Abstract

The field of sensory studies is still a developing academic field; However, various contributions from various social sciences have begun to configure a set of relevant knowledge. At the moment of thinking of life in cities as a sensory experience, several questions arise about the preponderance of one sense over others, or about the way in which the senses are socially structured, and from there questions arise about the differentiation in their use and significance. In this text, this theme is explored through an in-depth interview and tours of downtown Mexico City with a blind person. From this testimony the importance of the sensitive world through which their journeys pass is highlighted. Orientation strategies, sensitive memory, and sequential mind mapping are crucial to movement, as are textures, smells, and sounds. One can then think of the existence of a sensory order from which routes and interactions are structured. The narrative of the displacements is also important insofar as it shapes the experience, makes it communicable, and defines the narrator.

Keywords: urban centrality, physical and social distances, public space, social narratives, social use of the senses

Centrality of the Senses: A Blind Subject's Movements Through Downtown Mexico City

The field of sensory studies is an academic discipline still under development; that said, a number of contributions from several social sciences have begun to configure a body of relevant knowledge. When we imagine city life as a sensory experience a number of questions arise with regard to the preponderance of one sense over the others, or indeed, with regard to the way the senses are socially structured; these in turn give rise to questions about differentiation in senses' use and signification. The present text explores this thematic based on an in-depth interview and outings with a blind person in downtown Mexico City. From this testimony we discover the importance of the sensible world in which the movements take place. Orientation strategies, sensible memory and creating sequential mental maps are key to movement, as are textures, smells and sounds. We can therefore believe in the existence of a sensory order upon which outings and interactions are structured. Narratives of getting around are also important to the degree that they lend form to experience, make it communicable and define their narrator.

Keywords: senses' social uses, public space, urban centrality, social narratives, physical and social distances.

Introduction

In this text I seek to make an approach to travel in the city from the perspective of sensory or sensitive studies. This is a developing field in social studies and arises from concerns of various disciplines (sociology, anthropology, human geography) to address the way in which the sensory world, in its structuring and organization, provides elements of understanding about the relationship between individuals and the social world.

The exploration carried out on movements and sensory atmospheres is made up of two parts. In the first one, there will be an exhibition of significant proposals regarding the approach to the sensory world in the social sciences, emphasizing how these contributions illuminate various ways of relating to urban environments through the senses. The second part will consist of an exploratory approach to the theme of the senses in the city from a reading sensory of the displacement of a blind person through the historic center of Mexico City. This person was interviewed in depth and subsequently two interviews in which he was accompanied on daily and preferred journeys. This research strategy combines talking and walking. The evocation of places and their valuation, as well as walking and telling experiences and sensations, has allowed atmospheres linked to movement and the senses to emerge fully, atmospheres that are a resource for the elaboration of defining marks of the place and orientational mental maps.

The sensory and the sociocultural

In order to place the discussion on the sensory at the level of the social sciences, it should be noted from the beginning that it is consistently recognized that although the senses have an individual dimension in principle, since it is the person who sees, listens, and so on with the senses. other commonly recognized senses, the way to use them, categorize feelings with them and give them a meaning is eminently cultural. Howes and Classen state: “the way we use our senses and the way we create and understand the sensory world are shaped by culture” (2014: 1). Le Breton also points out in the same sense when he postulates that “perception is not the imprint of an object on a passive sensory organ, but an activity of knowledge diluted in evidence or the result of reflection. What men perceive is not the real, but already a world of meanings ”(2007: 22).

It follows that the sensory dimension approached from a broad perspective in the social sciences places the process of perception not only in the individual, but in the field of social elaboration of the uses and significance granted to a set of stimuli that have an existence from their collective recognition. As Sabido (2016) states, in this field it is also important to ask about the interactive dimension (mutual perception in one way and not another) and the dispositional dimension (how one learns to perceive one way and not another) as one way. to bring the subject closer to a necessary sociological analysis.

Faced with the social and cultural diversity approachable by the social sciences, a field of inquiry has been that of the social and cultural modes of classification and nomination of the senses. This has led to findings of a wide diversity of ways in which the senses are conceived beyond the Western world. From here, elements have been contributed, based on an ethnographic strategy, to emphasize the sensitive orders of different cultures. Howes (2014) points out, for example, that in classical Indian philosophy a list of eight senses is suggested, which includes a sense of thought and mind (manna), which indicates an opposition to the Western tradition of sharply differentiating mind and body. This minimal illustration serves to point out the great diversity of ways of conceptualizing the sensory world and postulating, following Howes, that each order of the senses is a social order, since it implicitly marks a hierarchical order to which social groups or activities are assigned. . Thus, there are "high or noble" senses such as sight, and "low" senses such as smell and touch; This then makes it possible to differentiate social groups according to the use or not of a certain meaning for daily activities. To evoke a case, the emphasis on the feminine from the idea of softness and delicate touch goes hand in hand with the idea that the domestic is the space for the exercise of these activities (see Goffman, 1991), or that in the The private car protects the body from unforeseen contact with others and therefore in public transport it is necessary to “endure” contact with others (Capron and Pérez López, 2016).

