FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
COURSE UNIT OUTLINE 2013/14

SOAN60992: Title: Documentary and Sensory Media

Semester 2
Credits 30

Lecturer: Rupert Cox

Room: ??? Tuesday 9.00-12.00 and 1.00-3.30
Telephone: 0161-275-0570
Email: rupert.cox@manchester.ac.uk
Office Hours: Mon 12-1 & Tue 1-2.

Administrator: Vickie Roche, Arthur Lewis Building

(0161) 275 3999 vickie.roche@manchester.ac.uk

Classes: 10
Credit: 30
Mode(s) of assessment:
Assessment: Students must produce a portfolio comprising three pieces of work,
For the portfolio each individual piece of work is worth one third of the total mark. The three
pieces of work are chosen from a selection of four. These are: i) a photo essay, ii) an
exercise in photo elicitation, iii) a soundscape recording, iv) an interview.

***IMPORTANT INFORMATION – PLEASE READ***

Essay hand in date: 9 May

Communication: Students must read their University e-mails regularly, as important

information will be communicated in this way.

Please read this course outline through very carefully as it provides essential information
needed by all students attending this course. This course guide should be read in
conjunction with the “School of Social Sciences. Postgraduate Taught Student Handbook
2012/2013” available online at -
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/intranet/pg/handbooks/

PLEASE NOTE
Attendance at classes is compulsory. Students are expected to make every effort to attend
all classes (lectures, workshops, seminars) on this course. If they know in advance that
circumstances beyond their control will prevent them from attending a class, they should
contact their lecturer with this information. If they are unable to do this, they should explain
their absence as soon as possible. Please also arrive on time for classes as late arrival
disrupts the lesson.

Course Aims This course aims to develop critical sensory capacities for thinking and working
through non-filmic media by developing practical skills and experience in photography and
sound recording. The aim is to develop an awareness and appreciation of the potential of
particular visual and aural based productions in the following ways: as methods of social
engagement; as intellectual projects for critical analysis and as forms of advocacy. The course
is directed towards providing hands-on experiences of the creation and interpretation of
images and sounds and the various possible ways in which they may be applied in
anthropological enquiry.

Block A: Researching with a Camera

The first part of the course will concentrate on photography and aims to draw attention to
specific practical, methodological and ethical aspects of doing anthropological research with
a camera. A small scale visual project forms the core of this block of lectures and is intended
to give practical experience of general techniques of visual communication. These should
inform student’s understanding of more theoretical topics, such as: the status of photography
as a form of ethnographic description; as a document of anthropological knowledge; and as
an object with certain material qualities.

Block B : The Anthropology of Sound

This second section of the course will investigate the personal and cultural meanings of
voice, sound, noise and silence, the idea of the soundscape and the practice of
soundwalking. Exercises will focus on the potential of sound as a means of anthropological
description and a subject for the analysis of topics such as space and place, time and
memory, identity and belonging. Students will begin practical exercises by engaging in
intensive periods of listening, during which identified sounds are logged and reflected upon.
Through recording and playback the responses of others may also be collected and
analysed. Students will produce an oral/aural recording of voices and/or ‘soundscapes’ as
well as engage in a ‘soundwalk’. The outcome will comprise one or two recordings each of
no longer than five minutes in duration. In all cases, it is the forms of sociality engendered by
or reflected through voices and/or environmental sounds that are being sought for and not
simply the verbal commentary of an ‘informant’ whose words will be better located in an
accompanying text.

Workshops: There will be a number of workshops throughout the course, of one or possibly
two days duration. These are dedicated to the practical elements of the three different
lecture blocks and may on occasion replace a lecture. Details of the times, locations and
subjects of these workshops will be distributed at the first meeting of the semester.

General works and Edited Collections for the course:

Michael, M & L.Back 2003. (eds) The Auditory Culture Reader. Berg Press.
Collier, J 1967. Visual Anthropology: photography as a research method. Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Prosser. J, ed. 1998. Image-based Research. Routledge Press.
Rose, G. 2000. Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to Interpreting Visual Objects. Sage
Press Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. Penguin Press.
Barthes, R. 1982. Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard. Jonathan Cape.
Pink, S. Kurti, L & A. Afonso, eds. 2004. Working Images: Visual research and
representation in ethnography. Routledge Press.
Feld, S. 1982. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression.
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Erlman, V ed. 2004. Hearing Cultures Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity. Berg
Press.
Corbin, A.1998. Village Bells – Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth Century French
Countryside. transl Martin Thom, New York: Columbia University Press.
Schafer, M. 1977. The Tuning of the World. Alfred A Knopf Press.

