Oktoberfest in Brazil: Domestic Tourism, Sensescapes, and German Brazilian Identity

By Audrey Ricke

Oktoberfest in Brazil: Domestic Tourism, Sensescapes, and German Brazilian Identity is one of the first ethnographies to analyze the tourism industry based on German cultural heritage in southern Brazil. Southern Brazil’s booming domestic tourism industry draws more than 500,000 people to events such as the Oktoberfest in Blumenau. Ricke investigates domestic tourism as sensescapes, focusing on the multiple and layered meanings associated with tourism’s sensory experiences and interactions. The author also introduces the “economy of aesthetics” as a new framework to capture how the sensescapes associated with domestic tourism are intertwined in the negotiation of ethnic, national, and transnational identities. These sensescapes also intersect with discourses on class and race, which are examined as well.

Oktoberfest in Brazil leads readers on a tour through German Brazilian home gardens, folk dance performances, and the largest Oktoberfest in Brazil. These sensory-rich spaces of interaction provide access to different perspectives and types of identity negotiation at multiple levels from the local to the transnational. Ricke illustrates how the emotions and sensory experiences of these sensescapes associated with German cultural heritage function as a means for German Brazilians to negotiate senses of belonging as Brazilians as well as their ethnic and transnational identities.

This book also provides historical and contemporary insights into the politics of citizenship associated with cultural heritage. As politics become more polarized, the need to analyze different ways of communicating through sensory experiences increases. The unique contribution of the economy of aesthetics framework is its ability to capture the influential power of sensory experience in the negotiation of identity and senses of belonging and citizenship more broadly. It provides new insights into how and why some sensory experiences within domestic tourism foster belonging and identity while other experiences reinforce social distinctions and national divisions.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9780817394592

Book preview

Oktoberfest in Brazil

OKTOBERFEST IN BRAZIL

Domestic Tourism, Sensescapes, and German Brazilian Identity

Audrey Ricke

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2023 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Arno Pro - Regular

Cover images: Oktoberfest, German Brazilian home gardens, and architecture; photographs by Audrey Ricke

Cover design: Sandy Turner Jr.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-2164-2 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-8173-6090-0 (paper)

E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9459-2

To my father, Steve, my mother, Mary Kay, my sister, Stephanie, and all those in Brazil, Germany, and the United States who have shared their life’s journey with me

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Encountering Another Part of Brazil

1. The Making of Ethnic and National Imaginaries

2. Cultivating Identity: Gardening among German Brazilians

3. Polkaing in Brazil: Moving Toward Transnational Ties

4. Oktoberfest in Brazil: Sensing German Brazilian Identity

Conclusion: A Deeper Sense of Identity

Notes

References

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

1. Yard with gnome figurines

2. Yard with tropical plants in a curved layout

3. Flower and vegetable garden

4. Fachwerk-style house with flowering plants

5. Yard with a variety of colorful flowers

6. Heliconia rostrata

7. Map of the 2010 Oktoberfest at Parque Vila Germânica

8. Oktoberfest participants who reported feeling a connection

Table

1. Examples of festivals associated with German cultural heritage in Santa Catarina

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the countless hours that so many Brazilian individuals shared with me. I will never forget your kindness, willingness, and patience in answering my questions; the giving of your time even when it was in short supply; and for welcoming me into your homes. Thank you for guiding me to a better understanding of Brazilian life and allowing me to accompany you at practices and performances, Blumenau’s Oktoberfest, Festa Pomerana, Festas de Rei e Rainha, and community events and during walks through your neighborhoods and home gardens. Following conventions in confidentiality, although your names are not listed, please know that I remember each one of you and am very grateful for your help. Thank you for generously giving of your time and inviting me into your homes during our many visits and on special holidays, treating me like family.

To the two German folk dance groups and their coordinators who welcomed me into their groups so generously and shared their lives with me, I hope you know that words cannot express my gratitude for your kindness. Thank you for the many rides—often out of your way—that you gave me, even at the end of very long days; for your willingness to answer my myriad questions and allowing me to accompany you to performances and practices; for your generosity in inviting me to group and family celebrations; and for introducing me to various people and supporting my research. I am very grateful to the Associação Cultural Gramado—Casa da Juventude for granting me permission to attend their training course and conduct research in their library. The acceptance that the two German folk dance groups, the association, and those who attended the folk dance course so readily gave me and your willingness to share your experiences and perspectives on German folk dance will always be remembered. Thank you for welcoming me like family! I enjoyed dancing with and getting to know all of you.

