TY - JOUR

T1 - Mixing methods, tasting fingers

T2 - Notes on an ethnographic experiment

AU - Mann, Anna

AU - Mol, Annemarie

AU - Satalkar, Priya

AU - Selim, Nasima

AU - Sur, Malini

AU - Yates-Doerr, Emily

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - This article reports on an ethnographic experiment. Four finger eating experts and three novices sat down for a hot meal and ate with their hands. Drawing on the technique of playing with the familiar and the strange, our aim was not to explain our responses, but to articulate them. As we seek words to do so, we are compelled to stretch the verb "to taste." Tasting, or so our ethnographic experiment suggests, need not be understood as an activity confined to the tongue. Instead, if given a chance, it may viscously spread out to the fingers and come to include appreciative reactions otherwise hard to name. Pleasure and embarrassment, food-­like vitality, erotic titillation, the satisfaction or discomfort that follow a meal-we suggest that these may all be included in "tasting." Thus teasing the language alters what speakers and eaters may sense and say. It complements the repertoires available for articulation. But is it okay? Will we be allowed to mess with textbook biology in this way and interfere, not just with anthropological theory, but with the English language itself?

AB - This article reports on an ethnographic experiment. Four finger eating experts and three novices sat down for a hot meal and ate with their hands. Drawing on the technique of playing with the familiar and the strange, our aim was not to explain our responses, but to articulate them. As we seek words to do so, we are compelled to stretch the verb "to taste." Tasting, or so our ethnographic experiment suggests, need not be understood as an activity confined to the tongue. Instead, if given a chance, it may viscously spread out to the fingers and come to include appreciative reactions otherwise hard to name. Pleasure and embarrassment, food-­like vitality, erotic titillation, the satisfaction or discomfort that follow a meal-we suggest that these may all be included in "tasting." Thus teasing the language alters what speakers and eaters may sense and say. It complements the repertoires available for articulation. But is it okay? Will we be allowed to mess with textbook biology in this way and interfere, not just with anthropological theory, but with the English language itself?

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Method

KW - Tasting

KW - Food

KW - Experiment

KW - Fingers

KW - Fluid

KW - Senses

M3 - Journal article

VL - 1

SP - 211

EP - 243

JO - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

JF - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

SN - 2575-1433

IS - 1

ER -