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the Government Health Authority, including those that deal with smoking and pregnancy,
smoking and lung cancer, passive smoking, and so on. These labels take up a large area
of a cigarette package (roughly one-third of the front side and roughly one-half of the
back), and so they draw the attention of purchasers very effectively. A common response
to this among the smokers I interviewed in the course of preparing this paper involved the
selective purchasing of cigarette packages that displayed the least frightening
Government Health Authority Warning labels. Purchasers I spoke to said that they often
exchanged the cigarette packages they had been given by store clerks for less frightening
ones before paying for their cigarettes. Men and women who were not pregnant
overwhelmingly favored those packages that indicated that cigarettes could harm unborn
babies, and tended to try to avoid those that mentioned lung cancer. This might be
regarded as the refusal to reflexively attend to the body presented by the anti-smoking
lobby; a decline of the invitation issued by them to attend to a present body.
16 Michel Serres, Les Cinq Sens Paris, Hachette, 1998.
17 Jeffrey Compton, Embracing the Body o f Culture: Understanding Cross—Cultural
Psychology From the Perspective o f a Phenomenology o f Embodiment
(http://home.earthlink.net/~rationalmystic.cultsoma.htm) 2001, p. 4.
18 Langer, op. cit.
19 Robert Levy, ‘The Emotions in Comparative Perspective’ In Klaus R. Scherer and Paul
Eckman (eds.) Approaches to Emotion Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence and Erlbaum and
Associates, 1984. pp. 397-412.
20 Compton, op. cit., p. 4.
21 Michel Serres, Les Cinq Sens Paris, Hachette, 1998.
22 Katz, op. cit., p. 379 n. 39.
23 Katz, op. cit., p. 340.
24 Peter Stuyvesant Lights Package Advertising.
25 Serres, op. cit., p. 405.
26 Ibid., p. 334.
27 Steven Connor, Michel Serres' Five Senses Expanded version of a paper given at the
Michel
Serres
Conference
held
at
Birbeck
College,
May
1999,
(http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/eng/skc/5senses.htm), 1999, p. 6.
28 Serres, op. cit.
29 Ibid., p. 413.
30 Ibid., p. 413.
31 Fiona Borthwick, ‘Olfaction and Taste: Invasive Odours and Disappearing Objects’
The Australian Journal o f Anthropology, August 2000 vol. 11 i. 2, p. 133.
32 Ibid.
33 Just as relevant is a visual metaphorics that does indeed allow us to partake of smoke at
a distance without having worked upon it with taste sense. Buying Winfield Blues (or
‘Winnie Blues’, as they were affectionately known among those of us without much
disposable income) in my hometown was a different thing from buying Dunhill or
Benson and Hedges. Flavor Country might well be a place I cannot afford to go.
34 Katz, op. cit., p. 379 n. 39.
35 A specifically Australian term for a cigarette break.
36 Borthwick, op. cit., p 132.
37 A regular nighttime disco held for people under 18 years of age by Australian Police
Departments.
38 Personal Field Notes vol. 2 April 2004 p. 5.
39 Ibid, p 31.