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Odor as a medium of cohesion and belonging1

A sensorial approach to family
Tino Schlinzig
p. 47-69

Résumé

Within the social sciences, family research in sociology has in recent years – and for good reason – taken to adopting a “practical turn” to its subject. Drawing on the concepts of doing and displaying family, numerous authors have provided valuable insights into the everyday dynamics of establishing and maintaining personal relationships. However, surprisingly little research can be found on the sensorial foundation of family relationships. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) It seeks to shed light on the still neglected sensory dimension of family practices by tracing fundamentals of a sociology of the senses in general and of odors in particular. (2) Based on qualitative research on multi-local families after separation and divorce, these considerations will be introduced as a lens helpful in studying current family practices in shared residence arrangements. These families are confronted with the challenge of establishing attachment and a sense of “we-ness” against the background of cyclical growth and reduction of the household community and the changing rhythms and patterns in their everyday lives. Following Goffman’s The Territories of the Self, we will explore how parents and children stabilize and also sensorily experience a local social order and belonging. In this, odors are of particular importance. Beyond verbal communication, they have a potential for merging what is separate and at the same time maintaining distinctions.

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I. Introduction

  • 1 This article is based on the chapter “Geruchsmarkierungen. Die olfaktorische Dimension von Vergemei (...)

1Long neglected, the sense of smell is gaining increasing attention from both the consumer market and within public and scientific discourse. «Anyone who addresses smelling today, be it literary, popular science, in books, journal articles, on television or in museum exhibitions, can be sure of a broad public interest and of its success», Jürgen Raab (1998:11) writes in his book The Social Construction of Olfactory Perception. He shows us that odors are attracting the increased interest of, for example, the New Age movement, which is rediscovering aroma therapy and its healing influence as well as the medicinal effectiveness of fragrances on the human psyche and organism. The market has also discovered stimulating scents, if one thinks, for example, of fragrant cafes and bakeries, perfumeries or simply supermarkets, where essences and aerosols are employed to evoke positive emotions and facilitate consumption decisions. However, sociological interest in this one of the five senses recognized in Western culture turns out to be surprisingly small. Despite some sociological works that are considered classic, including Georg Simmel’s (2009) influential Excursus on the Sociology of Sense Impression, the field has only recently begun to take shape (Göbel/Prinz, 2015; Utz, 2006; Howes, 2005, 2003). Within these five senses, smell holds a rather marginal position as one of the “lower sen­ses” leant a mostly negative connotation, an observation Simmel (2009:577) himself made and went on to reinforce. This neglects the observation that it possesses some remarkable qualities of creating sociality. Smell holds social significance because of the meanings attributed, elaborated, and negotiated by subjects in interactions (Low, 2005:398). This notion of “doing smell” leads directly to this article’s concern. The high figures of divorce and separation and the increasing involvement of fathers in child care promote residential models enabling children to participate in the everyday lives of their separated parents. In looking at these multi-local families, I draw attention to identity politics and territorialization practices. Within these shared care arrangements, smell assumes particular impor­tance. The following considerations focus on the potential of odors as shared knowledge and odorizations as practices stabilizing parent-child-relationships, across space and in the context of the recurring presence and absence of children within these families, and the changing rhythms and patterns of their everyday lives. However, surprisingly little research can be found on the sensorial foundation of family relationships. It seems that the power of odors in particular has so far been underestimated. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) It seeks to shed light on the still neglected sensory dimension of family practices by tracing fundamentals of a sociology of the senses in general and of odors in particular. Before doing so, I will briefly outline some characteristics of multi-local families after separation and divorce and the cultural ideal of physical co-presence. (2) Based on empirical research on multi-local families after separation and divorce, these considerations will be discussed and introduced as a helpful lens for studying current family practices. The qualitative interview data presented suggest that parents and children in multi-local families after separation and divorce oscillate between referring to the other household to create a cross-spatial sense of belonging and at the same time to promote a local family identity (Schlinzig, 2017). The establishment of a local social order and belonging is thereby stabilized and also experienced sensorily. Odors are of particular importance in this. They enable the creation of closeness and identification beyond verbal communication, have the potential to merge what is separate, and at the same time to distinguish (Soeffner, 2012; Largey/Watson, 1972). Following Goffman’s (1971) The Territories of the Self and Raab’s (1998) further considerations of his concepts within the framework of a sensorial approach to odors, I seek to explore the olfactory dimension of cohesion in families and suggest that odors may be considered as an important key to understanding processes of establishing belonging and identity.

II. Notes on methodology

2The empirical basis of this article is a study carried out between 2010 and 2015 with a total of five post-separation families in shared residence/shared physical custody arrangements in a major city in eastern Germany (Schlinzig, 2017). Families were recruited through advertisements in two city journals. The final selection followed a theoretical sampling accor­ding to grounded theory methodology (Corbin/Strauss, 2015). The biological and social parents have above-average formal educations, have medium to higher household incomes, and may be situated in a (metropolitan) urban residential milieu. At the time of the data collection, the seven participating children were between six and ten years old.