I am very grateful to the Oktoberfest and Festa Pomerana organizers and associated scholars for their generous support of my project, which made this research possible. To Parque Vila Germânica, the office of the secretary of tourism in Pomerode, judges of the Concurso de Jardins, and the scholars working with Festa Pomerana and Blumenau’s Oktoberfest, including Roseli Zimmer, Fabrícia Durieux Zucco, and Cristina Schmitt Miranda, thank you very much. Your insights into German cultural heritage and domestic tourism in the area were instrumental. To the band owners and performers I met, thank you for generously assisting me and patiently sharing your time and expertise during an already busy season. I am also very grateful to the organizers and members of the Clubes de Caça e Tiro for allowing me to participate in and research your traditions. Thank you for sharing with me a piece of your cultural heritage and so generously welcoming me at your events. Whether it was sharing photos and information, introducing me to others, and/or providing access, this research was made possible through the kindness and openness that each of the organizers and leaders of these events and groups showed me.

I truly appreciate the generosity of the individuals in Pomerode and Blumenau who opened their gardens and homes to me. Thank you for sharing your experiences with gardening as well as your lives growing up in the region. Thank you for the tours of your gardens and the area, including inviting me to Festa Pomerana. Thank you for the food you shared with me, along with the books, photos, and other items, and for your openness and willingness to welcome me into your lives. Although I was able to keep in touch with some of you, I unfortunately lost contact with others, but I remain very grateful to all of you for your help. I will always remember your kindness.

Thank you to the capoeira group and the Italian association in the area for allowing me to attend your events and visit with you. Although my time with you was short, I really appreciate the insights you shared with me about Black Brazilian and Italian Brazilian cultural heritages and your experiences.

I am very thankful for the various individuals from Germany whom I met and the many insights you shared with me about German cultural heritage in Germany and Brazil. To the three German exchange students, the German couple at the Oktoberfest in Blumenau, and the German entrepreneur, thank you for generously offering your time and perspectives. I would like to say a special thank you to Sabine for your advice and vast experience. It was really helpful discussing ideas with you early on. A big thank you as well to the German dance instructor for generously sharing with me your lifelong expertise with German folk dance. To the other individuals from Germany whom I met throughout my studies in Brazil and Germany, thank you for helping me gain a better understanding of German cultural heritage inside and outside of Germany.

I am very grateful to all of the Brazilian scholars who met with me to discuss my research, from its early inception to its later implementation. To Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), I truly appreciate your letters of support and the opportunity to work with the archive materials at UFSC’s Laboratório de História e Arte. I am very grateful as well to the other professors at UFSC who supported my work, including João Klug for his letter of support and for introducing me to other scholars of German Brazilian cultural traditions. To the many scholars at the Fundação Universidade Regional de Blumenau who shared your expertise and exchanged ideas with me about my project, thank you so much. I am very grateful to the following scholars for generously sharing your time and expertise: Adiléia Aparecida Bernardo, Cristina Ferreira, Luciano Félix Florit, Ricardo Guilherme, Marilda Rosa Galvão Checcucci Gonçalves da Silva, Ricardo Machado, Marlies Post, Cynthia Morgana Boos de Quadros, Clóvis Reis, and Marco Aurélio da Cruz Souza. To Isabel C. Arendt, Martin N. Dreher, and Roswithia Weber, and other scholars at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, thank you for the ideas and books that you generously shared with me in the initial stages of my project. I am very grateful as well to René Gertz for your letter of support and advice and for the resources that you gave me. In addition, I truly appreciate the ideas exchanged via email with Ellen Fensterseifer Woortmann during the early part of my research. A special thank you to Sueli Maria Vanzuita Petry for your suggestions and advice about my research and to the Arquivo Histórico José Ferreira da Silva in Blumenau for granting me access to many historical documents. Your support early on was instrumental, and any missteps in interpretation are mine.

