108
percentages. He has managed to achieve
the right balance between discussing the
concepts that underlie the statistics and
the detail that is needed to understand
how the statistic measures what it is
meant to. He discusses the statistics and
walks the reader through their calcu-
lation in a step-by-step manner without
the book simply becoming a cookbook
and without being patronising. He
makes use of simple examples and often
uses hypothetical data to keep things
clear and simple.
Because Burdess carefully explains
each statistic and technique he has had
to be somewhat selective in the statistics
he has covered. Certainly the reader will
come across reasonably straightforward
statistics and presentation techniques
elsewhere that are not covered in this
book. The book is an introduction to
basic statistical techniques and once
students have gained some confidence
and understanding from a book such as
this they will feel better equipped to
tackle other techniques.
What would make the second edition
of this book better? The book is very
basic and therefore very useful to begin-
ning students but it stops too early. It
would benefit by going a little beyond
bivariate analysis and at least covering
the logic and some techniques for con-
trolling for third variables. The intro-
duction discusses the need to test for
spuriousness but the tools with which
the student might do this are not pro-
vided. In the spirit of keeping the stat-
istics clear and simple a second edition
should also cover some of the techniques
of Exploratory Data Analysis. Through-
out the book Burdess distinguishes
between qualitative and quantitative
variables: I would have liked more dis-
cussion of ordinal variables and the stat-
istical techniques for handling these data
which, after all, are common enough in
sociological data analysis. What else? A
discussion of data reduction techniques
such as collapsing categories of vari-
ables, producing scales and indices
would be appropriate. Finally, the book
could give a little more emphasis to help-
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ing students learn which statistical tech-
niques to select when and why.
Who will buy this book? The Really
Understandable Stats Book is a basic
level introductory text book that is ap-
propriate for social science students in
the early years of tertiary education. It is
not restricted to sociology and the ex-
amples appear to be deliberately de-
signed to ensure that it be of use to
students from a wide range of non-
science disciplines. It is written for an
Australian audience. Most instructors
should be able to cover the material in
about eight weeks although I can ima-
gine that with some supplementary ma-
terial the book could be used as the core
text for a semester-length subject.
David de Vaus
Australian Institute of Family Studies
AROMA. THE CULTURAL
HISTORY OF SMELL
Constance Classen, David Howes and
Anthony Synnott
London and New York, Routledge, 1994, vru,
248 pp., £37.50 (hardback), £12.99 (paperback)
The publication of Aroma. The Cultural
History of Smell marks a new maturity in
inter-disciplinary research of the cultural
studies variety. It is also an entertaining
read and a treasure trove of cultural ex-
otica ! Anyone who enjoyed Patrick
Suskinds book, Perfume: the story of a
murderer, (1986, translated from the Ger-
man by John E. Woods, London: Penguin)
a novelistic account of a scent pervert,
will find Aroma essential reading. This is
a book that draws on extensive research
from history, anthropology and sociology;
the skilful weaving together of this re-
search provides a keen analysis and a
fascinating cultural history of this forgot-
ten sense-thus breaking the olfactory
silence of modernity (p. i).
The nub of this history is that histor-
ically and cross-culturally smell has held
an important place in cultural history:
smells denoted personal attraction, class,

rites of passage, aesthetics, and political
regimes. There was constant and con-
scious recognition of smells, odours, per-
fumes and essences in the conduct of
everyday life. Of course, there were idio-
syncratic variations as to which smells
counted and in what circumstances
across different ages and cultures, but
the explicit importance of aromas as
cultural markers and social tools was
common.
As with so many cultural phenomena
that we tend to regard as the naturalised
state of affairs, the role of smell was re-
cast in the late 1800s, dismissed by sci-
ence, philosophy and psychology (p. 89).
Smell was discredited and marginalised
as the quaint province of less civilised
beings, and overtly associated with sav-
agery (p. 92). Anthropologists denig-
rated non-Europeans because of their
reliance on the lower sense of smell,
[while] modern anthropologists sought
to render them as civilised as Euro-
peans, by deodorising their cultures
(p. 92).
The result was that smell was overtly
ignored and thus developed a secret his-
tory, a phantom life. Much of this book
explores parallels between the explicit
roles of smell in other cultures and its
implicit roles in modern cultures. The
authors trace the role of smell from an-
tiquity, through the Middle Ages and on
to Modernity. The theme is that smell
was an essential part of personal con-
duct, aesthetic culture, domestic life,
celebration and public display. The de-
scription of a wealthy ancient Greek
who steeped his feet and legs in Egyptian
unguents, rubbed his jaws and breasts
with palm oil, arms with mint, eyebrows
and hair with marjoram, and knees and
neck with essence of thyme (p. 17) epi-
tomises the meticulous attention to smell
as part of cultural life.