It should also be noted that the senses are not isolated from each other, in the manner of autonomous and differentiated perceptual universes. Through the concept of synesthesia, it is sought to recover the amalgam of the sensory in a single perceptual act. Let's go back to Le Breton (2007: 46): “at every moment existence requests the unity of the senses. Perception is not a sum of data but a global apprehension of the world ”. Howes and Classen (2014: 5) point in the same direction by postulating that “sensations complement each other, oppose each other, and, at times, contradict each other, as when something that seems heavy feels light… They are part of an interactive network of experiences, rather than being located in separate compartments in a sensory box ”. So then, a point of interest is not only to document what happens at the level of the use of a single sense, but what arises in the amalgam of senses, when and how this happens and what are the social uses of these almost infinite interactions.

Similarly, in the field of sensory relationships we also have another area to be systematized is that where sensory stimuli are connected with spatial orientation and the identification of material and social elements present in the structure of a perceptual world. So then, the sensory dimension is fundamental to experience space from a dimension that is not only abstract, but lived. Later we will address this point in relation to sound and the city.

From all of the above, a great field opens up, which is that of the social structuring of sensory worlds. If we think about it in relation to the spatial dimension of the social, it is clear that different types of spaces correspond to a set of sensory abilities that allow us to be in them. To give a contrasting example, a forest requires different skills to inhabit it than a beach. Identify what is important (sounds, smells, the direction of the wind) changes from place to place. Furthermore, the same material structuring makes it possible to have greater emphasis in one sense than in another to move around and carry out activities in this space. “Faced with the infinity of possible sensations at every moment, a society defines particular ways of establishing selections, establishing between it and the world the sieve of meanings, values, endowing each one of the orientations to exist in the world and communicate with their environment ”(Le Breton, 2006: 23).

The sensory elements become signals, signs, that mark what a certain place, so to speak, expects of us. Whether they are body movements, attention to smells, attentive listening in concert halls. In the same way, there are sensory elements that serve to anticipate what is to come: the sound of the subway when arriving at the station, the smell of food to be eaten, a bell that marks the end of some activity. And there is everything else, what is part of a social situation that possibly does not have an instrumental use in itself, something that calls for an activity, but that is part of its definition. This is what we can include under the definition of atmosphere.

In relation to the anthropology of the place, Abilio Vegara (2013: 47) points out that “the placer has its own discourse, its objects and subjects, its sound, which together generate a atmosphere and a rhythm that characterize it ... This multiple language, in its experiential and meaningful articulation, creates the ambient of the place, is what strengthens it in memory, when, for example, the evocation in absence springs from a word, a smell or a color… which together make up –and refer to– that particular atmosphere ”. Subject to returning to the idea of atmosphere later, it should be noted that it is useful to encompass sensory concurrence, the way the senses interact with each other creates a particular environment where there is not a single element that is the most relevant for its definition, it is perhaps in the mixture of sensory domains where the imperceptibility of a situation rests.

The sensory in the city

In his classic essay on The life of the spirit in the big cities, Georg Simmel (1986) establishes the primacy of the gaze in urban life. The need to orient themselves in urban displacements, coupled with an intense but fragile social life, makes city dwellers rely on sight as a resource to position themselves socially and spatially. When looking at others, the person finds his social place in the context of micro-interactions structured by appearance, when looking at urban environments he distinguishes routes and signs that guide him.

In the same way, the gaze not only fulfills an instrumental role in terms of enabling orientation. From the precepts of symbolic interactionism, it can be considered that it is also a device for defining oneself before others, starting from incorporating into the definition of the self the effects that appearance generates before others in situations of daily contact (Blumer, 1982 ). Likewise, when walking through the streets or when using public transport, the gaze locates the subject spatially and at the same time indicates to the other participants in the situation the type of individual disposition in which they are (haste, concentration, doubt, loss ). Thus, the viewer is also watched by other people around him, or from technological devices that, in the name of efficiency and safety, dissolve urban anonymity and seek total transparency and visibility. Perhaps the above results in a look where citizens become mobile objects with trajectories and the dimension of the sense of the urban goes to the background, since it is not appreciable in the control and monitoring monitors. The gaze, then, as an exercise in the urban relationship, oscillates between the ephemeral intensity of face-to-face encounters to its expressive nullification in the face of ubiquitous technological devices. Yet perhaps the widespread practice of selfie in public places in the city it has the effect of revaluing urban wandering, although paying the price of expressively interacting only in front of digital devices.

