Smells, intimate labor and domestic work in Delhi, India

ABSTRACT This article stems from an ongoing collaborative ethnographic project with a Delhi-based women workers’ union known as Shehri Mahila Kamgar Union. Since 2015 I have been studying how domestic workers view the relationship between the senses and work. The main objective is to understand how the “senses” in general and smell in particular have been invisibilised in discussions on “intimate labor.” While analyses of the sensory labor and synesthetic reason involved in craftwork and food preparation celebrate sensoriality, the location of smells in intimate labor, especially domestic work, has been occulted. I propose the term “intimate sense-labor” to foreground the study of the acts of erasure of smells that are central to the sensory practice of domestic workers. Intimate sense-labor consists of strictly disciplining the senses and controlling sensory emanations while reproducing the intimate smells of a household through acts of cleaning, washing, and cooking. Building upon everyday work narratives of domestic workers, I expose the workings of “intimate sense-labor” through an examination of the smells of happiness, fear, and disgust.