Political effluvia: Smells, revelations, and the politicization of daily experience in Naples, Italy

No matter how much one tries to seal windows and doors, or to close one’s eyes and ears, some things always find their way even into the most occluded lives. Naples, Italy, is the kind of city which does not leave you alone; sounds, perfumes, colors, and tastes stitch together the urban fabric as much as its architecture. Although always present in the city, garbage has become a cumbersome problem, especially since the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the streets flooded by garbage and people protesting, it is an issue that is hard to ignore. The stench of waste and the cries of people have even reached the academic world, literally entering through our office windows and awakening our senses. Solicited by this call from the world outside the university’s walls, we have attempted to make ‘sensing’ a fundamental tool in our research. In this contribution, we present research methods that account for the relevance of senses for the politicization of people involved in the socio-environmental conflicts over waste mismanagement and illegal dumping in Naples and its surroundings. In the following pages, we first discuss the challenges of integrating sensorial experiences, and smells in particular, in both academic research and activists’ practices-and sometimes at the crossroad of the two.