Many scholars in the United States have contributed in important ways to this project and offered invaluable advice. I am very grateful to have worked with such supportive professors and fellow graduate students at Indiana University. I truly appreciate the support and guidance of Anya Peterson Royce, Marvin Sterling, Eduardo Brondizio, Pravina Shukla, Beverly Stoeltje, Javier León, and Stephen Selka during those early years of what would become this book. I am also grateful for the training I received from my Portuguese professors at Indiana University, Harvard University-Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, and the Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, without which I could never have carried out this research. To Bia and Juliane, thank you for your translation support and above all for your friendship. A special thank you as well to my writing groups at Indiana University South Bend (IUSB) and Purdue University, especially Laura Zanotti, for your advice and mentorship through the numerous versions of draft chapters during different stages of this project. I am also grateful to the many scholars over the years with whom I have engaged at conferences. Although space does not allow me to list everyone, many thanks to Nobuko Adachi, Michael A. Di Giovine, Misha Klein, Katja Neves, and Maureen O’Dougherty; your work and/or advice were influential during different stages of this book. Thank you to the reviewers and editors of this book; your suggestions have helped to strengthen the narrative in many ways and have made its publication possible. I am so grateful to everyone who helped me cultivate this project from an idea to completion. I apologize to anyone whose name I have inadvertently left out but who helped me along the way with this research. Any mistakes are my own.

I am grateful for the many colleagues across Indiana whose advice and support in various areas of my teaching and publication life enabled me to develop this book. At Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), thank you so much Susan B. Hyatt and Paul Mullins for your many hours of mentorship, support, and advocacy; I am truly grateful. A special thank you to Gina Sánchez Gibau, Barbara Jackson, Hilary Kahn, Holly Cusack-McVeigh, Mary Price, Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, Wendy Vogt, Jeremy Wilson, and Larry Zimmerman, as well as Jeremy Beach, Bridget Nash-Chrabascz, Chris Glidden, Laura Holzman, Nancy Michael, Jeanette Dickerson-Putnam, Aubrey Thamann, and all those in anthropology and museum studies past and present; thank you for creating such a supportive environment. I am also very grateful to Nichole Neuman for your assistance and support and to Marilee Brooks-Gillies, Elizabeth Goering, Karen Roesch, Carrie Sickmann, Michael Snodgrass, and the many colleagues with whom I have worked through various IUPUI faculty communities of practice, IUPUI’s Max Kade German-American Center, and IUPUI’s School of Liberal Arts. At Purdue University, a special thank you to Ellen Gruenbaum, Evelyn Blackwood, Richard Blanton, Sherylyn Briller, Michelle Buzon, Riall Nolan, and Elizabeth Rowe for all of your advice and to everyone in anthropology who welcomed me into your department and homes. At DePauw University, a special thank you to Matthew Oware, Mona Bhan, and Rebecca Bordt and to our lunch group for your advice and support. At IUSB, a special thank you to Gail McGuire, Rebecca Torstrick, James VanderVeen, Joshua Wells, Allison Foley, and everyone in the sociology and anthropology department for your mentorship and warm introduction into the department and faculty life. Thank you to the many students I have had the privilege to work with over the years; you continually inspire me to always innovate and expand in new directions.

To the professors who taught me at Wichita State University (WSU), including Peer Moore-Jansen, Donald Blakeslee, Dorothy Billings, David Hughes, Jerry Martin, Clayton Robarcheck, Carole Robarcheck, Keith Prufer, and especially Robert Lawless, who helped me publish my first work and passed away before this book was completed: thank you for giving me a strong foundation in anthropology and for providing me with the opportunity to explore my interests in archaeology, biological anthropology, and cultural anthropology. I am also grateful to my German-language professors at WSU. I continually draw upon the expertise each one of you shared with me. I am thankful as well for the support and friendship of my peers in anthropology at WSU.

I am grateful to Indiana University, Bloomington’s Office of the Vice President for International Affairs, Office of Research, and University Graduate School for travel grants; the IU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Tinker Foundation, and Mendel Foundation for field research grants; and the IU Department of Anthropology for the David C. Skomp Summer Research Feasibility Award. I am also grateful for the fellowships I received from the IU Center for the Study of Global Change and the IU University Graduate School.

