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References of the abstract :
Sensory analyses on food product present interesting opportunities to challenge both activities of testing and tasting. This very particular professional activity has to show us numerous lighting perspectives on daily socio-technical practices: about industry, sciences and economy. In all these dimensions, activities around tests as about taste are simultaneously moments of enactment and demonstration of mastering powerful skills (Liberman 2012).
“Test” is an ambiguous and equivocal word. The goal of those examinations could be multiple: to outline consumers’ feelings and choices, to check the quality of production, to search new applications, or to improve an array of raw materials. In other occasions, a “test” is also used to search good descriptions, to elaborate an efficient classification for a specific domain of activity, or even to document an unknown object. Alongside to tests, « taste » present parallel and entangled meanings, which are re-defined through sensory lab activities. Following Whright (2013) or Muniesa and Trébuchet-Breitwiller (2010), I would outline some specificities but also multiplicity of sensory testing, with supporting ethnographic fieldworks.
Finally, I will explain why I would prefer use the terms « sciences of sensory experience » rather «science of subjectivity ». I will show that if some specific procedures exist to drive things « objective » (Daston and Galison 2007), subjectivity and objectivity express themselves unbearably in practical situations.This umpteenth dualism should be harder a brake than an assist to think the reconfigurations appearing during sensory panels. The materiality of the testing/tasting activities contributes to go beyond these concepts.