Ethnographies for the course:

Taylor, J.1998 Paper Tangos. Duke University Press.
Taussig, M.1993. My Cocaine Museum. Chicago University Press.
Feld, S. 1990. Sound and Sentiment. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stewart, K.1996. A Space on the side of the Road. Princeton University Press.
Ferme M. 2001. The Underneath of Things: Violence, History and the Everyday in Sierra
Leone.
Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Biehl J. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Pandolfo. S.1997. Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from a Moroccan Space of Memory.
University Chicago Press

Learning Outcomes : On completion of this unit students will be able to:

Critically use and interpret images and sounds to understand how they relate to a variety of
social issues. Demonstrate a competency in the documentary applications of photography
and audio production. Show an awareness of the ethical issues at stake in the use and
publication of different forms of media. Engage in sensory practices of looking and listening
to the environment so as to select and effectively apply available media technology. Show a
combination of artistic creativity and intellectual analysis in projects that requires background
research, practical applications and considered reflection.

Workload
The University's Academic Standards Code of Practice states that a 15 credit module is
expected to require a total of 150 hours of work. In PGT courses of 15 credits, this is
comprised of
• typically 2 hours of classes a week
• at least 6 hours reading the Key Reading and additional texts from the reading list.
This leaves 50-60 hours study time remaining to be used in independent study and the
preparation of non-assessed and assessed work over the duration of the course.

Classes
The course consists of x 10, 7 hour classes.
There are no separate tutorial groups.
Students are required to attend all classes for their duration.

Preparation – none required

Assessment: Students must produce a portfolio comprising three pieces of work, worth
100 % of the total marks for the course.
For the portfolio each individual piece of work is worth one third of the total mark. The three
pieces of work are chosen from a selection of four. These are: i) a photo essay, ii) an
exercise in photo elicitation, iii) a soundscape recording, iv) an interview.

Each piece of work should be a combination of text with images or text with a sound
recording. The text for each piece of work should not exceed 3000 words and the total for all
three pieces of work should be a minimum of 6000 words and a maximum of 9000 words
including all references and footnotes. You may concentrate your text in one or two of the
three sections of the portfolio and keep one or perhaps two sections relatively text free. This
is your choice. The number of images should not exceed 50 in total (that is counting all the
pieces of work together) and the length of each sound recording should not exceed 10
minutes. Therefore there is a maximum of 20 minutes of sound recording allowed, assuming
you choose to do two of your options about sound.

The deadline for assessed coursework is 9 May 2013. Full assessment details will be
available from week three of the course.

The essays must be typed, double-spaced in a reasonable font (eg. 12 point in Times New
Roman or Arial). You must submit two copies of the essay to the SoSS Postgraduate Office
in the Arthur Lewis building by 2pm on the deadline day unless given course specific
instructions by email.
For further guidance in relation to referencing and bibliographies see section below.
Inadequate referencing may be considered plagiarism, which is a serious offence.

Extensions may be granted to students where there are exceptional mitigating

circumstances (e.g. strong medical reasons). In such cases a Mitigating Circumstances
Form must be completed and submitted to the Postgraduate Office, 2nd Floor, Arthur Lewis
Building. A Mitigating Circumstances Form must be submitted before the due date of the
assessed work. Students are advised to refer to the University's Policy on Mitigating
Circumstances (available on the student intranet) for what constitutes grounds for mitigation.
If a Mitigating Circumstances Form is submitted after the due date then good reason must
be given for the delay.

Assessed work must not be faxed or emailed to any member of staff, no work
submitted in these ways will be marked. In special circumstances, with prior approval you
may be allowed to submit work by registered post. This must be agreed in advance with the
Social Anthropology PG administrator.

Non-assessed work details – Students are required to produce media work – photographs
and sound recordings, most weeks of the course. These form the basis for class discussion.