3For data collection narrative and problem-centred interviews with multi-local children, their parents and corresponding partners as well as focus groups in both family households, were employed (Bohnsack, 2010; Nohl, 2010; Witzel, 2000). Within the framework of reconstructive qualitative research, these were analysed using Bohnsack’s (2014, 2010) documentary method for the interpretation of text material. Related to the distinction between formulating and reflecting interpretation, this approach takes into account different kinds of collectively shared knowledge to access the subjects’ pre-reflexive knowledge, embedded in the routines of their everyday life. Instead of remaining at the level of common sense knowledge, it draws on implicit or documentary knowledge (Montanari, 2019; Bohnsack, 2014). Accordingly, in addition to what is said in the interviews (formulating interpretation), the analysis focuses on how something is said (reflecting interpretation), in order to reconstruct orientations bound to practices of a certain social milieu, generation, or gender.

4In addition to our own primary data, secondary analysis was conducted on interview material originating in ethnographic case studies by the Schumpeter research group on the “Multi-locality of Families” under the direction of Michaela Schier at the German Youth Institute (DJI) in Munich, taken together, resulting in 21 interviews and 6 focus groups. These data were supplemented by ego-centred network maps (Hein/Schier/Schlinzig, 2019) and photographs of everyday family life taken by the children as part of participatory photo interviews (Jorgenson/Sullivan, 2010; Kolb, 2008).

III. Multi-locality and the cultural meaning of physical co-presence

5The starting point of this study on multi-local everyday family life and its dynamics is a well-known assumption of modernist theory: social institutions like the family are to be fundamentally questioned. Personal relationships in second modernity – parent-child-relationships, for example – are no longer a given entity stabilized solely by tradition or religious arguments. They are rather matters of choice and negotiation (Beck/Beck-Gernsheim, 2004; Beck, 1987). The shared knowledge that guides our ideas and actions is eroding and increasingly challenged. The family can be studied as a seismograph of these transformations: pluralization of family forms, changes of traditional gender roles, the dissolution of the connection of family, marriage, heterosexuality, and the equating of family and household (Maihofer, 2014; Lenz, 2013; Peuckert, 2012). In the course of the functional differentiation of modern societies, family relationships and parenthood are experiencing a shift from a productive to an emotional foundation, with socialization and upbringing their primary efforts (Peuckert, 2012:12-17). Ideal concepts and role models of the family serve as background assumptions for tasks and efforts parents should provide for children (BiB, 2015). These are embedded within the normative complex of “responsible parenthood”, which demands the best possible promotion of child development (Kaufmann, 1990:34-48): (1) coordinating and organizing everyday family life, (2) social cohesion and emotional support, (3) socialization, (4) biographic and habitual positioning of children, and (5) care. These ideas are interwoven with assumptions of the spatial constitution of the family. Despite various dynamics and the public’s increased interest in changing forms of social relationships, the image of the family in Western societies is dominated by notions of a social group composed of parents and their biological children in a common household. These assumptions are strongly associated with the idea of a household community (Lenz, 2013:113-115). Currently shared cultural interpretations of modern western societies still consider the living together of family members, and hence the physical co-presence of children and parents, as a basic constituent. Physical co-presence is considered a fundamental constituent of family and as preferable to a technologically mediated presence. The sensory limitation of, for example, virtual co-presence is seen as deficient in comparison with sensorily saturated physical co-presence. Despite the fact that family is increasingly done in the physical absence of its members – due to employment mobility and in the course of separation and divorce – that orientation is remarkably stable within scientific discourse, mass media, and not least within families themselves. It is argued that physical co-presence has a number of distinct features or benefits compared to other forms of (mediated) presence. Sociology itself has long fed this understanding. For example, Schutz and Luckmann (1989:90) see the temporal and spatial commonality of the we-relationship – the interactions of people present – as characterized by a “maximum of symptom-fullness”. According to Simmel (2009:570-783), shared physical presence enables a multisensory impression. And Goffman (1983) also claims that the manifold information available in physical co-presence provides a range of indications for interpreting the social situation and the participants therein, and thus facilitates orientation. Various increasing mobility requirements – related to work, the growing popularity of multi-local family arrangements after separation and divorce, in which children regularly live alternately in both households of the separated parents, and last but not least in the course of migration, refuge and displacement – challenge these notions of co-presence. Information and communication technologies are increasingly used to establish and maintain personal relationships and care (Schier/Schlinzig, 2018:93-95; Parreñas, 2014; Greschke, 2012). Against this background, the term co-presence seems to be in need of supplementation and requires an understanding beyond that of its purely physical counterpart. Recent debates within family sociology have already made a number of suggestions in this regard (see Döbler, 2018 for an overview). Family researcher Loretta Baldassar (2008) suggests an extended typology that, in addition to the physical co-presence of family members, encompasses the care of parents for their children in virtual (mediated by communication and information technologies) (see also Baldassar et al., 2016:138-141; Christensen, 2009; Licoppe, 2004), by proxy (such as indirectly through objects), and imagined co-presence. Schutz had the latter in mind as far back as 1967 when pointing out that the perception of co-presence and shared knowledge are decisive factors in the creation of community and belonging, and that they do not necessarily require temporospatial co-presence. In his view, memories of other people may also become effective in influencing the actions of those who remember – a micro-sociological argument that, with regard to the normative framework of a society, can also be found in George Herbert Meads (1934) figure of the “generalized other”. He offers a genuine micro-sociological concept of co-presence without immediate presence, understood as the expectations of behaviour in a group that go beyond the concrete or significant other, who does not necessarily have to be physically present, but is imagined and whose sanctions are anticipated and regulate behaviour. In addition to the living presence of the we-relationship, Schutz (1962:221) discusses the «quasi-present in which I interpret the mere outcome of the other’s communicating – the written letter, the printed book – without having participated in the ongoing process of communicating acts». By looking at Italian immigrants in Australia and their relatives in Europe, Baldassar (2008) interprets this kind of co-presence by proxy as the representation of those absent through things. In this way things bring the people who gave them to mind and keep them present – a notion that Marcel Mauss also summoned: gifts as the incorporation of others not physically present represent objects that make external experiences possible (Mauss, 1966). As I want to show, the sociology of odors also provides evidence in this regard (Eberle, 2013; Largey/Watson, 1972) and the olfactory is able to perform in a similar way to serve for identification and distinction as shared knowledge within small groups like the family. But before I develop this argument, it is necessary to briefly introduce the five senses as a sociological subject and locate odor in its corresponding sociological discourse.

