Antropologia dei sensi. Osservazioni introduttive

Perception is not merely a physiological act, but it is mostly affected by cultural factors. Men do not simply "perceive" the world, but they are taught - indeed, culturally and socially taught - to signify their perception. From such a premise, the paper underlines that an anthropological exploration of senses relies on the aknowledgement of a sort of "social invisibility", a set of relations between people that are invisible from everyone who is not a member of the community. This social invisibility has a primary, more general sense, as it is a crucial dimension of human life, that is a "collective sensoriality". But is also needs, from a more specific perspective, the claim that anthropology itself needs to rethink the ways of its knowledge: the primacy of the vision as the tool of the knowledge (as in participant observation) in cultural analysis could not fit well with other cultures way to give sensorial order to the world.