cutting edge conceptual issues at the forefront of contemporary discussions on atmosphere, atmospherology and affect. It also extends the spatial and relational focus towards fundamentally temporal questions of performance, process, timbre, resonance and personhood. The capacity of atmospheric relations to imbue a situation with an ambient feeling and to modulate social collectives is highlighted, as well as auditory experience as a means of connecting with feelings. In addition to original research, the volume features a first translation of an important text by German phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz, and a debate on affect and atmosphere between the philosophers Jan Slaby and Brian Massumi. This novel contribution to the field of music research provides a strong theoretical framework, as well as vibrant case studies, which will be invaluable reading for scholars and students of music, sound, aesthetics, media, anthropology and contemporary philosophy.

Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond

Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond
Author: Philipp Schorch
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2020-03-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787357481

Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond provides a new look at the old anthropological concern with materiality and connectivity. It understands materiality not as defined property of some-thing, nor does it take connectivity as merely a relation between discrete entities. Somewhat akin to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it sees materiality and connectivity as two interrelated modes in which an entity is, or more precisely – is becoming, in the world. The question, thus, is how these two modes of becoming relate and fold into each other. Throughout the four-year research process that led to this book, the authors approached this question not just from a theoretical perspective; taking the suggestion of 'thinking through things' literally and methodologically seriously, the first two workshops were dedicated to practical, hands-on exercises working with things. From these workshops a series of installations emerged, straddling the boundaries of art and academia. These installations served as artistic-academic interventions during the final symposium and are featured alongside the other academic contributions to this volume. Throughout this process, two main themes emerged and structure Part II, Movement and Growth, and Part III, Dissolution and Traces, of the present volume, respectively. Part I, Conceptual Grounds, consists of two chapters offering conceptual takes on things and ties – one from anthropology and one from archaeology. As interrelated modes of becoming, materiality and connectivity make it necessary to coalesce things and ties into thing~ties – an insight toward which the chapters and interventions came from different sides, and one in which the initial proposition of the editors still shines through. Throughout the pages of this volume, we invite the reader to travel beyond imaginaries of a universe of separate planets united by connections, and to venture with us instead into the thicket of thing~ties in which we live.

The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography

The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography
Author: Phillip Vannini
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2023-11-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000994279

The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography reviews and expands the field and scope of sensory ethnography by fostering new links among sensory, affective, more-than-human, non-representational, and multimodal sensory research traditions and composition styles. From writing and film to performance and sonic documentation, the handbook reimagines the boundaries of sensory ethnography and posits new possibilities for scholarship conducted through the senses and for the senses. Sensory ethnography is a transdisciplinary research methodology focused on the significance of all the senses in perceiving, creating, and conveying meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of strategies that involve the senses as a means of inquiry, objects of study, and forms of expression, sensory ethnography has played a fundamental role in the contemporary evolution of ethnography writ large as a reflexive, embodied, situated, and multimodal form of scholarship. The handbook dwells on subjects like the genealogy of sensory ethnography, the implications of race in ethnographic inquiry, opening up ethnographic practice to simulate the future, using participatory sensory ethnography for disability studies, the untapped potential of digital touch, and much more. This is the most definitive reference text available on the market and is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in anthropology, sociology, and the social sciences, and will serve as a state-of-the-art resource for sensory ethnographers worldwide.

Atmospheres and the Experiential World

Atmospheres and the Experiential World
Author: Shanti Sumartojo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1315281236

We live in atmospheres, we talk about them and we move through them. They offer us an important route into comprehending several aspects of human life and experience, what is important to people, the environments life is played out in, and the processes of change and possible futures. Atmospheres are an ephemeral yet inescapable element of our everyday experiential and conceptual environments. They are continually beyond our grasp as they undergo constant transformation. By interrogating atmospheres, this book arrives at new ways of thinking about the relationships between people, space, time and events. Atmospheres and the Experiential World explores the ways we engage with these affective modes, and the possibilities they offer for researchers, designers and policy-makers to make and intervene in the world. Chapters propose an approach to atmospheres that is not fixed to certain forms or boundaries. Instead, this book argues that atmospheres should be conceptualised as dynamic and changing configurations that allow analytical insight into a range of topics when we think in, about and through them. This book offers scholars, designers and creative practitioners, professionals and students a research-based way of understanding and intervening in atmospheres.

Search After Method

Search After Method
Author: Julie Laplante
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2020-09-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178920884X

Reigniting a tradition of learning from experience, Search After Method is a plea for livelier forms of anthropology. The anthropologists in the collection recount their experiences of working in the field, framed within a range of anthropological debates. The book thus provides accounts of lived experiences from both extensive and contemporary fieldwork as well as offering solutions for how to evolve the art of anthropological research beyond what is currently imagined.

Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism

Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism
Author: Michael Volgger
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2019-11-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1838670726

Combining ideas of sustainable development, strategic marketing and branding with space design and architecture, this volume offers contemporary perspectives on the development and impact of 'atmospheric quality' in tourism and hospitality service situations. Topics discussed include: silent airports, ambient odours and, co-created atmospheres.

Atmosphere and Aesthetics

Atmosphere and Aesthetics
Author: Tonino Griffero
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2019-11-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030249425

This book provides a presentation of the concept of “atmosphere” in the realm of aesthetics. An “atmosphere” is meant to be an emotional space. Such idea of “atmosphere” has been more and more subsumed by human and social sciences in the last twenty years, thereby becoming a technical notion. In many fields of the Humanities, affective life has been reassessed as a proper tool to understand the human being, and is now considered crucial. In this context, the link between atmospheres and aesthetics becomes decisive. Nowadays, aesthetics is no longer only a theory of art, but has recovered its original vocation: to be a general theory of perception conceived of as an ordinary experience of pre-logical character. In its four parts (Atmospheric turn?, Senses and Spaces, Subjects and Communities, Aesthetics and Art Theory), this volume discusses whether atmospheres could take the prominent and paradigmatic position previously held by art in order to make sense of such sensible experience of the world.