The Auditory Culture Reader

by Bull, Michael; Back, Les

• ISBN13: 9781859736180
• ISBN10: 1859736181
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-05
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Sight and sound are equally crucial to our understanding of the world, yet the visual has dominated discussions of cultural experience. The very way we relate to, and think about, our everyday world has been influenced by this emphasis on sight over sound. Providing a definitive overview of an emerging field, this pioneering reader is the first to redress a glaring imbalance by investigating how auditory culture subtly and profoundly impacts on our everyday lives. From the evocative tolling of village bells to the grating rattle of exhaust pipes, what we hear influences how we feel and what we do. As technology advances, the world has become an increasingly noisy, confusing and disturbing place. The recent addition of mobile phones alone has irrevocably changed our auditory experiences. In order to retreat from jarring sounds, we seek new sounds sounds that calm, block, soothe. Beginning with the role of sound in historical and social thought, The Auditory Culture Reader moves on to consider city noise, music, voices, and new technologies and medias of sound. It explores, for example, the sectarian sounds of North Belfast, sounds of the powwow amongst Native Americans, football chants, recorded sermons, and the power and influence of the DJs voice. Filling a significant gap, this groundbreaking and multidisciplinary reader combines classic texts, interviews and original contributions by leading social and cultural theorists. It represents a landmark statement on a surprisingly overlooked aspect of our everyday experience.

Author Biography

Edited by Michael Bull, Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Sussex and Les Back, Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	xi
Acknowledgements	xvii
Introduction: Into Sound	1	(24)
Michael Bull
Les Back
Part I: Thinking about Sound
Open Ears	25	(16)
Murray Schafer
Hearing Loss	41	(20)
Leigh Eric Schmidt
Auditory Imagination	61	(6)
Don Ihde
The Help of Your Good Hands: Reports on Clapping	67	(10)
Steven Connor
The Sound of Music	77	(14)
Douglas Kahn
Songtime: Sound Culture, Rhythm and Sociality	91	(26)
Paul Filmer
Part II: Histories of Sound
The Auditory Markers of the Village	117	(10)
Alain Corbin
Tuning into London c.1600	127	(10)
Bruce R. Smith
Listening to the Heard Worlds of Antebellum America	137	(28)
Mark M. Smith
The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age: Technology and Symbolism of Sound in European and North American Noise Abatement Campaigns, 1900--40	165	(26)
Karin Bijsterveld
Medicine's Acoustic Culture: Mediate Auscultation, the Stethoscope and the `Autopsy of the Living'	191	(32)
Jonathan Sterne
Part III: Anthropologies of Sound
A Rainforest Acoustemology	223	(18)
Steven Feld
Performing Patriotism in Native North America: Ojibwa Powwow-sounds and the Paradoxes of Identity	241	(24)
Cora Bender
Sectarian Sound and Cultural Identity in Northern Ireland	265	(16)
Paul Moore
Nostalgia and Radio Sound	281	(22)
Jo Tacchi
Part IV: Sounds in the City
Aural Postcards: Sound, Memory and the City	303	(8)
Fran Tonkiss
Sounds in the Crowd	311	(18)
Les Back
The Sonic Composition of the City	329	(14)
Jean-Paul Thibaud
How Many Movements?	343	(14)
Caroline Bassett
Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Study of Automobile Habitation	357	(24)
Michael Bull
Part V: Living and Thinking with Music
Between the Blues and the Blues Dance: Some Soundscapes of the Black Atlantic	381	(16)
Paul Gilroy
Diasporic Sounds: Dis/Located Sounds	397	(12)
Vic Seidler
The Sounds of Alterity	409	(10)
Sanjay Sharma
Calypso Kings	419	(8)
Stuart Hall
Bessie Smith: `Thinking Blues'	427	(8)
Susan McClary
`Chatting' for Change!: Interview with William (Lez) Henry	435	(16)
Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System Session	451	(30)
Julian Henriques
Resistance	481	(22)
Richard Sennett
Afterword
The Indefensible Ear: A History	487	(16)
Hillel Schwartz
Index	503