I would also like to say a special thank you to Ted and Gail for your generous assistance, support, and friendship throughout the years. Without your funding, I would not have been able to conduct this research. To the many family and friends whom I have been blessed with along this journey, including my friends from Wichita who have been with me since high school, thank you very much for your understanding and encouragement.

Above all, I thank my parents, Steve and Mary Kay, and my sister, Stephanie, for all of their behind-the-scenes support, without which none of this would have been possible. You were there for me through the whole journey, including the ups and downs and the countless moves, and always with an understanding heart. Thank you for your encouragement and love. I am extremely blessed to have you in my life.

Although there were many Brazilian individuals and scholars who shared their experiences and knowledge with me, I was able to integrate only a sample of those in this book. Nevertheless, your knowledge provided invaluable insights and context. Thank you! Muito obrigada! Eu estou muito agradecida pela sua ajuda e gentileza!

Introduction

Encountering Another Part of Brazil

I have spent hours walking downtown along the main street of this sprawling city of more than three hundred thousand people. Scattered along the street are shops housed in ornate gingerbread and Fachwerk-style (timber-framed) buildings. Storefront windows display dirndls and lederhosen and are framed with black, red, and gold ribbons. The stores also offer local residents and tourists alike a variety of consumer goods, from beer mugs and floral headbands to the latest entertainment technology, household appliances, and linens. Near one of the city’s iconic landmarks, a tall Fachwerk building with a central clock, the cool humid air carries the sounds of a polka band playing out front. Such experiences are familiar occurrences in the city, given that it is October.

I take a minor detour around the tall Fachwerk building with the clock and walk across the street to look down at the winding, flood-prone river along which the city is located. Hills of vegetation on the other side of the bank serve as a backdrop for the city’s multistory apartment buildings and businesses. Turning to walk back across the street, I notice a newly planted row of flowers lining the sidewalk that takes passersby to the white and dark brown Fachwerk building of city hall. The final destination of my walk is the Oktoberfest not in Munich, Germany, but in Blumenau, Brazil. Blumenau is located in southern Brazil, just two states north of Argentina, in Santa Catarina. The hills of vegetation are dotted with palm trees; local people around me are conversing in Portuguese; and some of the stores that feature the German-themed souvenirs and other consumer goods associated with middle-class standing also sell tourists towels and linens produced by the area’s textile companies.

For some individuals, this piece of Germany nestled in Brazil may come as a surprise. Germany evokes an aesthetic mix of polka rhythms; the smooth, foamy tastes of wheat beer served in large glass mugs at Oktoberfest; and picturesque views of the Rhine River winding through rolling green hillsides dotted with castles. In contrast, Brazil is commonly associated with the fast-paced samba beats of Carnaval; the crisp, strong tastes of limes blended with sugar rum sold at beachside kiosks; and the greenish-brown hue of the Amazon River flowing through tropical forest. Such expectations stem from tourism imaginaries of these places that circulate globally about what a visitor to Germany or Brazil might experience (Salazar 2012).¹ As Noel Salazar points out, tracing the origins of these tourism imaginaries is a challenge, especially for those that have been in existence and circulation for a while (2012). However, what is clear is that these tourism imaginaries mask regional differences, struggles over national belonging, ethnic, racial, and class tensions, and inequalities of all kinds. They are largely oversimplifications of the reality and culturally diverse contexts of these two countries.

Southern Brazil has a booming domestic tourism industry that each year draws more than half a million Brazilians from around the country to events like Blumenau’s Oktoberfest (Município Blumenau 2018). Some of the aesthetics of German cultural heritage imprinted on Blumenau’s downtown are new additions, first appearing with domestic tourism in the 1970s and 1980s, and reflect international tourism imaginaries of Germany.² Others date back to 1850, when the city of Blumenau in Santa Catarina was established and settled with immigrants from what is today Germany.³ In contrast to what international tourists might expect, southern Brazil’s domestic tourism industry involves different experiences and imaginaries. Yet, it is unclear what impacts these domestic tourism spaces have on local residents and tourists. As Salazar states, how exactly [tourism] imaginaries influence a broad public is an ambiguous question that merits grounded ethnographic research on reception and consumption (2012, 868). At the same time that tourism imaginaries circulate among domestic tourists, so too do national imaginaries, which Kelly Askew defines as the multiple and often contradictory layers and fragments of ideology that underlie continually shifting conceptions of any given nation (2002, 273). Throughout this book, I show how analyzing the sensory experiences, emotions, and accompanying forms associated with tourism and their intersections with national imaginaries is key for unpacking their public impact.