Feedback
Students will get informal verbal feedback continuously throughout the course during the
workshop/tutorial elements of classes. Written formative feedback will be provided on non-
assessed work. Written formative and summative feedback will be given on the assessed
essay at the end of the course.

General Course Readings

Some required readings may be made available electronically via the course website. All
other readings should be available from the John Rylands University Library.

Bibliography and Referencing

Assessed essays:
The lack of a proper bibliography and appropriate reference will potentially greatly affect the
mark for the work and may be considered plagiarism.

Plagiarism:
Plagiarism is a serious offence and students should consult the University of Manchester
guidelines, also the Faculty's TLO Website

http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/studyskills/essentials/writing/avoiding_plagiarism.ht
ml

http://www.studentnet.manchester.ac.uk/crucial-guide/academic-life/formal-
procedures/conduct-and-discipline/

All essays must employ the scholarly apparatus of references (or footnotes) and a
Bibliography. At the end of an essay, you must provide a Bibliography which lists your
sources in alphabetical order by author's surname. In the essay itself, you must use a
reference or footnote to give the source for any quotation, data, and/or for any view or
interpretation which you summarise or which you attribute to another source or author.
References (or footnotes) enable the reader to find as easily as possible the authority for
every important statement and the sources contributing to all ideas and comments.
There are different acceptable referencing styles. Professional journals and scholarly books
can provide students with examples of different acceptable styles. Whatever referencing
style and bibliographic style you choose to use, be consistent.
The titles of book, journals, newspapers, and magazines are either underlined or italicised,
while the titles of articles are placed inside quotation marks. Quotation marks are not placed
around the titles of books and journals.

In the Bibliography, sources are listed in alphabetical order by author's surname. Hence, in
the Bibliography, an author's surname comes before forenames; however, in a footnote (or
endnote), forenames precede surname. For further details please see the referencing guide,
available online at:
http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=2870

Assessment Criteria
For further details of assessment criteria, including what evidence of levels of understanding
and expression constitute the range of marks available, please see the “School of Social
Sciences. Postgraduate Taught Student Handbook 2012/2013”, available online at –
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/intranet/pg/handbooks/documents/PGTHandbo
ok2012-13FinalCopy.doc

Lecture 1 The Photograph as Document: Object and Process

This lecture explores the ideas that were formulated about photography following its
technological invention in the 19th century and what this means for an understanding of
photography as a form of social science inquiry. We will look at how the use of photography
in social science enquiry has been based on a conception of its evidential status and of an
instrumental reading of the image as truth. We will look at the development of these
theoretical paradigms and their relationship with the aesthetic aspects of photography - in
the following ways: Firstly through anthropometrical photography and its differences with the
work of August Sander. Secondly through the practices applied by Malinowski in establishing
the validity of fieldwork and functionalism and the way it differed from his compatriot
Witkiewicz’s surrealist photography. Thirdly, we will look at how Gregory Bateson & Margaret
Mead used photographic sequences and text to show patterns of Balinese behavior and the
relationship with the classic modernist photo-essay James Agee and Walker Evan’s ‘In
Praise of Famous Men’.

Film: The Genius of Photography: Documents for Artists. (BBC 4)

Tutorial Task – Select and bring in a Photograph(s) (of your own or another’s) that moves
you and consider how it achieves that effect. Consider how you would deploy theory to
interpret the photograph(s).
During the class we will look at some anthropological photographs and colonial photographs
of non-western peoples. It is essential that you have read at least two of the three articles
below in order to discuss these sensibly.
Essential Reading:
Sekula, A. 1986. The Body and the Archive. October, Vol 39
Sapir, D. 1994. On Fixing Ethnographic Shadows. American Ethnologist, Vol 21, No 4. 867-
885.
Benjamin, Walter .1979. ‘A Short History of Photography’ Screen.1972; 13: 5-26

