Abstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the socio-historical construction of the taste for perfume in Brazil - especially in the Northeast Region (state of Bahia) - drawing upon the relations of interdependence and interpenetration of peoples in the country. Under the lights of Norbert Elias’ and Roger Bastide’s contributions, the creed in the magical features of scents is taken as a jointing element for heterogeneous religiosities, customs and peoples. Specificities of figurations in each region are evinced and also some of their conditioning factors, as well as their transformation processes along the time, and the role magical healing could have had in framing the taste for perfuming oneself. Thus, figurational sociology emerges in its potentiality to allow for the fact of complex realities of interpenetration.
Keywords:
Perfume; scent; cure; figurational sociology; interpenetrations’ sociology