IV. Odors as a subject of sociological theory and research

6The senses certainly do not belong to the basic canon of sociology. On the contrary, a far-reaching “oblivion of the senses” may be observed and understood historically by looking at the discipline’s constitution and efforts to distinguish itself from psychology and biology (Reckwitz, 2015:442). The longstanding dualistic understanding of how the genuinely social sphere was separated from the psychic-mental or the organic-bodily has furthered this development and has led – as Reckwitz illustrates – to the omission of perception and the senses from the social. However, in the past few years there has been an increasing body of theoretical and empirical work focusing on the sensorial as genuinely social phenomena: auditory sense (Bull/Back, 2016; Schrage/Hoklas, 2018; Erlmann, 2004), visual sense (Mirzoeff, 1999), olfactory sense (Raab, 2016, 1998; Eberle, 2013; Waskul/Vannini, 2008; Synnott, 1991; Largey/Watson, 1972), gustatory sense (Barlösius, 2011; Lemke, 2007; Holtzman, 2006) and touch (Zin­gerle, 2016). And since there is no generally agreed understanding of the number of senses and what can be considered sensory perception, the classification scheme of the five senses with its long history going back to Aristotle can be interpreted as part of socially shared theories of the body, a systematization of knowledge and normative claims, as Bellebaum (2016) and Loenhoff (1999) have suggested.

7Within the field of the senses the olfactory is primarily a domain of psychological research. And while odor is the least explored sense even within natural or life sciences, there exists a comparatively broad corpus of literature. As an example and, very selectively, I would like to refer to the very instructive article Proust Nose Best: Odors Are Better Cues of Autobiogra­phical Memory by Chu/Downs (2002). Like earlier authors, they refer to the French novelist Marcel Proust and his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Well known within cognitive psychological theories, the “Proust phenomenon” describes the observation that «odors are particularly powerful autobiographical memory cues» (Ibid.:511). The taste of the madeleine and the olfactory blending with linden blossom tea let the protagonist recall Combray, a place of his past, and his aunt Leonie. A piece of lost time from his childhood is recovered and, in the process of the narrator’s remembering, can be verbalized and shared – a kind of emotional re-experience also observed by anthropologist Jon D. Holtzman (2006) in particular, with food-centred forms of (collective) memory and identity. Karl Ove Knausgard’s (2014:154) currently very popular five-volume autobiography My Struggle also draws our attention to interrelation of odors and memory:

It smelled good there, not only in the kitchen, […] but everywhere there was a fragrance that underlay all the others and was constant, a vaguely fruity sweetness I associated with this house whenever I met it outside, for example when grandma and grandad were visiting us, because they brought the fragrance with them, it was in their clothes, I noticed it as soon as they stepped into our hall.

8This quotation nicely describes what is from the first a cognitive pheno­menon, showing how effectively senses and memories are linked. Wentura/Frings (2013), for example, write, on biographical memories, that access to an episode always succeeds if there is a sufficiently good “retrieval key” available. Odors are held to be a particularly distinct and powerful stimulus. Chu/Downs (2002) empirical findings suggest that, in comparison to the other senses, odors stimulate more reliable, more detailed and emotionally-focused autobiographical memories, reaching even further back in time.

9With these revealing insights, what can we learn for sociological approaches to personal relationships, especially when looking at families living in multi-local arrangements? From a sociological point of view it is worth looking at humans’ ability to create proximity and intimacy with the help of our senses and of merging together the spatially separate or distinct, to understand processes of cohesion building and the creation of we-ness within families. Belonging and identification within a group is, beside visual and auditory perception and recognition, also a matter of distinct smells. Beyond assigning odors to even larger social groups and processes of stereotypical attributions and exclusion, odors may be considered as a basis for creating belonging and identity. This draws our attention to genuine sociological approaches to the interplay of olfactory perceptions and social relationships.

