This pragmatic study addresses the question of the plural realities that emerge from perception, based on an empirical analysis of the tasting activity of wine amateurs and olfactory experts. Though they share the same requirement of rooting taste in the product under scrutiny, they also significantly differ regarding the constraints with which their tasting results have to comply: repeatability for experts’ tasting results, and activity contiunuation for amateurs. Both therefore foster the emergence of two contrasting realities: a stabilized one for (...) experts; an ‘un-stabilized’ one for amateurs. Both happen to fit with the ‘fiction’ and the ‘reference’ modes of existence of Latour’s inventory, which extends and relaunches the analysis of the coexistence of activities initiated by the works on ‘boundary objects’ some decades ago. Finally, the notion of taste is reinterpreted as a translation operator between tasting realities. (shrink)

This is an article about bodily pleasures, words and some of the relations between them. It is a turn in a conversation between the author and Marilyn Strathern. It talks theory, but not in general. Instead, this theory gets situated in traditions; specified; in relation to concerns; and exemplified with stories to do with the term lekker. This article is in English, but lekker is not an English term. It is Dutch. The stories come from long-term field work in various (...) sites and situations close to home for the author, who is also Dutch. They were driven by a concern with fostering bodily pleasures in contexts such as nursing homes and dieting practices where nutrients and calories are granted more importance. The difficulties of translating lekker are used as a set of intellectual resources. In contrast to Strathern, the author insists on the fleshy particularities of the practices where lekker is spoken. Along with Strathern, the author seeks to escape nature/culture divides. Inspired by Strathern, the author follows lekker around merographically – that is, along iterative trails and between sites and situations that are connected, but only partially so. In homage to Strathern, finally, the author plays with the question of who the collective subject of anthropological theory – we – might be, and who belongs to the others that form its object – they. (shrink)