Körper und Sinne bei den Wolof Nordwestsenegals

Eine mikroethnographische Perspektive

Abstract

Despite much interest being shown in the senses by anthropologists and ethnographers in the last two decades, the conundrum of the universal or culturally specific nature of sensory experiences, usages and meanings across cultures has not been resolved. This is partly due to methodological problems in effectively studying this phenomenon cross-culturally. This article suggests microethnography as an adequate method capable of escaping from this limbo. Drawing on thorough ethnographic fieldwork supported by videographic recordings in northwestern Senegal, it explores the sensory worlds of elders in interaction on a Wolof village square. As will be shown, their embodied sensory practices differ fundamentally from those in Western settings, even though no individual sense is revealed to be dominant, as previous studies in the anthropology of the senses have suggested. In particular, Wolof interactants realize conversational functions with audio signals or touch that, in Western societies, are proved to be accomplished by gaze. These differences in embodied sensory practices are to be explained by conceptual, ecological and spatial rationales.