„Ma hideg van.” A hideg és a vaszjugáni hantik

In my study, I deal with the anthropological aspects of perception in connection with a recent study by Katalin Sipőcz. Many people consider anthropology to be a science centred on vision and narration, which does not pay enough attention to the experiences of other senses. Sensual anthropology, which wants to reckon with this one-sidedness, draws attention to the fact that in addition to the Western basic attitude that results in the ocular-centricity of anthropology, there are also other sensory/perception systems, the understanding of which can lead to a better understanding of the given societies.

In connection with this problem, I review the experiences related to the perception of cold during my fieldwork among the Khantys in Western Siberia. The Khantys of Vasyugan express the temperature on the basis of different scales, expressing themselves with a specially understood Russian vocabulary. In addition to observing the thermometer and skin perception, cold and heat are also inferred with other sensory experiences, our perception is inherently synesthetic, which only we break down into separate senses and sensations. Different series of associations are connected to the cold, which may be radically different from our associations. Cold is a complex symbolic code for the Khantys of Vasyugan, which simultaneously means purity, freedom and activity, as well as peripherality.

The inclusion of a wide range of perception in the research has serious consequences for the practice of anthropology and fieldwork as well. In order to understand the perception of other cultures, we must experience their sensory perception ourselves, or at least experience what they feel. In order to understand this, I interpret an entry in my field diary from 2001, with the help of which I came closer to understanding the cold, and thus the Khantys. But it must be clear that my personal experience influencing understanding is different from the experience of the Khantys, we can only really understand their perception if we get to know their stories as well. Anthropology therefore, despite its efforts to include as wide a range of perceptions as possible in its research, is still locked in the world of narration: it can only really understand the experiences of local people with the help of their texts about them, and it is best to convey its own - and other people’s - experiences only in text.