On the other hand, an example of the way in which the senses are used to emphasize a socioeconomic location is provided by Urry (2008) in relation to the use of the balcony in cities, which allows us to look at others without being touched, or listen to or smell passersby. This sensory distance marks the city as predominantly visual by disconnecting other senses from the gaze; later, the skyscrapers participate in the same process, as do certain tourist buses in which the city is known only from the view, without getting off the transport to touch, smell or listen.

On the dimension of sound in the city, various studies point to its problematic character; that is, it is approached when in various situations its presence becomes annoying and causes damage to health. An illustrative case is that of noise, a disturbing and harmful sound that has given rise to inquiries about how it can be tolerated in residential or work environments. In the case of Mexico City, there are empirical approaches (see Domínguez, 2013) in which it is concluded that habituation to noise is recurrent, although not without leaving traces in hearing health, be it in the case of inhabitants in a area adjacent to the city's airport or in work areas.

However, the sound not only has a disturbing character, it is also capable of providing elements of identification of the space in which it occurs. That is, there are sounds typical of a place and their knowledge and identification immediately refers to the environment in which they are produced. Thus, it is possible to speak of a soundscape to the extent that the experience of the place, based on everything that develops there, is inseparable from the auditory dimension. Domínguez affirms: “sound as an attribute of identity includes all those sound experiences that are considered our own, either because we produce them or because they are a collective voice of which we feel part; this identification also engenders difference, that is, the recognition of a sound world that is alien to ours and with which we also link ”(2015).

It is important to consider the dispersion attribute of sound, which reaches areas other than those in which it is produced from its expansive nature. This is how it can come to weave relationships between various spaces, whether public or private, when this is socially valued it is that it refers to the idea of soundscape, and when experiencing sound as invasive, conflicts of all kinds emerge (noisy neighbors, work activities with disruptive sounds).

Other sensitive elements have their own language and expressive logic (smell, touch, kinesthetic sensations); However, rather than exposing their characteristics and how they could be articulated in relation to urban space, it seems pertinent to think about the way in which these elements are articulated with each other. The aforementioned notion of environment has the ability to integrate a sensitive universe assigned to a particular space, where it is not a matter of isolating various sensory elements, but rather contemplating them as a whole. This notion puts into play the “sensitive relationship of a set of subjects who perceive,… a minimum of expression and… cannot occur independently of a living temporality from which it is born and makes it disappear” (Amphoux, 2003). In this perspective, the idea of intersensoriality is also affirmed in a double sense: environments exist not only in terms of being perceived by the senses, but also because they are attributed a culturally shared meaning. Thus, sensory data and common interpretation are fundamental in the identification and construction of an atmosphere.

From the argumentation developed so far, it is possible to propose the existence of an urban sensorial order composed of the relationship between spaces and practices. This would mean that it is possible to think that a certain type of space corresponds to a generic sensory universe. That is, in a certain material arrangement existing in a typology of spaces in the city (shopping streets, popular residential areas, middle sectors, or mixed uses) it is possible to find a regularity in the sensory elements. This also points to a social distribution or structuring of the sensory experience since in a socially heterogeneous city the sensitive universes are not only diverse, but they are configured and appeal to different types of sensitivities valued differentially from social ascriptions. Thus, there would be activities and ascriptions in which the intensity of sensory stimuli are part of a particular social habitus. Consider, for example, the commercial activity in popular areas that takes place in an atmosphere of bustle in which sounds, smells, inevitable interpersonal contacts converge, and on the other hand, commercial environments governed by the idea of visual order, everything has to be recognizable by the gaze, and where other sensory stimuli are controlled from strategies of marketing (lighting, sounds, temperature, etc.). All of the above allows us to think about the presence of spatially and socially differentiated stimuli where what for some is their own and habitual and is taken for granted, for others can generate strangeness and the sensation of irruption and dislocation.

In this context, the street must be thought of as a space for multiple sensory stimulation, in many cases weakly regulated in formal terms, and in others, the object of policies that regulate both material and sensory aspects. In any case, the experience of the inhabitant of large areas of the Latin American city refers, as Duhau and Giglia (2008) point out, to an urban order in continuous negotiation in which the regulations are usually object of advantageous interpretation for those who are situated in Its limits. So then, it is also necessary to ask about urban conditions, in terms of social norms, which allow the formation of particular sensory environments and how these can be the expression of positively valued cultural dimensions or indicate a deterioration from particular interests that are imposed from conditions of power and hierarchy.

