III. Ethnographic Soundscapes

1. Anthropology of Sound

“Soundscape opens possibilities for anthropologists to think about the enculturated nature of sound, the techniques available for collecting and thinking about sound, and the material spaces of performance and ceremony that are used or constructed for the purpose of propagating sound.”

(from “Soundscapes: Towards a Sounded Anthropology,” by David W. Samuels, Lousie Meintjes, Ana Maria Ochoa and Thomas Porcello)

• But what of the ethnographic ear?

• In his introduction for The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, (1986) James Clifford argues for “a cultural poetics that is an interplay of voices, of positioned utterances”

• In such a poetic, “the dominant metaphor for ethnography shift away from the observing eye towards expressive speech (and gesture). The writer’s ‘voice’ pervades and situates the analysis, and objective, distancing rhetoric is renounced.”

What is Anthropology (or Ethnography) of Sound?

• Points to the limitations of textual paradigm, and need for ethnographic accounts of sensory perception

• The legacy of colonialism

• Listening practices, the body, and technology

• Contested identities

• Other soundscapes

• The four essential technologies for a colonial expedition (according to R.O. Marsh):

Sound Technology and Colonial Exploration:

• The four essential technologies for a colonial expedition (according to R.O. Marsh):

1. Outboard Motor (for transportation)

Sound Technology and Colonial Exploration:

• The four essential technologies for a colonial expedition (according to R.O. Marsh):

1. Outboard Motor (for transportation)

2. Dynamite (to blast through log jams on the river)

Sound Technology and Colonial Exploration:

• The four essential technologies for a colonial expedition (according to R.O. Marsh):

1. Outboard Motor (for transportation)

2. Dynamite (to blast through log jams on the river)

3. Fireworks (to entertain the Indians)

Sound Technology and Colonial Exploration:

• The four essential technologies for a colonial expedition (according to R.O. Marsh):

1. Outboard Motor (for transportation)

2. Dynamite (to blast through log jams on the river)

3. Fireworks (to entertain the Indians)

4. Victrola (to entertain the Indians, also provided occasion for social and cultural interchange – for non Cuna men to meet Cuna women)

Sound Technology and Colonial Exploration:

• The “magic” of sound reproduction

• Who is more fascinated by this magic, the natives or the white man?

• What is the source of this fascination?

• Ethnographic study focusing on Walkman users – the most mobile and privatized (at the time of the study) of media artifacts.

• Mobile privatization (Raymond Williams)

• Technologies of movement: “we-ness” and “accompanied solitude” (Theodor Adorno)

Sound, Proximity, and Distance in Western Experience :

“Mobile privatization is about the desire for proximity, for a mediated presence that shrinks space into something manageable and habitable. Sound, more than any other sense, appears to performance a largely utopian function in this desire for proximity and connectedness. Mediate sound reproduction enables consumers to create intimate, manageable, and aestheticized spaces in which they are increasingly about to, and desire to, live.” (p. 177)

Three Theoretical Models:

Three Theoretical Models:

1. Odysseus and the Sirens (Adorno and Horkheimer)

Three Theoretical Models:

1. Odysseus and the Sirens (Adorno and Horkheimer)

2. Fitcarraldo (Werner Herzog)

Three Theoretical Models:

1. Odysseus and the Sirens (Adorno and Horkheimer)

2. Fitcarraldo (Werner Herzog)

3. Radio listeners (Siegfried Kracauer)

The Walkman User:

• Amalgam of Odysseus, Fitcarraldo, and Kracauer’s radio listeners – mobile, Walkman becomes the wax in the ears, privatization of space through mediation of sound

• Aesthetic colonization, “brining my own dreamworld” (p. 184)

• Personal space defined as conceptual space

The Walkman User:

• Achieving a subjective sense of public invisibility, “they essentially disappear as interacting subjects.” (p. 185)

• Both utopian and located firmly in alienating and objectifying cultural dispositions that deny difference within culture.

• Both colonized and colonizing

“The need for proximity and for accompanied solitude expressed through the mediated sounds of the culture industry masks and furthers the public isolation in the midst of privatized sound bubbles of a reconfigured representational space.” (p. 189)

Comparative Analysis Between the Sound and Language Worlds of the Kaluli

and the Runa

Visual World of the Kaluli, Papua New Guinea

Visual World of the Runa (?), Ecuador

How are the sound worlds and soundscapes of the Kaluli and the Runa similar and different from ours?

How are their sound worlds and soundscapes similar and different from each other’s?

How are the sound worlds and soundscapes of the Kaluli and the Runa similar and different from ours?

• Acoustemology

• Sound as poetic cartography: Lift-up-over-sounding” (dulugu ganalan) and “flowing” (a:ba:lan)

• Sound worlds as embodied histories, i.e. histories lived musically

Some Relevant Theoretical Terms and Concepts:

• Sound alignment

• Ideophones

• Language cosmology

• Affective recognition: anthropomorphism and anthropopathism

What role does anthropological inquiry have in shaping the discourse of acoustic ecology and soundscape studies?

How might it help us imagine auditory cultur(s) as historical formations of distinct sensibilities, as sonic geographies of difference?

“Deep down the hope is that by giving marginalized voices places to speak and shout and sing from, anthropology can in some measure counter the long-standing arrogance of colonial and imperial authority, of history written in one language, in one voice, as one narrative.” (p. 223)