K E Y Low
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 5357 |
|---|---|
| NOME | K E Y Low |
| PRENOMES | K E Y |
| SOBRENOME | Low |
| ASSINATURA | LOW K E Y |
| AFILIAÇÕES | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4930-4035 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 165 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2005 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Sensory ethnography in everyday life
Knowledge of/Through the Senses
Human sensing, when taken as a conceptual tool, allows us to acquire wisdom in the sense that we are able to feel, acknowledge, and respond in a variety of ways. Through sensing, sensory interactions and knowledge both condition and configure human interpretation and meaning-making. These forms and processes of sensory interaction, knowledge circulation, and transference have transpired and traversed a vast range of domains analyzed in various di…
Of sensory infractions and anthropomorphism across Asian urban histories
On the qualia of sensory food heritage in Singapore
Fair or fowl
Urban living in densely populated cities such as Singapore requires a balance between polemic human-animal relations and the sensory boundaries of conduct and transgression. Noise and smell which emanate from animals serve as a source of disturbance that impels the authorities to intervene and resolve such transgressions. However, substantial numbers of residents rear animals in or around their public housing flats, thereby serving as a source of…
Sensory endurances
This thematic section explores how sensory and affective experiences mediate social hierarchies, marginality, and belonging across Asia. The papers bridge affect theory, sensory anthropology, and sociological studies of the senses to examine how smell, sound, touch, and other sensory registers become sites of social differentiation, endurance, and resistance. Introducing the concept of sensory endurance, the collection theorizes how derogatory se…
Between Scientific and Sensory Knowledge
This article explores how clay artists in Singapore utilize both their scientific and sensory knowledge of clay-making in producing clay works. Based on a study of the biographies and sensory experiences of clay artists, clay artists rely simultaneously on their scientific knowledge and understanding of clay firing processes, temperatures, and glazing, together with their sensory judgment and experience of the same set of processes, to produce cl…
Sensory Anthropology
The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory by Kevin Blackburn (review)
Reviewed by: The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory by Kevin Blackburn Kelvin E. Y. Low The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory, by Kevin Blackburn. Singapore: NUS Press, 2022, 208pp. ISBN 9789813251861 Singapore was, during WWII, one of the major centres of comfort stations for Japanese soldiers. Many women from the region and Europe, were comfort women. Yet, where women who were former comfort women in other Asian soc…
Gastropolitical encounters and the political life of sensation
Food as a political object has been pivotal in defining the political and socioeconomic positioning of political leaders across many different countries. Instrumentalised as a diplomatic tool to enhance and maintain economic and international relations, food as gifts and acts of commensality are routinely built into the pursuit and maintenance of local and foreign policy, which points to both the materiality and sensoriality of gastrodiplomacy. T…
Senses as Mobile Actants
The senses and their concomitant practices have historically and contemporaneously traversed borders and boundaries and in effect, acquire different meanings. Sensory modalities and ways of knowing become reconfigured as a result of cross-cultural sensory encounters in everyday life. Drawing from colonial and contemporary ethnographic encounters in Singapore, we make a case to extend sociocultural analyses of the character of the sensory-in parti…
Shaping Mobile Worlds in Asia
In these difficult, pressing and uncertain times, migration and mobility in Asia have been incorporated into the projects of state institutions, media and a range of civil society actors. These agendas engender and shape debates that include belonging and exclusion; social mobility and inequality; conflict, violence and persecution; economic growth and labor market outcomes; state regulation, governance and governmentality; as well as diversity a…
Sensory Experience as Method
The researcher’s body and sensory faculties are both experientially involved in interactional field settings. Drawing on their research, the authors sketch out three sensory encounters informed by theoretical and methodological debates pertaining to subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Dealing with issues of race, gender, and heritage, the authors demonstrate how their bodies as researchers go through processes of sensory learning and calibration.…
Theorising Sensory Cultures in Asia
Sociocultural meanings of the senses in society have recently received scholarly attention in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history and geography. With some exceptions, extant works have mainly focused on Euro–American contexts, or non-industrial societies. This article ethnographically documents and analyses the social life of the senses in everyday life historical contexts within Asia. I propose three theoretical them…
Smell
Previously occupying a low status in Western thought and culture, smell has since been studied vis‐à‐vis a wide‐ranging spectrum of sociality and through its differentiated vocabularies, including personhood and self‐presentation, social memory‐making, group membership, kinship, cosmology, morality, ethics, ethnicity, and religion. Whereas historical smellscapes comprising odoriferous substances emanating from both places and bodies were consider…