It should not be forgotten that there is also the social order from which passers-by approach, in terms of categorization processes, other passers-by. Here it stands out that the order in which we place others subtly reveals the order to which we belong: foreigners of the situation are easily located by the natives of a place and this gives rise to the game of recognitions and negotiations on the order in which they are develop relationships (see Grimaldo, 2018).

On the other hand, it is also relevant to note that sensory universes are strongly associated with modes of urban displacement. The way to travel the public space is a particular exposure to a certain sensory world. Thus, public transport is sensorially diverse to the private car or to commuting by bicycle or walking. Each one of them has its own complexity by exposing the person who is mobilizing to a multiple sensory world, be it outside / inside the car or bus, to the sensory concentration of those who travel in subway transport, or to the diverse intensity of stimulation for who travels by bicycle or walks. Already ET Hall in his well-known book
La dimensión oculta (1995) has also warned of the differential perception of space for those who travel by car and for those who walk; in the first case it is that of the gaze in the center and constructions and objects moving sideways, and in the second it is that of the richest perception and with the possibility of continuously changing the attention of the gaze and carefully focus the senses towards a point in particular. We can then point out that the analysis of a space that involves the senses allows us to have a more complex perspective of what comes into play, to endow it with a particular character beyond mere visuality.

On the other hand, a relevant issue in this context is how to analyze sensory experiences related to being and visiting places in the city. Tim Cresswell (2004: 11) proposes in a very suggestive way to think that a place is not only a thing in the world, but a way of understanding the world. He points out that “when we look at the world as a world of places we see different things. We see attachments and connections between people and place. We see worlds of meaning and experience ”. From this arises the possibility of asking ourselves how it is that places are made up of sensory experiences and how the sensory is not only a fact that is bodily experienced but also becomes a form of understanding and interpretation of the world, or at least of a certain social world with the one who is in relationship. A very useful proposal within the perspective that we propose is to approach the sensorial issue from an ethnographic approach. This makes it possible to recover the sensory experience from the point of view of those who are or circulate somewhere, as well as to approach this experience from meaningful practices and not only as a set of decontextualized evocations or accounts. This idea is expressed in the project of an anthropology of the senses, which according to Sarah Pink is characterized by three main themes: “it explores the question of the relationship between sensory perception and culture, it engages in questions about the status of vision and its relationship with other senses, and seeks a form of reflexivity that goes beyond how culture is “written” to examine the places of incorporated knowledge ”(2015: 13). This also supposes a situated ethnography that contemplates the theme of experience when addressing the relationships between bodies, minds and the materiality and sensoriality of the environment (2015: 28). In this way, the ethnographic approach, under this perspective, supposes the recognition of different environments, be they social, material, discursive or sensory.

Walking in the center of Mexico City as a blind person

This section seeks to address a specific case of analysis of the sensory dimension of walking. The particular twist that will be given to the analysis is to recover the experience of a blind person on their tour of the Historic Center of Mexico City and their recount through an in-depth interview, and two interviews during tours, about the different mobility strategies and the sensory dimension present in them. The in-depth interview addressed topics such as the appreciation of walking through the city, experiences and events that occurred during transfers, and an exploration of the biographical dimension in relation to displacement. Likewise, two tours of the center were carried out in which they were asked to comment on the usual movements, what attracted attention, what forms of orientation were deployed in different environments. The conjunction of steps and words made it possible to address the senses in motion and their relationship with places, situations and territorial marks. This research work seeks, based on the interviews carried out and the methodology used, to open interpretation guidelines of the way in which displacements in the city are conceived; it is an attempt to say something of what is present in steps and movements.

Choosing to analyze the sensory dimension from a blind person has the purpose of making the urban sensory universe explicit when the gaze is absent, given the emphasis on this dimension in the experience of the city. Thus, without the gaze, other sensory elements emerge with force while the use of the senses as a mechanism for orientation and identification of urban locations becomes evident. Walking can also be seen as “a way of making places (place making) considering the body dimension of the pedestrian and multisensory participation in the environment ”(Pink, 2015: 112). Recovering the previous Cresswell quote, we have to walk is to rehearse ways of understanding the world.