10Even though research on the social and cultural meaning of odors is still surprisingly limited, the field has been developing in recent years. The olfactory is attracting growing attention, especially with regard to smellscapes in historical and sociological research on urban change and social transformation processes (Ramos, 2020; Davis/Thys-Şenocak, 2017; Borer, 2013; Sliwa/Riach, 2011). However, it has a tradition of its own and cannot be thought of without its classical forerunners. Georg Simmel’s considerations in his foray into the Sociology of Sense Impression (2009:570-783) are groundbreaking. Simmel assumes that odors have a special quality and effectiveness: «When we smell something, we draw this impression or this radiating object so deeply into ourselves, into our center, we assimilate it, so to speak […]» (2009:578). These considerations were systematically expanded upon by Largey/Watson in their paper The Sociology of Odors in 1972. Simmel had underestimated the sense of smell in comparison to the visual and auditory and even introduced it as a «dissociating sense» (Simmel, 2009:579). Instead Largey/Watson recognize a higher socially impor­tance of odors and raise a number of sociologically highly relevant issues. An important contribution can also be seen in the work of the German sociologist Jürgen Raab and his Die soziale Konstruktion olfaktorischer Wahrnehmung. Eine Soziologie des Geruchs (The Social Construction of Olfactory Perception. A Sociology of Smell), a key work in the sociological dimensioning of the domain. He claims that smell is not only a chemical, biological, and physiological phenomenon, but also and therefore foremost an individual one, and that our nose is a socially and culturally formed, sti­mulated, and controlled sense organ. Moreover, «perception, interpretation, aesthetic appreciation or rejection and so the avoidance and production of smells is dependent on belonging to social milieux and a certain lifestyle» (Raab, 1998:8f.). Re-odorizing in the form of reversing practices of removing natural smells, would gain particular importance, he continues, since these can be considered as part of symbolic demarcations between social groups. Raab brings all these considerations together in the question of the “place of odors in our society”, also considering the social-interactive dimension of smells.

11In the following, I would like to build on this valuable body of research and raise the question of how families associate, identify, and distinguish themselves by means of smell, both across space and in a specific place/household. Interviews and focus groups I conducted with parents and children in shared residence arrangements after separation and divorce provide indications for understanding how odors and respective practices can be considered as forming part of boundary management by the family members. Goffman’s (1971) studies of The Territories of the Self have provided a useful heuristic in this regard, which is why I would like to introduce them here with reference to Raab (1998) and relate them to my empirical findings.

V. Odor as a medium for creating belonging and cohesion in multi-local families

12Although Goffman largely neglects the significance of odors in social interactions and their potential for violating or contaminating a person’s territories, his work is a valuable source for the study of the social-interactive dimension of smell. He addresses sensory experiences as «embodied messages» and describes seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching as «receiving equipment» that, primarily, enables the transmission and reception of information, and as a fundamental constituent of interactions (Goffman, 1963:14). As he understands it, any (verbal) message is enriched by embodied «additional information» (Ibid.:15) that enables interacting partners to decode messages and recognize the other in their social identity. This condition allows for «a very large number of brief messages» (Ibid.) and personal territorial claims recognizable to others to be made and protected from violation. However, among the possibilities for marking territories, Goffman considers only visual, acoustic, or tactile signs or signals, as Raab (1998:130) notes, seeking to fill this gap by referring to three of the overall eight of Goffman’s preserves – the personal space, the sheath, and the stall – and discussing how odors serve to mark or violate them. Taking up this proposition, the latter two are of particular relevance for our purposes.

A. Sheaths. The smell of clothing as a medium in perceiving others

13Erving Goffman (1971:38) understands sheaths to mean not only skin but also the clothes covering it, and describes body-bound territories of the self. According to Raab (1998:115-117), smells – adhering to clothing or the body – are perceived by others, enabling, on the one hand, the categorical and individual identification of the and, on the other, helping them control the presentation of their self. However, he considers the power of the odor of clothing first and foremost in the area of physical cleanliness and states that «clothing cannot make its own positive contribution to the odor image because the odorants in the textile care products […] are too volatile and the clothing quickly absorbs the body odors of the individual […]» (Ibid.:130). For the family members I interviewed, however, those fleeting moments seem to be sufficient for determining belonging and perceiving difference. The following quote from the interview with one of the multi-locally living children illustrates this observation. Eva, ten years old, who regularly lives with her sister in the two households of her separated parents and their new partners, describes it as follows:

Well, mum uses another detergent than dad does. And always when I return to their homes, I think: Huh, how does it smell here? And then it’s always […] confusing. For example, actually, I’m used to the smell of mum and dad. But when I’ve been to mum’s place and come in here, I think, oh, it smells strange in here today until I get used to it again. And it’s like that with mum’s, too.

