Sensory (sounded) Anthropology Flashcards
What is the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR)?
Pleasant sensation related to auditory-tactile synesthesia
What is misophonia?
“hatred of sound”
- negative feeling in response to certain sounds that cause emotional or physical reactions, perhaps moral disgust
What is Bernie Krause’s position on soundscapes as a bioacoustician?
Record life in its own environment, not separated
-> soundscapes: “valuable source of information”, “extraordinary narrative”
What is the purpose of soundscape ecology according to Max Ritts (geographer at UBC)?
- Collect patterns of activity and ecological diversity in the territory
- “to better understand the acoustical ecological profile of the territory at a time when things are changing very quickly”
Who coined the term “soundscape”
R. Murray Schafer
- used often to critique the ubiquitous sounds of post-industrialisation
What does R. Murray Schafer refer to by “soundscape”?
All noises and sounds we encounter in our daily lives
What are the principles of “sonic ethnography” (Ferrarini, Lorenzo, and Nicola Scaldaferri, 2020)?
- Listen critically
- “situated listening”: engage with “different positionalities of the listener”
- Representational methods of “framing sound recordings as more than illustrative material, developing arguments in sound through strategies of editing”
What does Steven Feld refer to by acoustemology?
Acoustic and Epistemology
- one’s sonic way of knowing and being in the world
What are Ernst Karel’s intensive listening practices?
- naturally in ethnographic site
- through headphone/mic
- as recording played back in studio or elsewhere
- evaluating edited compositions of recordings
What are the 15 juxtapositions present in sound established by Ernest Karel and Andrew Littlejohn ?
- Short - Long
- Indoor - Outdoor
- Low - High frequencies
- Single-pointed - Undirected
- Private - Public
- Beautiful - Unpleasant
- Loud - Quiet
- Participatory - Observational
- Recognisable - Unrecognisable
- Unchanging - Dynamic
- Close - Distant
- Legible - Illegible
- Ongoing - Intermittent
- Fixed position - Moving through space
- Staged - Spontaneous
How do Ferrarini and Scaldaferri (2020) define sound?
- Perception of acoustic phenomena through listening
- Material resonance of vibrations that create relationships with an environment
What characterises sound according to Ferrarini and Scaldaferri (2020)?
- Fleeting: we can’t freeze it and gaze upon its details like an image
- It is dense with content (voice, music, environmental, noise)
What is our relation to sound according to Ferrarini and Scaldaferri (2020)?
- It engulfs us, but we only give our attention to a narrow range
- Our sensory unconscious registers sonic vibrations in life altering ways
What is the voice according to Amanda Weidman (2014)?
- A set of sonic, material and literary practices shaped by culture and history
- A category invoked in discourse about personal agency, communication and representation, and political power
What does Amanda Weidman (2014) refer to by the materiality of voice?
“Technologies of sound reproduction, broadcasting, and amplification underline the powers/possibilities of voices separated from their originating bodies”
What is the role of “technologies of sound reproduction, broadcasting, and amplification” in the materiality of voice (Amanda Weidman, 2014)?
They help us observe the “mediation inherent in all voice-body relationships”
What is the “voice of God” in documentary films?
Disembodied voice, all-knowing, interpreting what is viewed for the viewer
-> imposition
What is oral history according to Thomas L. Charlton (1985)?
“the recording and preserving of planned interviews with selected persons able to narrate recollected memory and thereby aid the reconstruction of the past”
What is oral history according to Harris (in Grele, 1985)?
“that area where memory, myth, ideology, language, and historical cognition all interact”
What is oral history according to Ronald J. Grele (1985)
“a tool to democratise the study of history”
What did we learn from orality in history?
Authoritative voices have been privileged
What is the ‘sensory turn’ in Anthropology?
Anthropological attention to cultural variation of sensory understandings
What is the argument of David Howes on senses in Anthropology (2003)?
- Cultural approach to the study of the sense
- Sensory approach to the study of culture
What does David Howes (2003) argue is the best thing an anthropologist can do?
“cultivate the capacity of ‘two sensoria’ about things”:
- their own
- that of the culture under study