It should be noted that the analysis of the displacement of blind people in the city has also been approached from the perspective of disabling environments, that is, those that present physical barriers for people with some type of disability, an architectural design that excludes those who are not capable of using ladders or door handles and means of transport that assume that all people have the same mobility capacities (see Hernández, 2012). In fact, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities sponsored by the United Nations Organization proposes the right to accessibility, public transport and what is defined as urban law, understood as “that constructions and Public places have adequate facilities that are accessible to people with disabilities. In this way, they will allow those with a disability to fully develop work, educational, cultural and recreational activities. Examples of architectural and urban adjustments are ramps, wide doors, elevators, railings, toilets with adjustments, among others. " (cndh, s / f). A persistent tension can be located here between the characteristics of spaces and designs that impede the mobility of people with some type of disability and the rights to which they can access. As we will see later, this tension is resolved based on individual strategies to overcome obstacles and a limited use of design actions or equipment operation derived from the existence of these rights (this is the case of tactile signs on the pavement and auditory traffic lights). .

As already stated, we start from the idea of the existence of a sensory order, which in the case of certain areas of the city center translates into the intense use of public space for commercial activities, structured from the conflictive relationship of unionized actors in street vendor associations, who maintain a constant dispute over their presence on the streets with both local authorities and established merchants. This results in an “unstable” space, in the sense of a habitually negotiated regulation, which is expressed in an intense informal commercial activity in the public thoroughfare and producer of diverse sensory atmospheres.

The analysis will be carried out from the approach of the case of a person who was interviewed and who was accompanied on his journey through the streets of the historic center of Mexico City. We will call him Juan Antonio, he is 32 years old and has lived in the National School for the Blind, located in the very center of the city for twelve years. In the mornings he studies a degree in Pedagogy and in the afternoons he works in the subway singing or selling CD, which positions it in a particular way, as we will see later, against the street trade. It is highly mobile around the city by public transport and on foot. As a bonus, it is worth mentioning that his tour descriptions and hike comments are highly detailed, revealing an acute awareness of the world around him. It is also worth noting the use of language to "translate" experiences, there is a wide use of popular language, word games, humor; all this shows a great creativity from the sensory experience.2

Centrality in motion

To begin with, it should be noted that Juan Antonio makes a very clear distinction between trips for work or to go to school and pleasant trips. In the pleasant route there is a highly valued arrival point (a place to drink coffee), listen to the noise of the water on a wall with vegetation and the sound of the wind that moves the plants. This pleasant journey is configured from what he calls "secret places", corners, walls, limited places, which have a particular sensory dimension that is shown by the concentrated use of the senses, such as the smell of coffee, the wind that moves the vegetation. This reveals a theme that will appear at different times in the interview: the acute ability to recognize sensitive data as an element of positive differentiation from other street users. Even the very idea of "secret place" expressed refers not so much to the place itself as to the ability to sensibly access it, a capacity that other passers-by do not possess; the secret would then be in relation to the exclusivity of access.

In this context, it is worth recovering the approach of Tim Ingold (2011: 46) regarding the value of movement in the knowledge of the environment: “the starting point for the study of perceptual activity is locomotion and not cognition”. This approach takes up and expands the idea of the psychologist J. Gibson in the sense that perception starts from a “path of observation”; If this is the case, then it is worth reflecting that since perception is a function of movement, then we must perceive, even partially, depending on how we move. Thus, this makes it possible to think that Gibson's "observation route" can be transformed into a "sensible route", from which we obtain a multiplicity of sensory experiences derived from movement. With this, the sensitive world of a blind person is configured not only of information from the environment, but also of that information in movement (closeness-distance, bottom-up) and how the body is able to perceive it (rise-fall, stony texture- smooth).

To address Juan Antonio's story, derived from an in-depth interview, and later another interview conducted while walking with him through the streets of the center, the most relevant thematic dimensions present in the testimonies will be systematized.

Emotions and affections

Although the movements made may have an instrumental purpose, go to the subway or return to the place where one lives, they have an affective dimension that accompanies them. The possibility of the unexpected, some obstacle that causes a stumble, is strongly associated with the idea of fear and caution. The translation of the above is slowness and caution in the steps, since speed is a risk. In slow movement the senses are in synchrony, the ability to decipher what is around and the movement of the body ensures the firmness of the steps. Security is then a feeling of the slow; fear, of the fast and the unexpected.

Interrupted continuity

Obstacle sidewalks

Sensory data

In the interview, the count of sensory data is multiple and ranges from the recognition of the place from particular elements to the unexpected that is harshly shown. You can recognize the street poles when you touch them, you can identify the water on the pavement that comes from melting ice, you can easily perceive the odors of food and the sound of the oil in which some of them are fried. The rumble of cars and minibuses is recognized and distinguished. There is a church that has a characteristic smell: old. There are sensory elements that are easily and quickly deciphered or through slow learning. The following quote illustrates the above:

In my case, as a blind person, I like to stop to touch the wall as a reference to see what is the characteristic that it has, if it is robust, if it is rough, if it is a thick wall or is it a little reduced, if it has outgoing, if it has eyelashes so that it won't hit me on the forehead or on the head ... and that idea of being able to check those reference points allows me to perceive these types of constructions through touch, hearing and smell, because I can perceive; Believe it or not, I can do it.