14This example vividly shows that changing location is accompanied by a sensorily perceptible experience of differences between the two parental homes. The physical space of the home is carrier of a smell distinguishing both family locations, a role filled by the use of re-odorizing substances – in this case the detergents used. The recurring return of children to the respective family households obviously delineates different purity practices and raises questions of taste in Bourdieu’s sense. These practices of an olfactory identification of belonging are embedded in practical consciousness – to use Giddens’ (1984) concept here. The recognition of differences and irritations due to other odors “brought in” objectify this shared tacit knowledge and form the basis for claims of we-ness and otherness. This assumption becomes plausible, for example, with the observation that the children living multi-locally carry along traces of smells from the other place on retur­ning from the household, making the use of other care products, for instan­ce, recognizable and making it possible for the mono-local family members to experience it. Here is a quote from an interview with one of the mothers, 34-year-old Annett, whose two sons move to and from their father’s household on a weekly basis. She tells us:

When the children get to my place, they always smell of their father’s detergent. I don’t know what he’s using. All their clothes, I always wash them first and almost from Saturday, they smell again […] differently. [laughs] I keep noticing that, you know? Also the shampoo they’re using, when I smell their hair.

15The statement suggests that olfactory differences and the recognition of otherness are not only obvious for children living in multiple places, but also for the sedentary parents and siblings of the mono-local household. The difference recognized makes it possible to determine one’s own scent space. This apparently creates a distance from the children who have returned from the father’s household. The quote from the interview shows that obviously the odors brought in call for a neutralization or a re-odorization with the typical smell of the family home. Mary Douglas (1984 [1966]) described these practices of separation, order, and purity in her study Purity and Danger, in which she examines the interrelation between the strength of group identity and the degree of social order with a view to the degree of ritualization of a society. In this view, rituals in the sense of “moral codes” express ideas of purity in the narrower understanding and a system of values associated with a community (Douglas, 1996). These ritual practices are highly functional since they confirm and reproduce a locally bound social order and serve in terms of distinction and order principles. Douglas concludes: «Dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organise the environment» (Douglas, 1984:2). The distinctiveness of olfactory perception and its emotion-evoking effect suggests that the sense of smell seems to be directed towards «perceiving and evaluating objects and conditions relentlessly, radically and emotionally» (Barlösius, 2011:78). In addition, the skin or hair belonging to the sheath was also mentioned as a scent carrier. Here, not the body’s own smell is recognized, but again the re-odorization of the hair by another shampoo. Like Largey/Watson (1972), Jürgen Raab (1998) distinguishes between de-odorization and re-odorization. If the former refers to the neutralization of socially undesirable odors in the course of physical cleaning and hygiene, the latter describes the application of socially accepted and idealized odor substances with the aim of «generating a certain odor image», as Raab (1998:120) describes. As the authors point out, these two techniques refer not only to the human body, but also to private space – the home – and public spaces, and thus «olfactory spaces, which surround the individual as concentric circles» that range from the body via territories of the self to public space (Ibid.:112). Both laundry and hair scent refer to the use of certain care products, which in turn provide references to the social differentiation already made by Raab (Ibid.:194) along with the categories of taste, lifestyle, and milieu, and thus specific habitus and social practices. As the interview data of the families demonstrate, these are spatially bound. Practices of purity and ideas of smelling good and its counterpart mark spatial boundaries, an order tied to the family place, and can thus coincidentally become effective as a basis for spatial family identity. In this respect, family identities are olfactoricaly impregnated and odor practices, as part of aesthetic practices, are not merely affective reactions, but document the social use of smell and its consequences (Reckwitz, 2015).

B. Stalls. The home as olfactory marker and identification medium

16In addition to sheaths, a further territory independent of the body is of particular interest. Goffman (1971:32) talks of stalls as «well-bounded pla­ces to which individuals can lay temporary claims, possession being on an all-or-none basis». Such spatial claims are characterized by recognizable boundaries and ownership is indicated by means of appropriate requisites. Family homes know these kind of stalls too. There are also claims on partial spaces provided with ownership markers. For example the placement at the dining table is not arbitrary and variable. This spatial order does not require any explication until it is challenged by uninformed outsiders. But claims can be made, for example, by placing drinking glasses or depositing personal, assignable objects such as glasses. In addition to the use of artefacts, odors serve to demarcate a home and recognize others’ territories. Private spaces represent the sphere that can be olfactorily marked and recognized by others as belonging to an individual or group (Raab, 1998:132). These «odor settings», as Largey/Watson (1972:1026) call them, have the capacity to create belonging or to exclude, and to create and/or strengthen a group’s sense of togetherness. The statements of the interviewed children and parents make it clear: smells, related to persons and places, bring to mind emotions and memories; personal relationships are stabilized by this and possibly absent others will be co-present. Simmel (2009:566) relativizes the difference between spatial proximity and distance: the «psychological effect of the former can actually be very largely replaced by means of indirect interaction and still more by that of the imagination». On the other hand he emphasizes the «perceptible character of local proximity» (Ibid.:568) and its ability to create attachment sensorily and emotionally. In addition to «social integration» linked to presence and face-to-face interactions, Giddens (1984:28) is also familiar with the enhanced concept of «system integration» that refers to those «who are absent in space and time». The findings of cognitive psychology support this assumption. The phenomenon is known in relation to autobiographical or episodic memory (Wentura/Frings, 2013). Once again, smells are powerful key stimuli that remind us of the emotional and spatial experiences of past olfactory perceptions. And these are quite obviously linked to memory to a greater or more precise degree than is the case with visual or auditory stimuli, for example.