Eating in the city
This special issue introduction examines why and how food matters in Asian cities and foodscapes, thus providing a different lens from Western interpretations of urban space. As cities transform, the ways that people eat and procure food also change, along with the sociocultural meanings of food itself. The special issue brings together seven research papers that together draw attention to the everyday culinary habits, rituals, creativity, and se…
Concrete Memories and Sensory Pasts
Migrant warriors and transnational lives
The Nepalese Gurkhas have often been regarded as brave warriors in the scheme of British military recruitment since the 1800s. Today, their descendants have settled in various parts of South East and South Asia. How can one conceive of a Gurkha diaspora, and what are the Gurkhas and their families' experiences of belonging in relation to varied migratory routes? This paper locates Gurkhas as migrants by deliberating upon the connection between mi…
Remembering the Samsui Women
The sensuous city
While urban dimensions of landscapes and the physical environment are often regarded as built structures that relate to functionality in modern life, cities are also sites of human experience that comprise social relationships, memories, emotions, and how they are negotiated on an everyday basis. Embedded within these processes of sociality is how the senses mediate one's engagement with urban life, hence rendering insights into the multi-sensory…
Chinese Migration and Entangled Histories
This paper broadens the analytical contours of Chinese migration by employing the paradigm of histoire croisée. By comparing three connected episodes within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (1) British expansionism; (2) Kuomintang activities and British migratory legislation; and (3) the interconnection of the slump in China's silk industry, the anti-marriage movement, and the intertwinement of historiographies of China and Singapore - the…
Olfactive Frames of Remembering
By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta-narratives including…
Sensing cities
This paper explores the sensory misconduct of foreign workers in Singapore as identified by local residents in neighborhoods across the island city. Urban bodies and sensory differentiation form the focal point of discussion, given that complaints about sensory disturbances are sociocultural expressions of rejection which are connected to power relations in the city. I focus on two cases that have been identified from my research on Singapore new…
The Social Life of the Senses
Sensory scholarship in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and geography, among others, has proliferated in the last few decades. Sensory works in these disciplines argue for the senses as social, highlighting important insights that further our comprehension of selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I delineate five interrelated sections that inform how sensory works have developed over time. In the first section, I p…
Empire of the Senses
The sensuous city
While urban dimensions of landscapes and the physical environment are often regarded as built structures that relate to functionality in modern life, cities are also sites of human experience that comprise social relationships, memories, emotions, and how they are negotiated on an everyday basis. Embedded within these processes of sociality is how the senses mediate one's engagement with urban life, hence rendering insights into the multi-sensory…
The Social Life of the Senses
Sensory scholarship in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and geography, among others, has proliferated in the last few decades. Sensory works in these disciplines argue for the senses as social, highlighting important insights that further our comprehension of selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I delineate five interrelated sections that inform how sensory works have developed over time. In the first section, I p…
Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon
This article looks at arguments concerning the supposed low status of smell in relation to the other senses to shed light on how smell has been perceived historically, across time. It also locates olfactory enquiries beyond scientific, biological concerns and argues for smell as a social medium present in our everyday life experiences. The article explores smell in the fields of history, anthropology, religion, gender and sociospatial analysis, e…
Sensing cities
This paper explores the sensory misconduct of foreign workers in Singapore as identified by local residents in neighborhoods across the island city. Urban bodies and sensory differentiation form the focal point of discussion, given that complaints about sensory disturbances are sociocultural expressions of rejection which are connected to power relations in the city. I focus on two cases that have been identified from my research on Singapore new…
Olfactive Frames of Remembering
By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta-narratives including…
Theorising Sensory Cultures in Asia
Sociocultural meanings of the senses in society have recently received scholarly attention in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history and geography. With some exceptions, extant works have mainly focused on Euro–American contexts, or non-industrial societies. This article ethnographically documents and analyses the social life of the senses in everyday life historical contexts within Asia. I propose three theoretical them…
