Malodour can also be a form of violence and use of force
How does it feel when your neighbourhood and your own body stink for days, even weeks? What is everyday life like when your sense of smell has been harnessed as a weapon and a tool for control? This is what geographer Mikko Joronen, Senior Research Fellow, studies in his current research project at Tampere University.
Having worked at Tampere University since 2014, Senior Research Fellow Mikko Joronen is probably already a familiar face to many in its academia. His research has been focusing on the occupied Palestinian territories, first of all on the impacts of the occupation on the everyday life of the local population. The uncertainties of life under the occupation, continuous waiting and various prevalent threats constitute slow, creeping and mundane violence.
– My goal has been to understand how structural violence with its colonialist, discriminative and spatial forms has become sedimented as a part of the Palestinians’ everyday life under occupation. Often these forms of violence become visible only by approaching their formation as part of everyday vulnerabilities.
Breathing and the militarization of odour
Joronen started his Fellowship at the Tampere Institute for Advanced Study of Tampere University in September 2022.
– My research focuses on various kinds of atmospheric control techniques as well as the materialistic and affectualist politics of colonizing the home, says Joronen.
– My main focus still lies on the Middle East but, first of all, my aim is to create conceptually and thematically fresh openings which also speak beyond the special features of a certain regional context without brushing them aside, however.
Some of Joronen’s research themes deal with quite concrete issues, such as atmospheric violence and its significance in everyday life. Among his other themes, Joronen concentrates on breathing and the weaponization and militarization of malodour. A concrete example of this is the “skunk water” developed by Israel: this extremely foul-smelling liquid originally designed to break up protests and demonstrations has been used more and more as a way to control and punish the Palestinian population. Skunk water stench can stay on the skin, clothes, and various surfaces for days, weeks, and even for months. It has been sprayed to gardens, courtyards and shops, but also to insides of homes. Still, skunk water is regarded as a more human option than rubber bullets and tear gas in breaking up riots and controlling large crowds; however, its social, economic, and bodily impacts among the local population are significant.
– At the moment I study, among other issues, the use of “skunk water” not only in breaking up protests in the occupied territories but as a form of collective punishment. Because of the fact that skunk water odour sticks, it has long-term local and temporal impacts that intertwine in various ways with both micro-climates (with prevailing weather conditions) and political aims.
Joronen is interested in atmospheres as both affectual spaces, or as spaces of attunement and emotions, and materialist spaces of sensing and mixing. His aim is thus to better understand the everyday nature of the materialist and affectual politics of violence.
Keywords: slow violence, Middle East, occupied Palestinian territories, Tampere University, Tampere Institute for Advanced Study