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- Convenors:
-
Antonio Marazzi
(University of Padova, Italy)
Francesco Spagna (Università di Padova)
- Stream:
- Moving bodies: Sounds and Resonance/Corps mouvants: Sons et résonnance
- Location:
- MRT 015
- Start time:
- 2 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Hearing in the perception of soundscapes, production and uses of sounds and noises in various cultures and environments; acoustic functions for body movements, equilibrium and language abilities.
Long Abstract:
We are proposing a new subdiscipline in anthropology, along the recent focus on the senses, dealing with hearing and its importance in various environmental and cultural situations. While perception and production of images have given rise to visual anthropology, aural perception has given rise to separate fields, such as the transference from orality to written scholarly texts, or the registration and interpretation of soundscapes, both natural and man-made; and above all, ethnomusicology. Bur ears are what makes humans able to speak, and cultural meanings of noises are often neglected in fieldwork. Ears control our movements, providing the necessary equilibrium for walking and dancing, under various forms of cultural control. The dividing line between noises and harmonious sounds is also culturally defined, while all kinds of natural sounds are variously classified and interpreted. The contributions of ethnomusicologists and anthropologists in the field are rich (Feld, Seeger, Carpitella), but what seems to be needed is an encompassing framework bringing together such a variety under the common role of our sound perception. Ferdinand De Saussure, the founder of struturalist linguistics, due to have a strong influence in anthropology, started his analysis on what he called 'image acoustique' (acoustic image), later defined as the 'signifiant'. What the proposed Aural Anthropology is trying to achieve is an expansion of this approach to all possible perceptions and expressions of sounds and their cultural interpretations.
In the proposed panel we encourage presentations bringing together sounds and written comments, along with written papers.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Venice has a unique sonic environment. The symbolic unity of the city is represented by the sound of its huge bell, the 'marangona'. And the whole city has no street noises of cars and buses, but sonic signals for high tide or fog.
Paper long abstract:
All over the city of Venice, the sound of the huge bell, the'marangona', is heard from San Marco square at noon and midnight: she is called 'the owner of the city', stressing symbolic unity.
Historically, the five bells of San Marco gave the rhythms to all social activities, from work hours to public meetings, political events and religious ceremonies, till death executions.
A unique soundscape still characterizes the modern city: no street noises from cars or buses, no horns; but an OE! shouted by the boatmen at the narrow canals' crossings; the warnings announcing a high tide by a modulated alarm reaching every corner of the city; the low-tone sirens from the boats, when the fog covers the lagoon. And the silence in the narrow streets, interrupted by the steps of a passer-by. And the lively cosmopolitan athmosphere at the piers, where the most diverse languages mix while the tourists squeezed in a small space are waiting for the water-bus.
Listen to the sounds and silences of Venice and you will feel the soul of the city, beneath its visual splendour.
(with sound reproductions from the field)
Paper short abstract:
Taking onto account studies on soundscape, acoustic design, and acoustemology, and by means of some ethnographic case studies, this paper proposes some "points of listening": perspectives on hearing (the Second Sense) as a tool to access the world and to understand it.
Paper long abstract:
The Second Sense is hearing, because the first one is sight.
In the hierarchy of senses the primacy of the eye marks the contemporary imagination, and it is common sense to refer to eye-centric culture, visualism, iconism. Cultural anthropology makes no exception: its scientific methodology of "field research" is based on the "participant observation". This paper investigates the role of hearing and listening in the work of the anthropologist: ethnography as an acquisition practice, and, most of all, as a representation of culture.
Taking onto account studies on soundscape, acoustic design, and acoustemology, and by means of some ethnographic case studies, this paper proposes some "points of listening": perspectives on hearing (the Second Sense) as a tool to access the world and to understand it.
Paper short abstract:
Sensorial landscapes of mining life are linked to the subjective voices of which they express history and memory. Starting from an ethnographic research in Italy, I shall discuss the relationship with performative aspects of oral memory and the aural and visual ones of modern-day mining work.
Paper long abstract:
Mining work for the anthropologist seems to be typified by specific spatial, material, corporeal and sensorial relations. The ongoing debate emphasizes the prominence of a direct approach to this range of facts, in addition to the need to understand their links with the related meanings shared by the miners as the community of practice. Nevertheless , the historical decline of mining activity inexorably restricts mining landscapes and cultures to the heritage of the past. In some European districts, such as South-East Sardinia (Italy), an unusual situation has been established in which a rich heritage of the memory of an abandoned mining world coexists with some advanced, government subsidised mining plants that are still active. In this context, a particular form-of-life seems to appear that links the miners, witnesses of a recent mining past, with the local communities that are still entangled in mining activity. The underground presence of a rich aural sensitivity, recorded by the research project's filmmaking, is particularly related to the way in which the miners "speak" and "feel" what they are saying, that is their words, which is what this paper will try to explore.
Paper short abstract:
The contrast between different tones of the speech along with the emotional flow in the voice of the narrator, can lead to the point: to find the thread that connect interviews and knit the anthropological discourse. Listening – as well as observation – foster the soundness of ethnographic research.
Paper long abstract:
What makes anthropologically relevant the emotional tone in the voice of the narrator - beyond the quality of sound - is mainly its difficult, if not impossible, transcription. A challenge arises to the ethnographer transcribing from a recording: the one who has been alongside the narrator is aware that a particular tone in the voice "gets the point", brings into contact with an important meaning core of the research.
A brief excerpt from an interview taken with the wife of an elderly miner in a village of the Dolomites, North East Italy, will be presented for listening: as the interview is coming to the end, the voice of the narrator breaks, to sign the impossibility to talk over the flow of emotions that reminescence has brought up. While - during reminescence - the voice was round, dense of affection, nostalgic. The contrast between these different tones of the speech leads to the point (a denied memory and ambivalence): to find the thread that connect this interview with others and knit the anthropological discourse.
Listening - as well as observation - foster the soundness of ethnographic research.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I will discuss the relationship between audibility, hearing and justice, and the multiple layers of 'hearing' in a courtroom. Drawing on my fieldwork in a courtroom in Mumbai, I will show how hierarchical spatialisation affects audibility, hearing and justice.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will discuss the relationship between audibility, hearing and justice. I explore the multiple layers of 'hearing' in a courtroom beyond the sensorial act of audibility. In this paper I will explore how hierarchical spatialisation affects audibility, hearing and justice, and how it disables audibility itself as litigants struggle to 'hear' the proceedings. The delay in receiving relief and not being 'heard' was a recurring subject in my interviews with women litigants. Drawing on my fieldwork in a courtroom in Northern Mumbai, India on the domestic violence law, I will discuss how spatial hierarchy amplifies only certain voices, and only those privileged spatially hear what is being said. The court determines who is heard and who hears, who partakes and who doesn't. The spatialisation disempowers litigants and undermines their status in courts, but also reinforces the superior status of other participants. This denial of 'hearing' and 'witnessing' is also connected to language and the quality of legal assistance most women court users can afford. It often determines who is heard, what makes it into court records and which case is worthy of court time. The language of the law and the constant switching between multiple languages in courts affects 'hearing' as litigants fail to grasp and comprehend the proceedings. In this paper, I will explore the intimate relationship between justice and hearing.S