However, there are also sensations that appear suddenly, and refer to pain. There are moving objects, boxes, merchandise on the street, parked bicycles, which you stumble upon. Objects and situations that cannot be anticipated show the harshness of displacement.

Textures and roughness

Textures and roughness

Textures and roughness

Cognitive resources

The movement is not only carried out on the material surface of the route, streets, squares, it also has a highly relevant cognitive dimension. The elaboration of mental maps allows to organize the displacement from a figurative space from the sensible experience. From the location of the blind person and his cardinal orientation, it is possible to anticipate the route. In the case of Juan Antonio, the map is predominantly made of sequences, the identification of the streets from their relationship to each other composes this map (see the analysis of types of cognitive maps in Varela and Vidal, 2005). The instrumental value of this cognitive map lies in its stability, in the fact that the streets can be traveled according to the order in which they are settled in the mind of the person. However, for a blind person the great difficulty facing the route from the map is, as already mentioned, the appearance of the unexpected, that some material element has been transformed: new objects in the streets such as fences, tables, drains open, they are a source of dislocation in the routes. As Hernández acknowledges, “spatial perceptions, evaluations and representations are not simply neutral means used to register, analyze, communicate and conceive of space, but they are powerful instruments of spatial control” (2012: 80).

Likewise, the accumulated experience from multiple transfers becomes memory. The recognition of places from smells, textures, makes memory also of the sensitive. The recognition of certain attributes (sounds, unevenness in the asphalt) also allows orientation and updating of the cognitive map by locating the person at a particular point on the journey. In moving, memory is not only a storage of abstract information, it is, above all, a capacity that is experienced from the body and in tune with the other sensitive elements present on the street. There would then be an ability to experience the surrounding physical environment from the coordination of a large amount of sensitive information as well as cognitive resources. The absence of the gaze as a principle of ordering and identifying elements of orientation then makes the possibility of recognition and movement fall back on all other ways of experiencing the environment. However, in this process the body and memory take an active role in the creation of a sensitive entity through which it is possible to walk safely.

Smell mapping

Displacement strategies

Based on the above, it is recognized that moving through the motley streets of the city center brings into play a multiplicity of sensitive elements. The absence of the gaze makes these elements not sufficient to allow movement. You need, on the one hand, the support of the cane and, on the other, the help of other people. The cane is an extension of the touch and allows to identify textures in the asphalt, existence of ramps and holes, as well as obstacles on the road. It is then a fundamental tool, the same as that identifies for other walkers the condition of blindness of those who carry it. The interviewee usually asks for support from whoever is nearby to cross the streets, despite the fact that at times his voice is not heard due to the surrounding noise. When they did not receive an answer, they turned to the scream as a second option, in frank struggle with the din of cars and the music of street stalls. When getting care, permission is asked to take the person offering help by the arm.

Guide for walking stick (or podotactile)

Guide for walking stick (or podotactile)

Path taken

Decipher the cruises

It should be noted that the rate of displacement in commercial areas of urban popular areas is similar to that of the street vendor area in the center. Faced with the large amount of merchandise located on the sidewalk at peak times, there is very little space for pedestrians to move around, hence it is necessary to walk avoiding obstacles, moving the body so as not to collide with people and objects. The blind person then looks for the best way to move in a small choreography through a sinuous and variegated residual space. There is a use of the body that, despite the differences imposed by the situation of blindness, is shared with other inhabitants and spaces.

Another situation of interaction with the people around occurs when help is requested to locate a street. Sometimes the answer of "it's over there" is received, this evidently generates confusion since Juan Antonio assumes that the person extends his arm to point some direction, without considering his impossibility of seeing where the hand is pointing, as well as the indications from "to the left" or "to the right", since the position of the person indicating the route is not known. In other cases, the request for support is not to cross the street, but to locate a point of reference that will help them continue on their way. Sometimes the answers are accurate and correspond to the notion that one has of where to go. However, it can also happen that the answers are completely wrong and do not conform to the knowledge of the area that the interviewee has. This provokes the sarcastic comment of: “some people are more blind than me”. Likewise, unforeseen collisions with other people occur, in the face of which the claim is received "Don't you see where you are going?", And the answer is: "Well no".