I approach Blumenau’s domestic tourism industry as sensescapes that draw into contact Brazilian individuals from various states. Although there has been a tendency to emphasize the visual in analyses of landscapes, the reality is that these spaces are experienced and made meaningful through all of the senses (Agapito, Mendes, and Valle 2013; Porteous 1985).⁴ The concept sensescapes, which has been used in geography, tourism management, and anthropology, is intended to draw attention to the fact that our lived experiences of physical and cultural geography are not limited to the visual gaze (Agapito, Mendes, and Valle 2013; Howes 2005; Porteous 1985).⁵ I use the term sensescapes throughout the book to refer to the multivocal and multisensory lived experiences produced through interactions with culturally constructed and biophysical environments and with those that inhabit and move through these spaces. This includes material culture in all forms as well as interactions that are human-landscape mediated and human-human mediated, including performances. Such an approach to sensescapes aligns with other scholars’ more relational definitions of landscape and sensescape (e.g., Howes 2005; Ness 2016; Rodman 1992; Skov 2014; Tilley 2004).

I examine the sensescapes of domestic tourism and their implications for negotiating identity and crafting national belonging and social distinctions, including those that confer status and privilege. I illustrate how and why some sensory experiences, emotions, and forms within domestic tourism foster belonging and identity while other experiences reinforce social distinctions and national divisions. Rather than being peripheral to shaping experiences of citizenship and identity, a sensory-oriented ethnographic approach demonstrates the ways in which domestic tourism is intertwined with the formation and restructuring of local and national belonging. The book focuses on three important sensory-rich entry points: culturally produced landscapes, performances for tourism, and their confluence in large-scale national tourism attractions, that is, Blumenau’s Oktoberfest. These sites represent various sensescapes that provide access to different perspectives and types of identity negotiation at multiple levels.

I introduce the economy of aesthetics framework to capture how the sensescapes associated with domestic tourism are involved implicitly and explicitly in the negotiation of various identities, including transnational and ethnic identities.⁶ I define an economy of aesthetics as the complex interactions among sensory experience, emotion, form (e.g., the organization or structure of movements and sounds), and their various social meanings and value systems that conjoin to construct social connections within and across particular social groups as well as collide to reproduce social exclusion and hierarchies. I argue that an economy of aesthetics framework can assist in understanding how touristic and other sensescapes operate in the continual process of constructing, negotiating, and connecting multiple identities and senses of belonging.

To help explain how this process works and the power embedded within it, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s work with affective economies. Affective economies refer to how emotions and sensations do not reside in [any] object but rather circulate and, from this circulation, acquire power; they do things; . . . they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments (Ahmed 2004, 119–20).⁷ The stickiness of such attachments facilitates associations of particular emotions with particular groups, and through that process, groups with similar affiliated emotions become conceptualized by segments of the public as associated with one another (Ahmed 2004, 130–36).⁸ Such affiliations in turn come with social consequences, such as stigmatization or privilege, and thus illustrate in part how power can operate through and with emotions, affect, and sensory experience (Ahmed 2004, 2010). This work extends Ahmed’s analysis to look at the agency that particular immigrant groups have in mobilizing the circulation of emotions and affecting their public images within the context of domestic tourism and the negotiation of transnational identity. It also expands the analysis to focus more on culturally altered landscapes and other sensescapes as important mediums of communication through which the circulation and construction of meaning occurs.

