深受笛卡尔身心二分思想影响的人文社会科学，把研究重点放在心智上，认为它规定了人之作为社会存在，很少将身体作为研究主题。
法國現象學自梅洛·龐蒂(1908-1961)開啟了一個有關身體現象學的論述路線，在現象學潮流中有一明顯的標誌，梅洛龐蒂突出地論斷知覺的優先性，也讓現象學所關注的構成性主體與身體論述有一交集。
从具身体现（embodiment）角度出发，身体感觉不只是生理现象和铭刻文本意义的主要载体，也是创造意义的重要来源。
In the 1980s and 1990s, an “anthropology of the senses” was established by the work of Classen (1993, 1998), Howes (1991, 2003, 2005), Stoller (1989, 1997), Feld (1982), and Feld and Basso (1996). Sensory studies have since expanded to include a cultural history of the senses (Classen 1993, 1998, 2012), the sensual revolution (Howes 2005), sensuous scholarship (Stoller 1997), sensuous geography (Rodaway 1995), a sociology of the senses (Synnott 1993; Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk 2012), the senses and perception (Ingold 2000), senses of place (Feld and Basso 1996), the sensorium of contemporary arts (Jones 2006), sensory architecture (Malnar and Vodvarka 2004), sensory ethnography (Pink 2004, 2009), and ways of sensing contemporary society (Howes and Classen 2013) among other studies. While acknowledging different challenges to sensory studies, these views champion a more multi-sensory orientation towards theory, cultural understanding and fieldwork practices.
1980年代中期開始興起的感官人類學強調要將人類感知的經驗納入民族誌的書寫（Stoller 1989），並強調從感官經驗進行跨文化的比較（Howes 1991），提出感官經驗之歷史文化面向的重要性（Classen 1993）。
Constance Classen认为：“当我们检视不同文化里与感觉相关的意义时，会发现感觉成为潜在的象征集聚地。视觉可能与逻辑推理或者巫术相连；味觉往往被用作审美差异或性体验的隐喻；气味经常代表着神圣或者罪恶、政治权力或社会排斥；这些感觉的意义和价值形成了社会认可的‘感觉模式’，社会成员以此来理解世界或者将感官知觉和概念转译成特定的世界观。持有不同的某一感官价值的社会成员可能会对这一感官模式提出挑战，感官模式提供基本知觉范式供人们遵循或反抗。”
加拿大人类学家David Howes(2008)指出感官人類學由三個研究階段組成。
第一階段在發現一個文化的感官特徵或偏好。學者經常舉的例子是西方文化對視覺與聽覺的重視。這導致在研究非西方文化時，人類學者也偏重視覺與語言符號，忽略了其他知覺在這些文化中的存在。
第二階段的研究是探究造成它的社會文化背景。Howes 指出現代西方的「感官環境」(sensory environment)加深了對於視覺與聽覺的重視。例如，我們今日的獲得訊息的途徑多半是來自於視覺(電視、電 影、電腦、書籍)與聽覺(電話、廣播)，而不是來自味覺與嗅覺。在現代學校的教育裡，以味覺與嗅覺所傳遞的知識少之又少。
第三個階段研究是詮釋當地人如何賦予感官知覺意義。 西方人認為視覺與聽覺是高等的知覺、味覺與嗅覺是低等的知覺即是一種對西方身體觀點的詮釋。又如西方人認為下層的階級或族群有著各種洗不乾淨的難聞臭味，以此作為階級分化與族群歧視的藉口。
Sarah Pink认为，感官民族志的兴起主要受到知觉现象学、空间理论、人文地理学以及实验民族志等理论的影响，具体而言，则直接受到梅洛·庞蒂知觉现象学的具身体现、多感官同一性(multisensoriality)、人文地志学的具地体现（emplacement）及实验民族志的反思性等思想的启发。
栗山茂久說日本人經常覺得「凝肩」（katakori），表現在身體部位雖然是僵硬緊張的肩膀，卻混雜有整體身體的勞累酸痛，萎糜不振，精神不濟，壓力很大等等的感覺（Kuriyama 1997）。
台灣人類學界的成就值得注意。
人類學對「身體感」（bodily experience）的研究，在台灣已經出版的有余舜德（2006）對於飲用普洱茶的「陳韻」的身體感的討論，顏學誠（2006）對於「品茶」的討論，與林淑蓉（2006）對於中國西南侗人食物味覺的討論，張珣（2006）對於香氣的討論等，都是嘗試經由「身體感」，來探討人類學以往未曾碰觸的面向。
感官人類學雖然指出當代西方視覺優先的文化如何影響人類學家在田野中的參與「觀察」，但在指出其他感官的重要性時，其研究取向卻過於強調各感官之間的分立，忽略了在日常生活中，感官很少被單獨使用，而是一種整體之making sense of的過程（余舜德 2008：13）。
在討論文化時，除了過去所關注的「心」的範疇，這個由身體感知所形成的體系性關係猶如認知項目的體系，也構成文化意涵的重要面向（余舜德 2008：14）。
身體感是身體作為經驗的主體以感知體內與體外世界的知覺項目（categories），任一身體感項目由單一或多項不同的感官知覺形成...這些項目於人們的生長過程中，於身體長期與文化環境的互動中養成，身體感的項目與項目之間所形成的體系性關係，是人們解讀身體接受到的訊息及各種具文化意涵知行動的藍本；它們在人們處理每刻接受大量龐雜之身體感受的訊息時，將這些資訊放入秩序（put into order），加以譯解（decode），並作出反應的根本，更是我們行動之所賴。（余舜德 2008：15）
代表性学术机构如2006年成立的哈佛大学感官民族志实验室。
Scholars regard human sensing as
an interpretive process, and therefore explore the interactive ways that the senses are socially patterned within culture; how the senses are culturally ordered and variously ranked across cultures; and the ways in which
the senses are linked to emotion, memory, and experience.
