Editing Sensorium (section)

== Sensory ecology and anthropology ==
These sorts of insights were the impetus for the development of the burgeoning field of [[sensory anthropology]], which seeks to understand other cultures from within their own unique sensoria. Anthropologists such as Paul Stoller (1989) and [[Michael Jackson (anthropologist)|Michael Jackson]] (1983, 1989) have focused on a critique of the [[hegemony]] of vision and textuality in the social sciences. They argue for an understanding and analysis that is embodied, one sensitive to the unique context of sensation of those one wishes to understand. They believe that a thorough awareness and adoption of other sensoria is a key requirement if ethnography is to approach true understanding.

A related area of study is [[sensory ecology|sensory (or perceptual) ecology]]. This field aims at understanding the unique sensory and interpretive systems all organisms develop, based on the specific ecological environments they live in, experience and adapt to. A key researcher in this field has been psychologist [[J. J. Gibson|James J. Gibson]], who has written numerous seminal volumes considering the senses in terms of holistic, self-contained perceptual systems. These exhibit their own mindful, interpretive behaviour, rather than acting simply as conduits delivering information for [[cognitive]] processing, as in more representational [[philosophy of perception|philosophies of perception]] or theories of [[psychology]] (1966, 1979). Perceptual systems detect [[affordance]]s in objects in the world, directing attention towards information about an object in terms of the possible uses it affords an organism.

The individual sensory systems of the body are only parts of these broader perceptual [[ecology|ecologies]], which include the physical apparatus of sensation, the [[natural environment|environment]] being sensed, as well as both learned and innate systems for directing attention and interpreting the results. These systems represent and enact the [[information]] ([[information#As an influence that leads to transformation|as an influence which leads to a transformation]]) required to perceive, identify or reason about the world, and are distributed across the very design and structures of the body, in relation to the physical environment, as well as in the concepts and interpretations of the mind. This information varies according to species, physical environment, and the context of information in the social and cultural systems of perception, which also change over time and space, and as an individual learns through living. Any single perceptual modality may include or overlap multiple sensory structures, as well as other modes of perception, and the sum of their relations and the ratio of mixture and importance comprise a sensorium. The perception, understanding, and reasoning of an organism is dependent on the particular experience of the world delivered by changing ratios of sense.