In relationships with others there is then a use of the body different from the usual norms of coexistence between strangers on the street. Asking for help when raising your voice in a saturated listening environment, and requesting permission to hold others by the arm are perhaps the most distinctive elements. The anonymity pacts are transgressed in the transit through the city, through shouting and touching a link is established with the surrounding space, now in its interpersonal dimension. The others are used, despite the misunderstandings that this may generate. The resources of displacement then go from the sensory dimension of the material environment to the corporeality of nearby passers-by. This places blind people in a particular order of interaction, where forms of relationship other than dominant ones are possible.

Environmental preferences

Those routes and places that are preferred over others, what is enjoyed when walking, configures this dimension of environmental preferences and it is relevant to consider them, since the situation is shown here in which the senses are not alert in the anticipation of some mishap or misguidance, but under the idea of relaxation and joy. For Juan Antonio, trips on Sunday afternoons are the most pleasant. The city center loses a bit of its usual intensity, the density of objects and people is lower, the pace of activities is more leisurely. In this context, the interviewee likes to hear the cry of street vendors: "pass him güerita and put your hand ... to the merchandise." He recognizes that he encourages him and infects him with a positive spirit (remember that he is also a street vendor in the afternoons). Likewise, he also refers that he goes to some streets where there are street vendors to buy clothes in a situation in which he can touch them, feel their texture, ask about their colors and try them on right there, something that he cannot do when passing in front of large department stores that only have glass as borders towards the streets. There is then a direct interaction both with the objects and with the vendors in the street shops that is part of their habitual way of relating to their surroundings; he participates in a sensory order that he recognizes and considers as his own.

Another route that the interviewee enjoys is that of Regina Street, which has been converted into a pedestrian walkway and in which smells and the possibility of walking calmly are for him the main source of attraction. In conducting the interview, as stated at the beginning of this text, Juan Antonio takes the interviewer to a wall covered with vegetation on this same street, and asks her "Do you hear something?", Given the negative answer. he insists: “pay attention and you will realize. You are being guided by the vision and you missed something, listen ”. Finally, the interviewer recognizes the sound of water as part of a green wall irrigation system. Finally, the interviewee points out: “it is the water that is seeping through this wall, through these plants… this is a wonderful place and I am very envious because I do not invite everyone here, I like to come alone, I am not interested in coming with anyone , I like the tranquility. Here I put my eye plug ”. Paradoxically, the green wall, built mainly to be seen, now constitutes an unexpected soundscape capable of opening up new sensory and symbolic dimensions for a blind person. Water as an evocation of tranquility is combined with the idea of a secret place, one that can only be accessed through a particular use of the senses. The absence of the gaze is shown here as the possibility of accessing other features of the material world of the street, unsuspected for the habitual passer-by and that configure a discourse that even in conditions of social disadvantage it is possible to have some positive aspect, such as it is the access to this sound realm.

Wall of sounds

Narrative of walking as a blind person

The senses are not only related to language in terms of vocabulary and nominations to refer to sensations, we can also find a narrative about how the senses are used in certain situations, think in work contexts or in relation to sexuality to name a few from them. The concept of narrative is used in the sense of Daiute and Lightfoot (2004: xi): “Narrative discourses are cultural meanings and interpretations that guide perception, thought, interaction and action… The way people tell stories influences how they perceive, remember and prevent future events”. The idea of narrative from which we start not only supposes a recount of events, but also their organization in a plot that is already an interpretive principle. In the case that we address here, the sensitive perception of the environment through which one passes, the historic center, is framed in a narrative structure, culturally accessible and recognizable, about walking as a blind person. The identifiable narrative plot is one that refers to the acceptance of their situation, to the need not to be overcome by adverse circumstances and to take humorously the difficulties that appear. In this case, it can be thought that the narrative positioning results in a strategy for coping with the situation of blindness.

In a synthetic way, this narrative plot, which has been built throughout the in-depth interview as well as in the walk with Juan Antonio, can be found in the following quote:

… Already entering the subway, I was going very fast and I could not notice that there was an open drain; when I remembered, I go down; It was the last day of practice at the Normal School. He was very handsome and the whole thing, according to me, and I come out all muddy, because I did not know that there was water at the bottom of the drain, black water and other colors! As I can, I go out and stop to meditate for a little while and I feel all muddy and sad about what had happened to me. I said: no way, it happened to me, and I'm going to school like that.

This quote refers to an extreme case of difficulty with the material environment in which, despite everything, humor is present, a metaphorical language and the desire to overcome the situation.

