Paper short abstract:

The paper focus on the anthropological issue of auditory (un)awareness of human inhabitants of the Ostrow Tumski district in Poznan, Poland, in the perspective of urban studies, sound studies and more-than-human anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

In the presentation, I focus on the issue of auditory (un)awareness, which was one of the categories I addressed during field research conducted in 2021-2023 in the Ostrow Tumski district in Poznan, Poland. Ostrow Tumski is located on the last island on the Warta River, where the habitats of human inhabitants and habitats of non-human beings intertwine, but it is also an area where urban policy is expressed. Ostrow Tumski district in Poznan is an area of many interdependencies that can be considered trans-relational (Majbroda, 2021). The subject of the research conducted in close cooperation with the inhabitants of the Ostrow Tumski district in Poznan was sound, also considered as an analytical category (Stanisz, 2014). The experiences of multi-species and auditory life on Ostrow Tumski are most often unconscious for its inhabitants, transparent, difficult to access, and at the same time rooted in everyday urban life. Its space is filled with various communities (of human and non-human beings), and the audiosphere is filled with sounds of various origins.

In the context of urban research, the issue of memory (Pallasmaa, 1994) and its role in building urban matter (Tonkiss, 2015) is very important, which in the case of the mentioned research revealed the issue of auditory (un)awareness of the trans-relational dimension of being in the world of the human inhabitants of the district.

The main postulate of the presentation is therefore to practice urban anthropology in a way that is posthumanistic, multi-sensory and takes a more-than-human approach for granted.