Presenting the self, the social body, and the olfactory: Managing smells in everyday life experiences

This article considers smell as a social intermediary with regard to the body, presentation of self, mid social/moral order Employing the trajectory of a sociology of everyday life, the data presented here are collected from narrative interviews conducted with twelve,c 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 framed within Goffmanian sociology on the interaction order and corporeal scholarship. The findings show that respondants equate foul odors with social and moral defilements and this affects how they view social others, adopting attitudes mid behaviors of social inclusion and exclusion. Managing bodily odors also points to the idea that instead of approaching the body as an object of analysis, the body should also be analyzed as an active mid acting subject, located and influenced by socio-cultural conditions. This article thus contributes to discussions oil a sociology of the body by linking them with olfactory analyses and also aims to supplement the dearth of olfactory research in the Southeast Asian region by using Singapore as an empirical case study.