Other Readings:
Scherer, Joanna (1992) “The photographic document: photographs as primary data in
anthropological enquiry”, in E. Edwards (ed.), Anthropology and Photography, 1860-1920.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal
Anthropological Institute, London.
Winston, B.1998. “The Camera Never Lies: The Partiality of Photographic Evidence”. In
Prosser, J ed Image-based Research, A sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers.
RoutledgeFalmer Press.
Edwards, E. 1997. “Beyond the Boundary: a consideration of the expressive in photography
and anthropology.” In Banks, M and H. Morphy (eds) 1997. Rethinking Visual Anthropology.
Yale University Press.
Taylor, L. 1994. Visualising Theory. Selected Essays from VAR 1990-1994. Routledge Press.
Thurn, I. (1893). “Anthropological Uses of the Camera.” In JRAI, Vol 22.
Pinney, Christopher (1992a) 'The parallel histories of anthropology and photography', in E.
Edwards (ed.), Anthropology and Photography, 1860-1920. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London.
Maxwell, A. 1999. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions. Leicester University Press.
Poole, D. 1997. Vision, Race and Modernity, A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World.
Princeton University Press.
Landau, P and D, Kaspin eds. 2002. Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and
Postcolonial Africa. California University Press.
Ryan, J. 1997. Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire.
Reaktion Press.
Edwards, Elizabeth (ed.) (1992) Anthropology and Photography,1860-1920. New Haven:
Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London.
Edwards, E. 1990. “Photographic ‘Types’: The Pursuit of Method.” In Visual Anthropology,
Vol 3.
Gunning, T. 1995. “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations. Spirit Photography, Magic
Theatre, Trick Films and Photography’s Uncanny.” In Petro, P ed. 1995. Fugitive Images:
From Photography to Video. Indiana University Press.
Slater, D. 1995. “Photography and Modern Vision: The Spectacle of ‘Natural Magic.” in
Jenks, C ed. 1995. Visual Culture. Routledge Press
MacClancy, J. “Brief Encounter: The Meeting, in Mass-Observation of British Surrealism and
Popular Anthropology.” JRAI, Vol 1, No. 3, 1995

Malinowski and Witkiewicz

Damon, F. (2000) “To Restore the Events: On the Ethnography of Malinowski’s
Photography.” In Visual Anthropology Review, Vol 16, No 1.
Young, M. 1998. Malinowski’s Kiriwana: Fieldwork Photography 1915-1918. Chicago
University Press.
Krauss, R. 1981. The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism. October. Vol 19, 3-34.
Mead and Bateson and Walker Evans
Lakoff, A. (1996) “Freezing Time: Margaret Mead’s Diagnostic Photography.” In Visual
Anthropology Review, Vol 12, No 1.
Mead, M and G Bateson eds. (2002) “On the Use of the Camera in Anthropology.” in Askew,
K and R. Wilk (eds) 2002. The anthropology of media: a reader. Blackwells Publishing.
Jacknis, I. 1988 “ Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography
and Film.” in Cultural Anthropology, Vol 3 no 2.
Sullivan, G. 1999. Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and Highland Bali. Chicago University
Press.
Bateson, Gregory and Margaret Mead (1942) Balinese Character: a Photographic Analysis.
New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Tagg, J. 2003. Melancholy Realism: Walker Evans’s Resistance to Meaning. Narrative, Vol.
11, No. 1.

Websites:
1. www.visualanthropology.net
see essays by - James, A & Boot, J; Prosser, J; Ruby, J.
2. http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/
Lecture 2: Photography and the social imperative.
This lecture will look at the deep and extensive relationship between photography and forms
of social inquiry. The capacity of photography and the photographic image to expose, elicit
from and participate in the social world, links visual sociology with photo-journalism and
elements of conceptual art photography. These styles of photography which take their lead
and inspiration from the pioneering work of the social documentarists in the USA, lie outside
the normal purview of anthropological photography because their subjects are invariably
closer to ‘ home’ or are made as part of the unfolding of contemporary events with little
opportunity for reflection. We will consider how and if the approaches of ‘documentary’
photographers such as Eugene Smith, Robert Frank and Martin Parr are relevant to
anthropology. The themes we will consider are (i) The humanitarian and socially liberal
impulse among documentary photographers. (ii) The participatory immersion in a subject
enabled by working with a camera. (iii) The collaborations and facilitations that have been
initiated through documentary photography (iv) Performing with/for the camera. The
photographers whose work we shall look at are: Walker Evans, Eugene Smith, Robert Frank,
Susan Meiselas, Eugene Richards, Gary Winogrand, Susan Lipper, Hans Namuth, Martin
Parr, Craigie Horsfield, Julian Germain, Chris Killip, Jeremy Deller,

Films: The Genius of Photography Part 2.