Presenting the Self, the Social Body, and the Olfactory
This article considers smell as a social intermediary with regard to the body, presentation of self, and social/moral order. Employing the trajectory of a sociology of everyday life, the data presented here are collected from narrative interviews conducted with twelve respondents. The study looks at how respondents react to bodily odors and how they go about maintaining acceptable bodily scents to facilitate social interaction. The discussion is …
Eating in the city
This special issue introduction examines why and how food matters in Asian cities and foodscapes, thus providing a different lens from Western interpretations of urban space. As cities transform, the ways that people eat and procure food also change, along with the sociocultural meanings of food itself. The special issue brings together seven research papers that together draw attention to the everyday culinary habits, rituals, creativity, and se…
Concrete Memories and Sensory Pasts
Migrant warriors and transnational lives
The Nepalese Gurkhas have often been regarded as brave warriors in the scheme of British military recruitment since the 1800s. Today, their descendants have settled in various parts of South East and South Asia. How can one conceive of a Gurkha diaspora, and what are the Gurkhas and their families' experiences of belonging in relation to varied migratory routes? This paper locates Gurkhas as migrants by deliberating upon the connection between mi…
Chinese Migration and Entangled Histories
This paper broadens the analytical contours of Chinese migration by employing the paradigm of histoire croisée. By comparing three connected episodes within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (1) British expansionism; (2) Kuomintang activities and British migratory legislation; and (3) the interconnection of the slump in China's silk industry, the anti-marriage movement, and the intertwinement of historiographies of China and Singapore - the…
Senses as Mobile Actants
The senses and their concomitant practices have historically and contemporaneously traversed borders and boundaries and in effect, acquire different meanings. Sensory modalities and ways of knowing become reconfigured as a result of cross-cultural sensory encounters in everyday life. Drawing from colonial and contemporary ethnographic encounters in Singapore, we make a case to extend sociocultural analyses of the character of the sensory-in parti…
Remembering the Samsui Women
Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon
This article looks at arguments concerning the supposed low status of smell in relation to the other senses to shed light on how smell has been perceived historically, across time. It also locates olfactory enquiries beyond scientific, biological concerns and argues for smell as a social medium present in our everyday life experiences. The article explores smell in the fields of history, anthropology, religion, gender and sociospatial analysis, e…
Home Truths
Presenting the Self, the Social Body, and the Olfactory
This article considers smell as a social intermediary with regard to the body, presentation of self, and social/moral order. Employing the trajectory of a sociology of everyday life, the data presented here are collected from narrative interviews conducted with twelve respondents. The study looks at how respondents react to bodily odors and how they go about maintaining acceptable bodily scents to facilitate social interaction. The discussion is …
Empire of the Senses
The Social Life of the Senses
Sensory scholarship in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and geography, among others, has proliferated in the last few decades. Sensory works in these disciplines argue for the senses as social, highlighting important insights that further our comprehension of selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I delineate five interrelated sections that inform how sensory works have developed over time. In the first section, I p…
Olfactive Frames of Remembering
By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta-narratives including…
Sensing cities
This paper explores the sensory misconduct of foreign workers in Singapore as identified by local residents in neighborhoods across the island city. Urban bodies and sensory differentiation form the focal point of discussion, given that complaints about sensory disturbances are sociocultural expressions of rejection which are connected to power relations in the city. I focus on two cases that have been identified from my research on Singapore new…
Chinese Migration and Entangled Histories
This paper broadens the analytical contours of Chinese migration by employing the paradigm of histoire croisée. By comparing three connected episodes within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (1) British expansionism; (2) Kuomintang activities and British migratory legislation; and (3) the interconnection of the slump in China's silk industry, the anti-marriage movement, and the intertwinement of historiographies of China and Singapore - the…
Remembering the Samsui Women
The sensuous city
While urban dimensions of landscapes and the physical environment are often regarded as built structures that relate to functionality in modern life, cities are also sites of human experience that comprise social relationships, memories, emotions, and how they are negotiated on an everyday basis. Embedded within these processes of sociality is how the senses mediate one's engagement with urban life, hence rendering insights into the multi-sensory…
Migrant warriors and transnational lives