JA: What I found very interesting is, I discovered that every apartment has its own smell. For example I love the smell of my grandma’s home [laughs]. And then I just long for her. Or, for example, I could smell from my cousins’ laundry, who live in Berlin, that it belongs to them because they have such a distinct smell.

I: And do you notice differences between here and there?

JA: I don’t really notice that. I’m here too often. [–] You just don’t notice it anymore. If you are for example at grandma’s place then you don’t notice that particular smell any more. You just notice it when you’re […] well […] NOT there [laughs].

17In this part of the interview, ten-year-old Jasmin, who lives equally in the respective households of her parents, their new partners and their joint children, describes how, according to her observations, both homes have their distinctive olfactory impregnation – the «typical basic smell of an apartment», as Raab (1997:133) puts it. She is reconstructing situations in which smells refer to the grandmother and her home. Places, events, moods, and people are cognitively linked with the current perception of smell and social ties are reproduced through this sensorial perception. Odors evoke requests for presence and can bring places and people together in an imagined way – quite akin to Baldassar’s (2008) “imagined co-presence”. The example of the cousins’ clothing illustrates that odors can obviously be assigned to a specific person and permit the identification of others and oneself. Jürgen Raab (1997:113-115) highlighted the significance of this phenomenon, both for the individual – how body odors and olfactory practices facilitate the identification of oneself and others – and for the categorical classification of individuals among larger groupings such as ethnic groups, and the associated conclusions about their moral status. But little attention has yet been paid to the olfactory self-identification of small groups and the olfactory recognition of the members among themselves, as suggested by Jasmin, (the multi-locally living child in the above quote), in connection with the “closer family” in contrast to the other. The olfactory differences between the two places regularly inhabited by her are not consciously perceived, as she notes. The olfactory character of regularly frequented places can obviously not form the basis of a conscious recurring distinction between here and there. The phenomenon of habituation or adaptation – known from cognitive psychology on sensory perception and the processing of odors – is described here as a process of adaptation to regularly surrounding (everyday) odors, which are less conspicuous than unexpected or unknown scent stimuli (Raab, 1998:30). Indicated by a laugh, Jasmin recognizes an apparent paradox: her returning presence in certain places cognitively dilutes its olfactory specificity, which is an amalgam of body smells, furnishings, architecture, and the spatial location. This characteristic only becomes recognizable again in contrast to another place and in absence – for example through artefacts that have been taken away or through current olfactory perceptions associated with the other place. In both cases – the smells adhering to the clothing and those of the rooms – the interviewed children describe an effect of habituation. As on a temporospatial level vis-à-vis the specific location-bound family practices and rituals, re-integration is also required with regard to olfactory identification. This olfactory integration after absence is not actively done by the children, but is described by them as an inevitable and unconscious finding. The practices of parents – for example neutralizing odor differences as already descri­bed – must be understood differently, namely as an active achievement of olfactory equality. We see that integration efforts are not only essentially the responsibility of the multi-locally living children, but equally of the parents. It also becomes clear that children and parents have different power positions. Parents are obviously not only equipped with the competence to recognize differences, but also to actively shape them. It is within their power to set the olfactory definition of the family and to establish and stabilize social cohesion.

C. Re-odorized mobile objects. Objects to create bonds and belonging

18Objects are not per se immobile and location-bound. This is true for numerous commodities. Objects have their own (cultural) biography and are often just as mobile as their owner(s) themselves, as John Urry (2000:64ff.) vividly sketches in his Sociology beyond Societies. Mobilities for the twenty-first century. In the case of the interviewed families, certain objects and practices of dealing with absence attract particular attention. They have quite different meanings and, in the sense of Christena Nippert-Eng (1996), “bridging functions”. The following interview – again with ten-year-old Jasmin – illustrates in what way smell and the sense of smell adhering to the objects have a central associative function that establishes belonging:

JA: I used to take this with me [shows a small pillow].

I: What’s this, a cuddle pillow?

JA: Yes, I’ve had it since I was a baby. Very often repaired [laughs].

I: [laughs].

JA: No, certainly not since I was a baby. Since I was five years old.

I: There’s a difference [laughs].

JA: Yes, I had various versions of it. Because I lost the first one on a cable car. It got dropped somewhere and we searched in the woods but could never find it. [–] I cried all the time. Grandma made me a new one, but I didn’t want to take it. [1.5] uhm [.] But then my mum came up with the idea that she would spray her perfume on it and then I accepted it. [–] Because it smelled like her [laughs up].

I: And because you can take it with you?

JA: Yes, so that it smells a little like mum.