Websites: http://www.bleakbeauty.com/ AND http://www.susanmeiselas.com/ AND

http://workinglife.org.uk/

Tutorial Task (for the second week of class): Shoot, select and present for class
discussion a sequence of photographs on the theme of ‘working life’ (see the web sites
above for ideas). The sequence should follow a process or event and through the
employment of text (captions and/or short statements) and design (the order, size and
arrangement of images) you should create an interpretative visual narrative. Read the article
by Becker below and be prepared to comment on your photographs in reference to this
paper.

Essential Reading
Becker, H. 1998. “Categories and Comparisons: How we find Meanings in Photographs.” in
Visual Anthropology Review Vol 14, no 2.
Stewart, K. 2002. “Scenes of Life/Kentucky Mountains.” Public Culture 14(2):349-360

General Reading:
Dominy, M. 1993. “Photojournalism, Anthropology and Ethnographic Authority.” In Cultural
Anthropology, Vol 8, No 3.
Becker,H. 1974. Photography and sociology. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual
Communication, 1(1), 3-26.
Chari, Sharad. 2009. “Photographing dispossession, forgetting solidarity: waiting for social
justice in Wentworth, South Africa.” Transactions of institute of British geographers. Vol 34,
no 1 pp 534-540.
Prosser, J ed. 1998. Image-based Research, A sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers.
RoutledgeFalmer Press.
Rosenblum, B. 1978. “Style as Social Process” Journal American Sociological Review.
Vol 43.
Dubin, M. 2002. “Opportunities Found: Photographing the Arts of Everyday Life in
California.” in Visual Anthropology Review, Vol 18 nos 1-2
Newbury, D. (1999) “Photography and the Visualisation of Working Class Lives in Britain.” in
Visual Anthropology Review, Vol 15, No 1.
Becker, H.1998. “Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: It’s
(Almost) all a matter of context”. In Prosser, J ed Image-based Research, A sourcebook for
Qualitative Researchers. RoutledgeFalmer Press.
Friday, J. 2000. Demonic Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Documentary Photography. British
Journal of Aesthetics, Vol 40, No 5. 356-375.
Dawber, S. 2004. Martin Parr's Suburban Vision, Third Text, Vol 18 No3, 251 – 262.
De Cuyper. (1997-8) “On the Future of Photographic Representation in Anthropology: From
the Practice of Community Photography in Britain.” in Visual Anthropology Review, Vol 13,
no 2.
Meiselas, S. 1997. Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History. Random House
Anderson, J.L and Dworzak, T. 2004. Taliban. Trolley Press
Arbaizar, P, Clair, J; Delpire, R; and P Galassi. 2006. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the
Image and the World: A Retrospective. Thames & Hudson

Lecture 3: Anthropology of/by Photography – Description and elicitation

Anthropology, like social science has treated photography for the most part as an object or
practice to be described rather than as a means of description; as something to elicit
responses from observers rather than an observer itself; as a sign to be read as or explained
by text rather than as an ‘image-text’.
In this lecture we will deal with these three aspects by looking firstly at some of the
differences in attitudes to photography revealed by anthropological analyses and placing
these alongside the use of photography as a form of ethnography. Secondly by assessing
how the camera has been utilised as a tool for verbal elicitation and how this has been
overturned by the recent work of Azoulay that sees the photograph as an observer which
elicits social relationships. Finally, we will address epistemological and methodological
questions about the relationship between text and image in photography. The status and
relationship of images and texts is a central issue in their academic use and we will use
Mitchell’s article on the Photographic Essay to look at examples of the merging of text with
the photographic image.

Tutorial Task: Read the article by Mitchell below and write a short photo-essay (250-500
words). This can be about the same subject as your first exercise. You should give us as
much detail as you can and (if possible) the words of your subjects. Take photographs that
you can insert into the description as description. Look at examples of photo-ethnography
from the section below and find work which relates to your own that you can talk about in
class.

