Sweet Colors, Fragrant Songs: Sensory Models of the Andes and the Amazon Author(s): Constance Classen Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 722-735 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645710 Accessed: 14/10/2010 14:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Ethnologist. http://www.jstor.org sweet colors, fragrantsongs: sensory models of the Andes and the Amazon CONSTANCE CLASSEN-McCill University Every culture has its own sensory model based on the relative importance it gives to the different senses. This sensory model is expressed in the language, beliefs, and customs of a culture. In our own visualist culture, for example, we use expressions like "worldview" and "I see what you mean."1 In cultures with different sensory orientations one might speak ratherof a "world harmony" or say "I smell what you mean." These sensory biases have profound im- plications for the way in which a culture perceives and interacts with the world. Walter Ong (1967:6) goes so far as to say that "given sufficient knowledge of the sensorium exploited within a specific culture, one could probably define the culture as a whole in virtually all its aspects." While this, as we shall see, may be an overstatement, Ong's (1969:636) point that we would gain a truer understanding of other societies if we were to allow that their conceptions of the world may very well not fit into our visualist paradigms is undoubtedly valid. This point is eloquently illustratedby Steven Feld in "Sound as a Symbolic System: The Kaluli Drum." Feld (1986:147) describes how Papuan drums, whose essential meaning for the Pap- uans lies in the sounds they make, are reduced to a mere visual exhibit in Western museums. Similarly, many artifacts employed in dynamic and multisensory contexts by their cultures of origin are transformed into static objects of sight when they enter our sensory domain.2 More than any other discipline, anthropology should seek to counter our tendency to perceive other cultures through our own sensory model by attempting to understand them through their sen- sory models. A start in this direction is evidenced in the work of many of the leading anthro- pologists of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Rhoda Metraux (1953), EdmundCarpenter (Carpen- ter and McLuhan 1960), and Claude Levi-Strauss(1969) (Howes In press). Levi-Strauss'sanal- ysis of the sensory codes in myths (1969:147-163) could have provided a basis for analyzing the sensory codes of whole cultures. In its preoccupation with hermeneutics and with reading The indigenous peoples of South America culturally code sensory perceptions in varied and complex ways. This article outlines and compares the sensory models of indigenous cultures from two contrasting South American regions: the central Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. While the various peoples of the Andes appear to share the same basic sensory model, those of the Amazon mani- fest significant differences in the symbolic values they accord the different senses. One common factor among the Amazonians, which also distinguishes them from the Andeans, is the importance given to the senses dependent on proximity, par- ticularly smell. Such differences can be attributed to a variety of causes and are seen to have a variety of cultural effects. In conclusion, the anthropological im- plications of examining indigenous theories and modes of perception are explored. [South America, Andes, Amazon, anthropology of the senses] 722 american ethnologist cultures as texts, however, contemporary anthropology has instead tended to increase the vi- sual bias inherent in our perception of other cultures.3 This preoccupation can be traced to Geertz's work The Interpretationof Cultures, in which, following Ricoeur (1971), he describes culture as an "ensemble of texts . which the anthro- pologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong" (1973:452). The drawback to Geertz's approach, an approach that can be very informative in many re- spects, is not only that it reduces the multisensory dimensions of a culture to a flat, visual sur- face, but that it turns dynamic, interactive events into static, passive texts, which need only be properly interpreted by the ethnographer to be understood (Howes 1988b).4 There are a number of anthropologists who have criticized the dominance of the visual in contemporary anthropology and have argued for the development of an "anthropology of the senses" (see Howes 1988a, 1988b; Seeger 1981; Stoller 1989). In "The Shifting Sensorium: A Critiqueof the Textual Revolution in Anthropological Theory," David Howes writes: Theethnographer who allowshis or herexperience of someforeign culture to be mediatedby the model of the text will have no difficultyin comingto thinkof the nativesas enactinga particular"interpreta- tion"of the world in theirritual and otheractivities. But it would be moreaccurate to regardthem as sensingthe world.What is involvedin "sensingthe world"is experiencingthe cosmosthrough the mold of a particularsense ratioand at the sametime makingsense of thatexperience. [1 988b:91 The present article contributes to the developing field of the anthropology of the senses by examining how the sensory models of the indigenous peoples of two contrasting South Amer- ican regions, the central Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands, are expressed in their cultures. It should be emphasized that the purpose of this investigation is not to analyze native sensory data according to Western theories of perception, after the manner of those interested in the cross-cultural psychological study of perception (for example, Bolton, Michelson, Wilde, and Bolton 1975), or to situate the sensory models of the cultures studied within a single ex- planatory perceptual framework. It is rather to explore and compare indigenous theories of perception and the role these play in symbolic and social systems and, I hope, to indicate the potential for furtherresearch in this field. My discussion of sensory models in the Amazon is largely based on work done on the Desana Indians of northwestern Colombia over the last two decades by the brilliant and perceptive ethnographer Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff. This is supplemented by data on other Amazonian cultures drawn from the writings of various sensorially aware ethnographers of the region. The ethnographic data available on the cultural role of the senses in the Andes is more limited than that available for the Amazon.5 In any case, modern Andean culture is generally more closely linked to Western culture than is Amazonian culture, and can hence be suspected of having adopted many Western sensory modes. In order to arrive at a more authentically Andean sen- sory model, therefore, I will augment the modern Andean material with data taken from the richly detailed corpus of Inca traditions recorded after the Spanish Conquest in the 16th cen- tury. The juxtaposition of the Inca and modern Andean data reveals that, although present-day Andeans have to contend with the impact of the dominant Western sensory order, in the more traditionalcommunities of the Andes the senses are ordered much as they were in Inca times. II Creation myths are often a useful guide for discovering which senses are deemed most im- portant by a particularsociety. In the Inca cosmogony, which still survives in various forms in the Andes, sound is the primary medium of creation: the world is called into being and ani- mated by the voice of Viracocha, the creator: Viracocha. drewon some largestones all the nationshe thoughtto create.This done, he orderedhis two servantsto committo memorythe names he told them of the peoples he had paintedand of the valleysand provincesand placesfrom where they would emerge,which were thoseof all the earth.He sweet colors, fragrant songs 723 orderedeach of themto take a differentroute and call the aforementionedpeoples and orderthem to come out, procreate,and swell the earth. The servants,obeying Viracocha's command, set themselvesto the task.... On hearingtheir calls, every place obeyed, and some people came out of lakes,others out of springs,valleys, caves, trees, caverns,rocks, and mountains,and swelledthe earthand multipliedinto the nationswhich are in Peru today.[Sarmiento de Gamboa1965:207-210] An Inca prayer puts it more succinctly: "O Viracocha, who . said, 'let this be a man and let this be a woman,' and by so saying, made, formed, and gave them being" (Molina of Cuzco 1943[1575]: 20). Viracocha is, above all, the one who speaks. He knows all languages better than the natives do (Pachacuti Yamqui 1950[1613]:215). He names all the plants and animals (Molina of Cuzco 1943[1 575]:14).