The Nepalese Gurkhas have often been regarded as brave warriors in the scheme of British military recruitment since the 1800s. Today, their descendants have settled in various parts of South East and South Asia. How can one conceive of a Gurkha diaspora, and what are the Gurkhas and their families' experiences of belonging in relation to varied migratory routes? This paper locates Gurkhas as migrants by deliberating upon the connection between mi…
Eating in the city
This special issue introduction examines why and how food matters in Asian cities and foodscapes, thus providing a different lens from Western interpretations of urban space. As cities transform, the ways that people eat and procure food also change, along with the sociocultural meanings of food itself. The special issue brings together seven research papers that together draw attention to the everyday culinary habits, rituals, creativity, and se…
Concrete Memories and Sensory Pasts
Smell
Previously occupying a low status in Western thought and culture, smell has since been studied vis‐à‐vis a wide‐ranging spectrum of sociality and through its differentiated vocabularies, including personhood and self‐presentation, social memory‐making, group membership, kinship, cosmology, morality, ethics, ethnicity, and religion. Whereas historical smellscapes comprising odoriferous substances emanating from both places and bodies were consider…
Sensory Experience as Method
The researcher’s body and sensory faculties are both experientially involved in interactional field settings. Drawing on their research, the authors sketch out three sensory encounters informed by theoretical and methodological debates pertaining to subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Dealing with issues of race, gender, and heritage, the authors demonstrate how their bodies as researchers go through processes of sensory learning and calibration.…
Theorising Sensory Cultures in Asia
Sociocultural meanings of the senses in society have recently received scholarly attention in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history and geography. With some exceptions, extant works have mainly focused on Euro–American contexts, or non-industrial societies. This article ethnographically documents and analyses the social life of the senses in everyday life historical contexts within Asia. I propose three theoretical them…
Senses as Mobile Actants
The senses and their concomitant practices have historically and contemporaneously traversed borders and boundaries and in effect, acquire different meanings. Sensory modalities and ways of knowing become reconfigured as a result of cross-cultural sensory encounters in everyday life. Drawing from colonial and contemporary ethnographic encounters in Singapore, we make a case to extend sociocultural analyses of the character of the sensory-in parti…
Shaping Mobile Worlds in Asia
In these difficult, pressing and uncertain times, migration and mobility in Asia have been incorporated into the projects of state institutions, media and a range of civil society actors. These agendas engender and shape debates that include belonging and exclusion; social mobility and inequality; conflict, violence and persecution; economic growth and labor market outcomes; state regulation, governance and governmentality; as well as diversity a…
Gastropolitical encounters and the political life of sensation
Food as a political object has been pivotal in defining the political and socioeconomic positioning of political leaders across many different countries. Instrumentalised as a diplomatic tool to enhance and maintain economic and international relations, food as gifts and acts of commensality are routinely built into the pursuit and maintenance of local and foreign policy, which points to both the materiality and sensoriality of gastrodiplomacy. T…
Sensory Anthropology
The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory by Kevin Blackburn (review)
Reviewed by: The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory by Kevin Blackburn Kelvin E. Y. Low The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory, by Kevin Blackburn. Singapore: NUS Press, 2022, 208pp. ISBN 9789813251861 Singapore was, during WWII, one of the major centres of comfort stations for Japanese soldiers. Many women from the region and Europe, were comfort women. Yet, where women who were former comfort women in other Asian soc…
Between Scientific and Sensory Knowledge
This article explores how clay artists in Singapore utilize both their scientific and sensory knowledge of clay-making in producing clay works. Based on a study of the biographies and sensory experiences of clay artists, clay artists rely simultaneously on their scientific knowledge and understanding of clay firing processes, temperatures, and glazing, together with their sensory judgment and experience of the same set of processes, to produce cl…
Of sensory infractions and anthropomorphism across Asian urban histories
On the qualia of sensory food heritage in Singapore
Fair or fowl
Urban living in densely populated cities such as Singapore requires a balance between polemic human-animal relations and the sensory boundaries of conduct and transgression. Noise and smell which emanate from animals serve as a source of disturbance that impels the authorities to intervene and resolve such transgressions. However, substantial numbers of residents rear animals in or around their public housing flats, thereby serving as a source of…
Sociology (22 obras) · Aesthetics (17 obras) · Psychology (15 obras) · Epistemology (13 obras) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (12 obras) · Sensory system (12 obras) · Political science (11 obras) · Anthropology (10 obras) · Art (10 obras) · Cognitive psychology (8 obras)