Essential Reading:
Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. ‘The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies’ Ch 9 in Picture Theory.
Chicago University Press.
Azoulay, A. 2007. The Civil Contract of Photography. Chapter 1. Zone Books.
Harper, D. 2002. Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation Visual Studies, Vol. 17,
No. 1,

Description
Hirsch, E. (2004) “Techniques of vision: photography, disco and renderings of present
perceptions in highland Papua.” Journal JRAI, Vol. 10.
Ben-Ari, Eyal. 1991. Posing, Posturing and Photographic Presences: A Rite of Passage
in a Japanese Commuter Village. JRAI Vol. 26, No. 1: 87-104.
Marr, Carolyn. 1990. Photographers and their subjects on the Southern Northwest
Coast: Motivations and Responses. Arctic Anthropology, 27 (2), 13-26.
Buckley, Liam. 2000. Self and Accessory in Gambian Studio Photography. Visual
Anthropology Review, Sep., Vol. 16, No. 2: 71-91.
Sprague, Stephen. 1978. How I See the Yoruba See Themselves. Studies in the
Anthropology of Visual Communication, Sep., Vol. 5, No. 1: 9-29.
Pinney, Christopher (1997) Camera Indica: the Social Life of Indian Photographs. London:
Reaktion.
Gutman, Judith (1982) Through Indian Eyes: 19th and Early 20th Century Photography from
India. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pinney, C and Peterson, N. eds. (2003) Photography’s Other Histories. Duke University
Press.
Kratz, C. (2002). The Ones that are wanted: Communication and the Politics of
Representation in a Photographic Exhibition. California University Press.
Ethnography
Stewart, K. (1996) A Space on the Side of the Road. Princeton University Press.
Berger, J & J. Mohr. 1989. The Seventh Man. Granta Press.
Brody, H. 1987. Living Arctic: Hunters of the Canadian North. Faber and Faber Press.
Orwell, G. 1963. Down and Out in London and Paris. Penguin Books.
Malek Alloula. 1986. The Colonial Harem. University of Minnesota Press.
Mohr, J & J Berger. 1999. At the Edge of the World. Reaktion Books.
Said, E &. J. Mohr. 1999. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. Columbia University Press.
Goodwin, C. Professional Vision.1994. American Anthropologist, Vol 96, No 3. 606-633
MacDougall, D.1992. “Photo-Wallahs: an encounter with photography. Visual Anthropology
Review. Vol 8 No 2. 96-100.
Becker, H. 2002. Visual evidence: A Seventh Man, the specified generalization, and the
work of the reader Visual Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1
Elicitation
Collier, J. (995) “Photography and Visual Anthropology.” In Hockings, P ed. 1995. Principles
of Visual Anthropology. Mouton de Gruyter Press.
Beilin, R. 2005. Photo-elicitation and the agricultural landscape: ‘seeing’ and ‘telling’ about
farming, community and place. Visual Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1,
Harper, D. 1982 Good Company, Chicago University Press.
Harper, D. 2000 Changing Works: Visions of a Lost Architecture. Chicago University Press.
Harper, D. 1987 'The visual ethnographic narrative', Visual Anthropology, 1 (1)
Harper, D. 1998 'An argument for visual sociology', in J. Prosser (ed.), Image-based
Research: a Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London: Falmer Press.
Harper, D. 2002. Framing photographic ethnography: A case study, Ethnography Vol 4, No2
241–266.
Image-Text
Hughes, A & A, Noble. 2003. Phototextutalities: intersections of Photography and Narrative.
New Mexico Press.
Pink, S. Kurti, L & A. Afonso, eds. Working Images: Visual research and representation in
ethnography. Routledge Press.
Mitchell, WJT. 1986. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. University of Chicago Press.
Berger, J & J. Mohr. 1989. The Seventh Man. Granta press.
Agee, J & Walker Evans. 1939. Let us now praise famous men. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Scott, C. 1999. The Spoken Image: Photography and Language. Reaktion Books.
Kumar, A. 2000. Passport Photos. California University Press.
Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. Picture Theory. Chicago University Press.
Mitchell, W.J.T. 2007. What do Pictures Really Want. Chicago University Press.
Hunter, J. 1987. Image and Word: The Interaction of Twentieth-Century Photographs and
Texts. Harvard University Press.
Shloss, C. 1987. In Visible Light: Photography and the American Writer 1840-1940. Oxford
University Press.

Lecture 4: Photography, Memory and Materiality.

