ANU Sociology Seminar Series, "Human Instruments: Sensory Science and the Exclusions of Perceptibility" by Dr Ella Butler (ANU)

[Thao Phan]

Please join us for the next seminar in the ANU Sociology Seminar Series, "Human Instruments: Sensory Science and the Exclusions of Perceptibility" by Dr Ella Butler (ANU) 

• Date: Monday 25 May, 2026 
• Time: 12 – 1pm (AEST)
• Location: RSSS Room 4.69, and Zoom (register to receive Zoom link) 
• Registration link: https://events.humanitix.com/anu-school-of-sociology-seminar-series-dr-ella-butler-anu 

Human Instruments: Sensory Science and the Exclusions of Perceptibility 

In this paper, I analyse how perceptibility is organised as a social process in a scientific experimental setting. Specifically, I detail how an American sensory science lab conducts a form of test called ‘descriptive analysis,’ which aims to transduce the sensory experience of a comestible into a set of terms characterising elements of taste, flavour and texture. I focus ethnographically on the process by which the meaning of terms is agreed upon – how some words are taken up by the tasting panel while others are discarded. Language becomes part of the architecture of the lab through which perceiving subjects are made into and imagined to be forms of scientific instrumentation. I show how exclusion, rejection and deferral become primary means by which consensus on sensory properties is ultimately achieved, a result of the tricky semiotic ideology of science whereby the relationship between language and underlying reality is at once both disavowed and instrumentalised. 

About the speaker: 

Ella Butler is a research fellow in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. Her work draws on science and technology studies (STS) and sensory anthropology to investigate the intersections between theories of embodiment, science, and the cultural politics of commodities, with a particular focus on food and pharmaceuticals.