The spread of Christianity was the
turning point in the fortunes of smell;
while certain smells were associated with
sanctity, others were regarded increas-
inglywith suspicion. Coupled with the
urbanisation and industrialisation of
Europe, the sweet smelling cultures of
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109
other times and places were contrasted
with a way of life that was rather on the
nose. This quote from The Arabian
Nights describing Europeans from a non-
Western perspective, conveys the emer-
ging olfactory conventions: ,
They eat evil-smelling, putrescent
things, such as rotten cheese and
game which they hang up; they never
wash, for, at their birth, ugly men in
black garments pour water over their
heads, and this ablution, accompan-
ied by strange gestures, frees them
from all obligation of washing for the
rest of their lives. That they might not
be tempted by water, they destroyed
the [public baths] and public foun-
tains, building in their places shops
where harlots sell a yellow liquid with
foam on top, which they call drink,
but which is either fermented urine or
something worse (cited pp. 69-70).
The book draws on anthropological
material to show also the role of smell in
concepts of time, space, food, language,
cosmologies and rites. Among the Ongee,
for example, people greet one another
with the question, How is your nose?:
If the person feels heavy with odour,
the inquirer politely sniffs some of it
away. If, on the other hand, the person
feels she or he is low on odour-energy, the
enquirer will provide an infusion of extra
scent by blowing on her or him (p. 114).
In Arab cultures, it is reported that after
a meal, the host offers perfumes to the
same sex guests to anoint her/himself,
whose body is then infused with a censer.
The guests leave enveloped in the per-
fumes of the host, thus enhancing and
expanding the latters social prestige (p.
129).
In the latter part of the book, the
authors explore the hidden life of smell
in Western cultures, in particular concen-
trating its commodification as, for
on
example, in products to deal with body
odour. They subsequently extend their
argument suggest that smell is the
to
postmodern sense: In our postmodern
world smell is often a notable (or, in-
creasingly, scarcely noticed) absence.
110
Odours are suppressed in public places,
there are no smells on television, the
world of computers is odour-free, and so
on. This olfactory &dquo;silence&dquo; notwith-
standing, smell would seem to share
many of the traits commonly attributed
to postmodernity (p. 203). By this they
mean that contemporary smells are a
pastiche of styles and genres, imitations
and simulations, images over sub-
stance, and the endless production of
goods of desire (p. 203). In effect, smell
is in the process of re-discovery, aided by
developments in chemical artifice (in-
cluding commercial perfumes that mimic
natural scents, aroma-imbued food, and
scented sprays for rooms, cars, etc.).
In the case of perfumes, the advert-
isers make use of many of the ancient
associations of smell-with magic, with
sexual power, with healing-in order to
promote their products (p. 205). The
difficulty of conveying the nature of a
perfume in a print advertisement (despite
scent strips) or television commercial,
means that perfumes must be promoted
through qualities and attributes they can
bestow on the wearer: as femmes fatales,
hunks, connoisseurs, escapists and so on.
Sexual attractiveness, social behaviour,
class identification and persona (ideals,
dreams and fantasies) are the stuff of
modern perfumes and explicitly rein-
forced by the names chosen for per-
fumes : Brut, Obsession, Poison, White
Linen, Charlie, Joy, Polo, etc. (pp.
186-192).
This industry of creating olfactory
cultural resonances canbe examined as
a index of consumer culture;
superficial
but the authors argue that it also reflects
the deeper role of smell in so-called
postmodern life, as cultural shadow
play-the epitome of the postmodern
condition. Others might view the re-
invention of smell as a return to a ro-
manticised past of unadulterated
humanity. But perhaps the new explicit-
ness of smell-symptomatically re-titled
aroma-might simply be read as the
reworking of the attributes of contem-
porary personae.
Whatever explanation one might
offer, Aroma has made a major con-
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tribution to the topic. The strength of the
book is its detailed cultural history and
conceptual mapping of the universe of
smells. Less convincing is the postmod-
ern turn, but this fashionable discourse
does not detract from the substance of
the book.
Jennifer Craik
Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy
Faculty of Humanities
Griffith University
POLICE AND GOVERNMENT:
HISTORIES OF POLICING IN
AUSTRALIA
Mark Finnane
Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1994,
x, 238 pp. $24.95 (paperback).
Given the interest in police and
current
policing inAustralia in the form of tele-
vision documentaries and dramas, and
the media interest in NSW at least in the
current Wood Royal Commission, this
book provides some timely material on
the history of police and policing in
Australia and, to a lesser extent, New
Zealand. Indeed, the historical material
will be of use in interpreting current
events.
Mark Finnanes primary theme in this
book is well summarised in his conclu-
sion in the following: ... the task of this
book has been to show how policing
may be seen as a historically-formed
practice of government in modern soci-
ety (p. 187). To achieve this task, the
book is divided into three sections, each
of which has an introduction and three
chapters. The book is completed with a
full introduction and a conclusion. The
first section analyses police forces as
state instrumentalities, the second the
police role in social life, and the third
covers the history of discipline and cor-
ruption. The book includes extensive
end notes for each chapter, but, irritat-
ingly, no bibliography, and a useful few
pages of suggestions for further reading.
Chapter one focuses on the historical
development of Australian police forces