What unfolds in the following chapters is an analysis of domestic tourism based on German Brazilian cultural traditions and how the economy of aesthetics associated with these sensescapes functions to negotiate identity, from the community level all the way to the transnational. The pathway through such sensescapes involves intersections with discourses on class, race, ethnicity, and national imaginaries in Brazil. It also involves the perspectives of various Brazilians, many of whom are from the South and the middle class. Together, their experiences highlight how some within this segment of Brazil see themselves, as well as how they enter into discourses on what it means to be Brazilian and German. The domestic tourism industry in this way poses an interesting case to approach the nuanced, intersectional, and overlooked ways in which national belonging and exclusion can operate to varying degrees within an industry that features sensescapes that draw individuals from across the country.

Sensing Belonging, Feeling Exclusion: Identity and the Senses

Sensory experience is simultaneously corporal, cultural, and social and thus has an important role to play in understanding how individuals perceive themselves and others in relation to shared senses of belonging. As we experience the world, the sociocultural norms and expectations that we have been enculturated into, in conjunction with our memory, past experiences, and current circumstances and surroundings, influence the meaning-making that takes place (Geurts 2002; Howes 2003; Hsu 2008; Lawless 1979; Seremetakis 1994). The mind-body is not a text or passive entity but rather an active agent by which and through which, we actively experience the world and through which the world as we know it is constructed not in isolation from others but in conjunction with them via what Adam Yuet Chau calls a sensorialized sociality (2008, 488, 500; Desjarlais and Throop 2011, 89).

In turn, sensescapes, which are at least partially produced by people, and aspects of sensescapes can become institutionalized, whereby sensory experiences are reproduced in specific ways with particular meanings and associations (Chau 2008). What makes this process both interesting and complicated are the layers of meaning, contradictory and uneven at times, associated with particular sensory experiences due to the fact that different groups’ social norms are simultaneously involved in meaning-making.⁹ Indeed, although one or more expressions of identities may be salient for an individual at a given moment in time and space, every individual has multiple affiliations and statuses related to their ethnic, racial, gender, social class, religious, sexual, national, transnational/diasporic, and other identities, and these identifications influence how they approach the world and in turn how the world approaches them. The result is both patterned perception and individual variation and immerging creativity (Howes 2003; Ingold 2000; Ness 2016).

Various scholars have started drawing attention to the role of patterned perception and its institutionalization in the production of national belonging as well as exclusionary practices. On the one hand, shared experiences have the power to facilitate a sense of connection or collectivity (Bendix 2005; Hsu 2008; Turner 1969; Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk 2012). As David Howes and Constance Classen’s work on the politics of sensory perception point out, the phenomenon of nationalism . . . can never be adequately comprehended simply as an adherence to certain political ideals or social communities. It is always at the same time attachment to particular tastes, smells, sounds and sights, which themselves carry cultural values and personal memories (2014, 65). On the other hand, how particular expressions of identity are perceived and whose experiences are ratified, valued, or dismissed can all result in social hierarchy and national exclusion (Howes and Classen 2014). Take, for example, Mark Smith’s historical analysis of smell and how this sense and others were used to erroneously naturalize the distinction and consequently the discrimination of Black individuals in the southern United States and elsewhere (2006).

Susanna Trnka, Christine Dureau, and Julie Park coined the term sensory citizenship to capture the intricate dialectic between lived experience, ideological formations, and political forces within which normative ideologies naturalize particular forms of belonging and point out that the making of citizens, then is a matter of twinned inclusion and rejection . . . [that] frequently (and repeatedly) returns to modes of sensory knowledge and being by means of which the body becomes central to naturalizing and consolidating the nation as the normative basis of the state (2014, 1–2). Thus, sensory experience plays a key, but sometimes overlooked, role in the negotiation of cultural citizenship, that is the right [of specific groups] to be different and still maintain their full social and legal rights as citizens and the process of self-making and being-made in relation to nation-states that is part of it (Rosaldo 1994, 402; Ong 1996, 737). Power is not just encoded one way through sensory experiences (Trnka, Dureau, and Park 2014; Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk 2012). A particular group within a nation-state can also mobilize sensory experiences to work out, retain, or reconcile their identities within culturally diverse contexts or in cases of discrimination, to counter ideologies about their communities that are reproduced by others through sensory and other means (Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk 2012).

A focus on sensory citizenship in anthropology is facilitated through an approach to the senses that developed, in