Odore di Napoli: Normativity from Objects and Smells

Observing the differences between insiders' and outsiders' perceptions of the smells of Naples, we draw parallels with different views of law. Insiders relate to the smells of the city as a complex olfactory web that defines places and regulates time. Outsiders generally privilege the sense of sight over smell. The groups relate differently to the urban fabric of the city, including the tangible walls and streets, and the intangible smells and the ephemeral meals. Such differences are here mediated by material objects, from cameras or phones to garbage and cruise ships, from Mount Vesuvius to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Legal outsiders observe regularities in behaviour which indicate the presence of laws. On the other hand, law is also seen as a set of rules to which one must. Rules and regularities seem inadequate to understand the complex ways Neapolitans negotiate their olfactory and legal environment. Informal legal normativity is inscribed in the walls and the geography, and mediated by the food and the smells of their city, that make up their own smellscapes, juxtaposing the scents and the stinks, profumo and puzza, and their ways of regulating behaviour, in time and space.