Abstract

This article focuses on commensality in contemporary Japan, seen as a moment of the production of socialized and localized sensorial spheres. Through Adam Chau's reflections on the concept of «sociothermic affect» and David Sutton's theory of multi-sensory memory, I suggest how ethnographic research on meals and everyday sociality may significantly contribute to the enrichment of social sciences, stressing the centrality of the synaesthetic and inter-subjective dimension of habitual practices in order to project the individual sensorium in social space. Shedding new light on the relation between sensoriality and agency can also help us understand better the position of the ethnographer with respect to his or her interlocutors.