David Le Breton - Böcker

Sensing the World: An Anthropology of the Senses is a highly original and comprehensive overview of the anthropology and sociology of the body and the senses. Discussing each sense in turn – seeing, hearing, touch, smell, and taste – Le Breton has written a truly monumental work, vast in scope and deeply engaging in style. Among other pioneering moves, he gives equal attention to light and darkness, sound and silence, and his disputation of taste explores aspects of disgust and revulsion. Part phenomenological, part historical, this is above all a cultural account of perception, which returns the body and the senses to the center of social life. Le Breton is the leading authority on the anthropology of the body and the senses in French academia. With a repute comparable to the late Pierre Bourdieu, his 30+ books have been translated into numerous languages. This is the first of his works to be made available in English. This sensuously nuanced translation of La Saveur du monde is accompanied by a spicy preface from series editor David Howes, who introduces Le Breton's work to an English-speaking audience and highlights its implications for the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and the cross-disciplinary field of sensory studies.

Sensing the World: An Anthropology of the Senses is a highly original and comprehensive overview of the anthropology and sociology of the body and the senses. Discussing each sense in turn – seeing, hearing, touch, smell, and taste – Le Breton has written a truly monumental work, vast in scope and deeply engaging in style. Among other pioneering moves, he gives equal attention to light and darkness, sound and silence, and his disputation of taste explores aspects of disgust and revulsion. Part phenomenological, part historical, this is above all a cultural account of perception, which returns the body and the senses to the center of social life. Le Breton is the leading authority on the anthropology of the body and the senses in French academia. With a repute comparable to the late Pierre Bourdieu, his 30+ books have been translated into numerous languages. This is the first of his works to be made available in English. This sensuously nuanced translation of La Saveur du monde is accompanied by a spicy preface from series editor David Howes, who introduces Le Breton's work to an English-speaking audience and highlights its implications for the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and the cross-disciplinary field of sensory studies.

The face: our most distinguishing feature, but one which remains alien to us and which hides as much as it reveals. The slightest variation in characateristics, their volume, lines and intensity, is enough to distinguish one physiognomy from another, and to determine identity and draw a line between one person and another. In the moral hierarchy of bodily geography, the face embodies the highest value. It is the privileged site of love and hate, and judgements of beauty or ugliness are inscribed within it. It is so highly valued that any change, any visible trace of injury, is a tragedy, akin to an attack on one's identity. An individual's unique face corresponds to the uniqueness of his or her personal adventure. It is also the vehicle through which we produce and manage our daily interactions with others. The face precedes individuals, announces their presence, indicates whether they are known and displays their possible intentions. An integral part of the human body, the face is a part like no other.David Le Breton offers a wide-ranging cultural history and anthropology of the face, from the mirror and the veil, the portrait and the invention of photography to cosmetic surgery, the selfie, facial recognition and AI. He reflects on how age leaves its mark on our fragile faces and how the symbolic violence perpetrated by racism expresses itself in the refusal to grant a person the dignity of a face. He reflects too on how the proliferation of faces in the age of the selfie renders the face banal, destroys its aura and weakens the social bond. Selfies proliferate in a world where face-to-face encounters are becoming increasingly rare, as individuals become monads focused on their phones. We are less and less together and more and more side by side, fragmented, our eyes glued to our screens, no longer looking at each other.This magisterial book will appeal to anyone interested in the face and the many roles it has played in our history, culture and social life, and in how these roles might be changing today in our contemporary digital age.