But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses

Erlmann, Veit

doi:10.4324/9781003103189-1

Cited by 44 publications

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“…The different backgrounds of the authors of this article (sociology, geography, architecture) demonstrate the interdisciplinarity enabled by the sonic turn. The number of scholars engaging in sonic ethnography has grown as a critique of the idea that culture is the result of acts of inscription, and consequently that the key task of the ethnographer is to decipher the meanings that result from these inscriptions (Erlmann, 2004). Related is the growing interest in urban ethnography as a distinctive method that brings into focus the everyday lives of city dwellers in relation to processes of urban change (Duijzings, 2018; Jones, 2021; Ocejo, 2012; Smithsimon, 2010).…”

Section: The Promise Of Sound In Urban Ethnographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing sonic urban ethnography: Voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London

Aceska,

Doughty,

Tiryaki

et al. 2024

Urban Studies

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Matters of sound and listening are increasingly being attended to across the social sciences and humanities, reflecting what has been termed a ‘sonic turn’ since the early 2000s. In urban ethnographic research, scholars are starting to pay attention to the role of sound in social relations, in expressions of identity and senses of belonging, as well as in processes of othering. In this paper, we explore the theoretical and methodological opportunities of sonic urban ethnography, that is, an urban ethnography that foregrounds sound and listening in theoretical and methodological ways. We argue that the promise of sonic urban ethnography lies in its ability to interrupt the predominant focus on text and the visual by developing expanded practices of listening for alternative ways of knowing and engaging with the urban. We share four empirical vignettes from Shanghai, Berlin and London that illustrate, in their different ways, the power exercised through sound in the urban environment. Our discussion of the empirical cases highlights three key ‘lessons’ for doing sonic urban ethnography.

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Section: The Promise Of Sound In Urban Ethnographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing sonic urban ethnography: Voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London

Aceska,

Doughty,

Tiryaki

et al. 2024

Urban Studies

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“…How exactly did I try to 'listen long enough'? Over the past several years, numerous researchers have been concerned with the role of their ears in conducting ethnographic research (Erlmann, 2004;Wood et al, 2006;Chien, 2009;Forsey, 2010;Samuels et al, 2010;Supper, 2012;Semmerling, 2020). 30 In her article 'Cultivating the Ethnographer's Ear', anthropologist Mei-ling Chien describes how she, during her fieldwork on courtship in a Chinese village, often had to ask herself what to listen for and how to hear it (2009: 88-89).…”

Section: Listening Closely: Methods and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Listen closely

Spronck¹

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Sound-Politics in São Paulo

Cardoso

2019

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This book is an ethnographic study of controversial sounds and noise control debates in Latin America’s most populous city. It discusses the politics of collective living by following several threads linking sound-making practices to governance issues. Rather than discussing sound within a self-enclosed “cultural” field, I examine it as a point of entry for analyzing the state. At the same time, rather than portraying the state as a self-enclosed “apparatus” with seemingly inexhaustible homogeneous power, I describe it as a collection of unstable (and often contradictory) sectors, personnel, strategies, discourses, documents, and agencies. My goal is to approach sound as an analytical category that allows us to access citizenship issues. As I show, environmental noise in São Paulo has been entangled in a wide range of debates, including public health, religious intolerance, crime control, urban planning, cultural rights, and economic growth. The book’s guiding question can be summarized as follows: how do sounds enter and leave the sphere of state control? I answer this question by examining a multifaceted process I define as “sound-politics.” The term refers to sounds as objects that are susceptible to state intervention through specific regulatory, disciplinary, and punishment mechanisms. Both “sound” and “politics” in “sound-politics” are nouns, with the hyphen serving as a bridge that expresses the instability that each concept inserts into the other.

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But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses

Cited by 44 publications

References 0 publications

Doing sonic urban ethnography: Voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London

Doing sonic urban ethnography: Voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London

Listen closely

Sound-Politics in São Paulo

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