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moves and touches the ground' (2005: 40). Accordingly, the gaze should be conceived as
entangled with numerous other senses, and as certainly 'more diverse and complex than the
simple “hypnotic spectacle” model' (Degen
et al.
, 2008: 1910) suggested by the likes of
Boorstin (1964). Furthermore, the distinct qualities of the space moved through and dwelt
within, and the particular practices undertaken by tourists must be taken into account in
developing an understanding of looking as a process that animates and is animated by the
multiple qualities of a specifi c place through sensory and embodied engagements.
In considering the neglect of other than visual senses in tourism studies, we acknowledge
the diffi culty of articulating the sensations of smell, touch and sound through language
(Paterson, 2009). Yet the common mantra of beach tourism, 'sun, sea, sand and sex', imme-
diately conjures up a series of non-visual sensualities. Pau Obrador Pons, writing of naturist
beach tourism, draws attentions to numerous non-visual sensations: 'the feeling of the sun
caressing the skin, the sensual movement of the naked body into the seawater and the
unpleasant infi ltration of sand into body orifi ces' (2007: 134). And in considering the praxis
and ethos of nudism, Obrador-Pons explains that
Nudism is . . . a way of accessing the world through the body and a sensual disposi-
tion . . . concerned with the cultivation of sensibilities, in particular the capacity of
the body-subject to create non-denotative meaning through its senses, movements
and tasks, as well as its ability to dwell in particular spaces and things.
(2007: 128)
This account of broader touristic sensory experience has been echoed by other recent
accounts. Gordon Waitt and Michelle Duffy account for how space is simultaneously 'shaped
by how people respond to the embodied, emotional and fl eshy experience of music' (2010:
460) as sound is folded in and through the permeable bodies of tourists at music festivals,
activating subjective expressions. And Arun Saldanha (2002) shows how Goan beach raves
combine sensations of music, smells of sweat, kerosene and cannabis, the sight of the moon
and swaying coconut trees, the tactilities of moving bodies, sand underfoot and humidity,
which combine - together with the varied effects of sensory-enhancing drugs - to produce
an intensely sensual experience.
These examples undergird the ways in which the senses combine in the experience of
place. In her aforementioned discussion of hill-walking and climbing, Lund (2005) highlights
how touch and tactility imbricate with other bodily sensations, including muscular exertion
and tension, mobility, balance and the effects of temperature and soreness. In other embodied
pursuits such as sunbathing, swimming, cycling and driving, we can similarly apprehend 'the
multiplicity and the interaction between different internally felt and outwardly orientated
senses' cited by Mark Paterson (2009: 768) that include an awareness of surroundings shaped
by kinaesthesia (the sense of movement), proprioception (felt muscular position and stance)
and the vestibular system (sense of balance). These multi-sensual apprehensions are not of a
dazzling distant world available for scrutiny by a spectator but of one that surrounds us.
As David Crouch maintains, 'stopping and gazing at a “view” is only a fragment of the way
the material world is engaged in practice' (2000: 68). Nevertheless, the immediacy and the
immersive qualities of the multi-sensual apprehension of space should not blind us to the ways
in which senses are learned in particular spatial and cultural contexts and grounded in itera-
tive practices that make them habitual. Lucy Lippard notes that 'If one has been raised in a
place, its textures and sensations, its smells and sounds, are recalled as they felt to child's,
adolescent's, adult's body' (1997: 34). Consequently, the most common sensual spatial