In Indian ceremonies, the sensual concept of rasa blends the tasting of food and beverage with pleasure, leading to a heightened emotional appreciation of the entire event. Food, along with enjoyment of the ceremony, is literally and metaphorically “tasted, ingested, and excreted” in a “snout-to-belly- to-bowel” mixing of intimacy and shared bodily substances among audience and performers (Schechner 2007:10).
These examples inform different modes of cultural perception, as culture-specific concepts and practices generate particular forms of social interaction for what is meaningful in life, how emotions are expressed, and how people should interact with material things.
Nevertheless, sensory anthropologists may inquire how these structured investigations might be contextualized and applied more holistically to everyday consumer situations. When, for instance, does everyday consumer enjoyment of a brand begin, and what are the sensory dimensions that subjectively lead to positive “peak experiences” (Privette 1983)? A sociologist recalls his total enjoyment of coffee as greater than any one, two or several isolated sensory cues that might be evaluated separately:
“I genuinely enjoy the total sensual experience of fresh-brewed morning coffee. The taste of coffee incorporates its smell, but the smell of the coffee I drink is quite different from the tantalizing aroma of brewing coffee, a scent that, in fact, seems to awaken my senses... I know that the smell of brewing coffee anticipates and lubricates how I both taste and smell coffee when I drink it... [T]he flavor of coffee also includes the feel of hot liquid. In the morning, it has to be hot. I occasionally enjoy iced coffee, but iced coffee would never satisfy me in the morning, regardless of environmental temperature. Even the weight and feel of the mug are significant. I find it hard to get a satisfying swig from those dainty, undersized, bourgeois espresso cups...” (Vannini et al. 2012:5).
In this instance, the taste, smell, weight and temperature of coffee, in addition to morning time, blend into
a full sensual, contextual, and temporal coffee experience, not reducible to isolated variables in experimental design or laboratory settings. Applying contextual features to sensory inputs expands our knowledge of what perceptual features make a beverage enjoyable, and under what social situations they occur. Marketing researchers note in controlled studies that sensory interactions influence consumer visual perceptions, such that taller glasses appear bigger and to hold more liquid (Krishna 2012), or that the texture and feel of the glass impacts impressions of quality and taste (Krishna and Morrin 2008).
...consumer researchers of
ritual have shifted their focus away from larger symbolic meanings in religion, cosmologies and belief systems to examine, instead, its
everyday occurrence. Whether highly stylized, or casual and informal, Rook situates
ritual as “expressive of symbolic activity” in everyday life (1985:252). Goffman’s “sociology of occasions” (1967:2) explores how rituals are performed in ordinary occasions and employed strategically to organize daily face-to-face social interactions.
Rituals are symbolic action “thick with sensory meaning” (Grimes 1995:965). Moreover, they arouse in the senses a particular quality that “awakens alertness” (Hsu 2008:439). Rituals are intentional sequences or series of behaviors that reformulate experience out of existing materials (Schechner 2002); and therefore may be examined here as situated practices that employ both sensory qualities and symbolic meaning to re-formulate a new sensory/symbolic order for participants.
Literature:
张连海. 感官民族志：理论、实践与表征. 《民族研究》2015年第2期
Timothy de Waal Malefyt. The Senses in Anthropological and Marketing Research: Investigating a Consumer-Brand Ritual Holistically. Journal of Business Anthropology, 4(1), Spring 2015