Furthermore, in the narrative that was expressed and formulated during the interview, both the narrator and his assessment of the sensitive world through which he transits were mutually constructed. The narrator constructs himself as an active person and the city is a terrain to travel from the cunning of one who knows how to decipher the sensory elements at his fingertips. It is important to consider that humor is a fundamental element in this narrative, as a way to de-dramatize the situation of blindness and the difficulties that this imposes on the daily movement. The use of popular language, particularly metaphors and analogies, also reveals the way to face daily adversities and a cultural resource of which he makes extensive use. An example is the following, in which he talks about going back to his boarding school after having breakfast at a nearby market:

On the way back there are more stores open and they are doing the cleaning, and whether I take the bucket, the broom or anything between my feet or they stamp me with the door of the place that they leave open, and well that does bother me but I also say "these people are not to blame for not seeing, right, I have to keep up", and to follow him. I take it from the friendly side, as Chimoltrufia said, I just rub myself if the blow was very strong, or I laugh, since I have no other choice ...

In the same vein, there are also numerous references in the interview to the smells of street food on the roads where it circulates, as if one could look through the nose. In this count, the smells correspond to a point in the particular space: in that street there is such a trade or such type of products, and at the same time their enumeration (cakes, tamales, churros, waffles, tacos) has the effect of inserting a playful dimension in the story.

The language about the senses and the journey takes a cultural form, the narrative of overcoming adversity, using a lexicon and rhetorical figures typical of a popular urban cultural environment.

Conclusions

The text has tried to point out, on the one hand, the relevance of the study of the senses in the social sciences, and on the other, to exemplify this area from an exercise in ethnography of the senses. It was sought to go beyond thinking of daily transfers in instrumental terms, as an access to sensitive worlds in which the data of the senses become indispensable resources for mobility. The city center has been a fruitful environment for this approach, the intense life in the streets represents what we could call a total sensory atmosphere. The notion of atmosphere converges the great amount of sensory stimuli with which the urban passer-by enters into relationship and that configure a sensitive relationship with the environment. The fluidity of the sensory world, passing easily from what is heard to what is smelt, from what is liked to what is bodily sensation, provides elements to recover a phenomenology of perception in which the subject actively participates in the elaboration of transient atmospheres.

The notion of atmosphere would be worth exploring as it brings into play the relationship between sensory data and their contexts, as well as the associations caused by the stimuli and memories generated in these places that are constantly updated on each journey. The sensory approach shows a social world that is constituted at the moment of being touched, of being experienced with the body. The objects with which one collides are not there in a random way, speaking and touching other passersby is done from the limits of the norms of interaction in public places, the invaded podotactile signs point to non-reflected transgressions; the material and sensory world that is traversed corresponds to an order of practices situated in a particular context. His knowledge allows displacement, while defining who does it as part of it.

The interviews and the route carried out with Juan Antonio show the existence of a highly heterogeneous sensory order in which movement strategies, recognition of sensory data, the capacities of the body in movement and the discourse in which all this is inserted to be combined are combined. communicable and create an effect of recognition and understanding. The sensations that we can call urban emerge from one's own movement and that of others, the interpretation and the ordering that is given to them, all this leads to forms of mobility oriented by sensations. In this kind of Moebius strip where sensations and movement are the two faces of the experience, they are mutually conformed and confused. When Juan Antonio says that in his secret place, the green wall, “he casts his eye”, the sensory notions dissolve in a festival of synesthesia: the sound moves to the gaze, the gaze to the sense of taste, that that is ingested is related to the difficulties to see.

On the other hand, the field work carried out confirms the capacity of the ethnographic approach to articulate multiple sources of information. The methodological concurrence of the verbal, the narrative approach, the image, the observation, has provided multiple elements to address the facets of the sensible world and their interrelation. Displacements involve a large number of actions in relation to the material and social world, this set of sensitive situations are fully expressed from suitable languages to expose the central elements of their personal and cultural significance. The experiences of the interviewee configured from their narrative articulation show how the smells, sounds and textures of the street can be pieces of a puzzle that take their final shape when assembled into a socially and biographically oriented plot, a plot that of course is never definitive, it changes situationally and contextually. What is important is that it is sensory information that becomes much more than that when used and signified in relation to movement.

The vulnerability of the blind person is evident, as well as the extensive personal resources to face it. In the testimony collected, the absence of references to urban policies to allow safe accessibility to mobility resources (ramps, auditory signs and material texture) is striking, which accentuates the social fragility of people with some type of disability. Urban policies that are translated into design elements (tactile roads or sound traffic lights), although they represent a recognition of the mobility rights of people with disabilities, also show their difficulties in effective use in contexts of saturation of sensory stimuli and accumulation of signs and urban furniture.

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