About the City of the Senses, the Senses in the City: An Introduction

Abstract

Urban-oriented sensory analysis, inspired by ethnographic and phenomenological work developed in the last century, has a long tradition in the social sciences, namely in anthropology and sociology (e.g., Low & KalekinFishman, 2018). However, in communication and cultural studies research, the sensorial orientation is still incipient. This publication is part of an ongoing call by Passeio, the platform for the study of art and urban culture of the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS), for an organicist vision of the city, underlining the need to re-signify the role of the senses in the experience of everyday contemporary urban life by crossing disciplinary boundaries, approaches and geographies and using multi-sensory frameworks (Low, 2015). This initiative is included in Volume 8, Issue 1 of the Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Sentient City — An Atonal Landscape (Pires et al., 2020), and this ebook.