19Artefacts, as anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1966) conceives them with regard to the exchange of gifts, serve as placeholders, so to speak. They enable the experience of the absent. In the case of multi-local children and parents, objects are an appropriate means of creating presence or being made present. Artefacts brought from one location to another enable an association with the other place and family members by their olfactory characteristics. Assumptions drawn from symbol and institution theory might be helpful in interpreting this observation. The smells adhering to objects unfold a symbolic power that can be described in Husserl’s sense as «making it co-present» (Mitgegenwärtig-Machen) (Husserl, 1973:139). According to Rehberg (2002:47) symbols have their own ability to create presence, more precisely «the mediating presence of the absent, the invisible, the transcendent». The transcendent, mediated through symbols, represents a «transgression of situations, that is contexts of time, space and meaning, as well as of living beings, for example persons» (Rehberg, 1994:63). This is evident in the above quote from Jasmin, whose pillow functions as a carrier of her mother’s fragrance. The personalized and symbolically highly char­ged artefact of the cuddly cushion is used by the mother as a medium to place herself, to anchor herself, and thus to create presence in absence through odorizing it with her usual perfume. «That we smell the atmosphere of somebody is a most intimate perception of that person; that person penetrates, so to speak, in the form of air, into our most inner senses», Simmel (2009:578) taught us regarding the powerful mechanisms of smelling others. Beyond the physical-bodily dimension of the pillow and the creation of belonging, the olfactory impregnation of the object enables the association with the mother and the sensorily extended assurance of bonding and belonging – in physical absence too. This phenomenon can also be explored through the lens of the “transitional object” originating in Winnicott’s (1953) psychoanalysis. Although its fixation on the mother as the primary caregiver as well as her presupposed constant presence must be reviewed critically, this concept offers a fruitful starting point. In essence, these objects serve the children’s individuation and detachment from a symbiotic unity with the mother. Following on from this, Mitscherlich (1984:197) sees transitional objects as a substitute chosen and created by children themsel­ves, which enables them to «endure the absence of the mother who is not present» and to visualize her symbolically. In this way parents and other family members can be co-present by proxy without being physically present. The empirical material suggests that the sharp contrast between presence and absence has been softened. Mobile or mobilized objects enable the mooring and stabilization of personal relationships across the changing spatial arrangements of children’s multi-local lives. In this regard, olfactory practices are key moments for understanding the ongoing accomplishment of family relationships and identification that transcends space and connects family places.

VI. Concluding remarks: Odors as a form of socially shared knowledge and practice

20Family sociology in the past two decades has taken the changing realities of its dynamic subject into account, refining its theoretical approaches, and increasingly focusing on practice theory accounts: Family needs to be confirmed and situationally done and displayed (Jurczyk, 2014; Finch, 2007; Smart, 2007; Morgan, 1996) – even, and with greater challenges, across space in the course of migration due to employment mobility, and, not least, separation and divorce. Surprisingly little research can be found on the sensorial foundation of family relationships and respective practices. Considering family as an ongoing accomplishment, it in particular makes sense to ask what significance olfactory practices take on/embody.

21Following Goffman’s (1971) The Territories of the Self, this paper has sought to explore the olfactory dimension of cohesion in multi-local families after separation and divorce, wherein social practices of identification and differentiation are particularly evident in the absence of cultural norms: (a) The sheath, and thus odors attached to clothes, can be interpreted as a medium for the perception of absent others and reintegration of the returning children. Interviews with parents and children can also show that (b) the living space understood as the stall serves as a marker of odor and means of identification – odors serve to demarcate a family home, to recognize other’s territories, and as sensual keys. Finally, the empirical material suggests that (c) the odorization of mobile objects is applied to establish co-presence in absence. In the olfactory definition of the family and its spatial representation, power imbalances between parents and children were observed. Parents gain “authority of interpretation” over the olfactory order of the collective. Smells in particular serve as a shared knowledge for identification of family members and others. Although one’s own experience as a source of knowledge is attributed prime significance in phenomenologically oriented sociology, Alfred Schutz himself stressed that knowledge does not originate exclusively in one’s own experiences, but in many cases is socially mediated. According to him, the important medium for the mediation of knowledge is language, underestimating the potential of the senses and especially of odors. Socially available knowledge is embedded in discourses and practices. These stocks of knowledge are translated into behavioral norms for dealing with objects and people, and «considered to be the natural, the good, the right ones by the members of the “in-group”» (Schutz, 1962:13). From a praxeological understanding of perception, in social practices we draw on the body as a physical-psychic resource. Practices «endow [the body] with appropriate competencies and forms of know­ledge that are retrieved and mobilized in the course of the practice», as Reckwitz (2015:447) points out. His claim that social orders are always sensory orders is supported by the family practices described above. In addition, local proximity of the actors – long considered to be elementary for olfactory perceptions – is apparently not necessary in stabilizing or rejecting close personal relationships and in creating and maintaining social boundaries.

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Annexe

Structured Summary

Presentation: Within the social sciences, family research in sociology has in recent years – and for good reason – taken to adopting a “practical turn” to its subject. Drawing on the concepts of doing and displaying family, numerous authors have provided valuable insights into the everyday dynamics of establishing and maintaining personal relationships. However, surprisingly little research can be found on the sensorial foundation of family relationships. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) It seeks to shed light on the still neglected sensory dimension of family practices by tracing fundamentals of a sociology of the senses in general and of odors in particular. (2) Based on qualitative research on multi-local families after separation and divorce, these considerations will be introduced as a lens helpful in studying current family practices in shared residence arrangements. These families are confronted with the challenge of establishing attachment and a sense of “we-ness” against the background of cyclical growth and reduction of the household community and the changing rhythms and patterns in their everyday lives. Following Goffman’s The Territories of the Self, we will explore how parents and children stabilize and also sensorily experience a local social order and belonging. In this, odors are of particular importance. Beyond verbal communication, they have a potential for merging what is separate and at the same time maintaining distinctions.

Theory: One of the main aims of this paper is to shed light on the neglected sensory dimension of family practices. Subsequently, fundamentals of a sociology of the senses in general and of odors in particular are introduced and discussed (Soeffner, 2012; Simmel, 2009 [1908]; Low, 2005; Raab, 1998; Synnott, 1991; Largey/Watson, 1972). Drawing on practice theory accounts in family sociology (Jurczyk, 2014; Finch, 2007; Smart, 2007; Morgan, 1996), Goffman’s (1971) influential micro-sociological approach to The Territories of the Self and Raab’s (1998) further considerations within the framework of a sensorial approach to odors, this paper seeks to explore the olfactory dimension of cohesion in families and suggests that as shared knowledge odors may be considered a basis for practices establishing belonging and identity.

Method: The empirical basis of this article is a study carried out between 2010 and 2015 with a total of five post-separation families in shared residence arrangements in a major city in eastern Germany (Schlinzig, 2017). Families were recruited through advertisements in two city journals. The final selection followed a theoretical sampling according to grounded theory methodology (Corbin/Strauss, 2015). The biological and social parents have above-average formal educations, have medium to higher household incomes, and may be situated in a (metropolitan) urban residential milieu. At the time of the data collection, the seven participating children were between six and ten years old. For data collection narrative and problem-centred interviews with multi-local children, their parents and corresponding partners as well as focus groups in both family households, were employed (Bohnsack, 2010; Nohl, 2010; Witzel, 2000). Within the framework of reconstructive qualitative research, these were transcribed and analysed using Bohnsack’s (2014, 2010) documentary method for the interpretation of text material. In addition to our own primary data, secondary analysis was conducted on interview material origin­ating in ethnographic case studies by the Schumpeter research group on the “Multi-locality of Families” at the German Youth Institute (DJI) in Munich, taken together, resulting in 21 interviews and 6 focus groups.

Results: Following Goffman’s (1971) The Territories of the Self, this paper has sought to explore the olfactory dimension of cohesion in multi-local families after separation and divorce, wherein social practices of identification and differentiation are particularly evident in the absence of cultural norms: (a) The sheath, and thus odors attached to clothes, can be interpreted as a medium for the perception of absent others and reintegration of the returning children. Interviews with parents and children can also show that (b) the living space understood as the stall serves as a marker of odor and means of identification – odors serve to demarcate a family home, to recognize other’s territories, and as sensual keys. Finally, the empirical material suggests that (c) the odorization of mobile objects is applied to establish co-presence in absence. In the olfactory definition of the family and its spatial representation, power imbalances between parents and children were observed. Parents gain “authority of interpretation” over the olfactory order of the collective. Smells in particular serve as a shared knowledge for identification of family members and others.

Discussion: Family sociology in the past two decades has taken the changing realities of its dynamic subject into account, refining its theoretical approaches, and increasingly focusing on practice theory accounts: Family needs to be confirmed and situationally done and displayed (Jurczyk, 2014; Finch, 2007; Smart, 2007; Morgan, 1996) – even, and with greater challenges, across space in the course of migration due to employment mobility, and, not least, separation and divorce. Surprisingly little research can be found on the sensorial foundation of family relationships and respective practices. Considering family as an ongoing accomplishment, it in particular makes sense to ask what significance olfactory practices take on/embody. From a praxeological understanding of perception, in social practices we draw on the body as a physical-psychic resource. Practices «endow [the body] with appropriate competencies and forms of knowledge that are retrieved and mobilized in the course of the practice,» as Reckwitz (2015:447) points out. His claim that social orders are always sensory orders is supported by the family practices discussed in this paper. In addition, the actors’ local proximity – long considered to be elementary for olfactory perceptions – is apparently not necessary in stabilizing or rejecting close personal relationships and in creating and maintaining social boun­daries. Considering sensual practices in families promises in-depth insights into the doing of personal relationships beyond what can be verbally said, but captures both a bodily dimension and describes a shared knowledge available for processes of identification. The findings of this paper recommend that this field has strong potential to be further explored sociologically and must by no means be left to psychology alone.

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Notes

1 This article is based on the chapter “Geruchsmarkierungen. Die olfaktorische Dimension von Vergemeinschaftung” of my PhD thesis (Schlinzig T., 2017), fully revised and supplemented by further considerations. I thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and advice.

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Tino Schlinzig

ETH Centre for Research on Architecture, Society & the Built Environment, ETH Zurich, Switzerland schlinzig@arch.ethz.ch.

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