In the modern age, photographs have become one of the primary and most tangible forms
for making and recording memory. As images and as material objects they reflect the
ambiguous ‘trace’ nature of photographs and the relationship, often mediated though implicit
or explicit acts of violence, rupture and displacement between memory and ‘post-memory’.
Approaches to these aspects of the photograph draw upon psychology and the idea of the
fetish and address the medium’s hallucinatory effects.
In this lecture we will look at how anthropology is particularly well suited to an investigation
of the forms of sociality and relatedness that may be produced and forgotten (as ‘absent
presences’) photographically. The theorists we shall consider are Christian Metz, Victor
Burgin and Abigail Solomon-Godeau. The Photographers whose work we shall look at are:
Joel Sternfeld, Simon Norfolk, Joel Meyerowitz, Laurenz Berges, Shomei Tomatsu

Film: Henry Singer. The Falling Man Image. C. Marker’s La Jetee.

Website http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/dec/02/photography

Tutorial Task: Find photograph(s),that you can use to elicit a conversation with someone
about their past. This may well mean a photograph of your own family or of someone that
knows you. You should be choosing photograph(s) and using them as a way of investigating
the relationship between memory and photography. Read the article by Harper in essential
reading for lecture three and think through how you are applying the methods outlined their.
Also, read the two articles below under essential reading and consider what we might
understand by the ‘materiality’ of the photographs that you used.

Essential Reading
Wright, C. 2004. Materiality and Memory: Photography in the Western Solomon Islands
Journal of Material Culture Vol. 9(1): 73–85.
Bouquet, M. (2000). “The Family Photographic Condition.” Visual Anthropology Review Vol
16, no 1.

General Reading
Hirsch, M. 2001. Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Post-memory.
The Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol 14, No 1. 5-37.
Hutnyk, J. 2004. Photogenic Poverty: Souvenirs and Infantalism. Journal of Visual Culture,
Vol 3, No 1 77-94.
Chalfen, Richard. 2003. Celebrating life after death: the appearance of snapshots in
Japanese pet gravesites. Visual Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2.
Starrett, G. 2003. “Violence and the Rhetoric of Images.” In Cultural Anthropology Vol 18 ,
no 3.
Schwartzenberg, S. 2005. The personal archive as historical record. Visual Studies, Vol. 20,
No. 1
James, A. (2000-1) “Mirror of their Past, Greek Refugee Photographs and Memories of
Anatolia.” in Visual Anthropology Review Vol 16, no 2.
Wolbert, B. 2001. “The Visual Production of Locality: Turkish Family Pictures, Migration and
the Creation of Virtual Neighbours.” In Visual Anthropology Review, Vol 17, no 1.
Yanay, N. 2007. Violence Unseen: activating national icons, Cultural Studies, 1 -25
Pinney, Christopher (1990) ‘The Quick and the Dead: Images, Time & Truth’ Visual
Anthropology Review Vol. 6 no 2.
Kuhn, A. 2002 Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination Verso, London
Olick, J. K. and Robbins, J. 1998 Social memory studies: from "collective memory" to the
historical sociology of mnemonic practices. Annual Review of Sociology 24 , 105-140.
Harper, D. Knowles C and P Leonard. 2005. Visually narrating post-colonial lives: ghosts of
war and empire Visual Studies, Vol. 20, No 1.
Van Alphen, E. 2002 Caught by images: on the role of visual imprints in Holocaust
testimonies. Journal of Visual Culture Vol 1: No 2 205-221
Hirsch, M ed.1999. The Familial Gaze. University of Dartmouth.
Hirsch, M. 1997. Family Frames: photography, narrative and Post-memory. Harvard
University Press.
Sebald, W.G. 2001. Austerlitz. Penguin Press.
Lury, C. 1998. Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity. London: Routledge
West, N. 2000. Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia. Virginia University Press.
Edwards, E & J. Hart eds. 2004. Photographs, Objects, Histories, on the materiality of
images. Routledge Press.
Edwards, E. 2001. Raw Histories, Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Berg Press.
Vizenor, G. 1998. Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and
Presence. University of Nebraska Press.
Burgin, V. 1996 In/different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. California
University Press.
Liss, A. 1998 Trespassing through shadows: memory, photography and the Holocaust.
Minnesota University Press.
Vizenor, G. 1998. ‘Fugitive Poses’ Ch 4 in Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of
Absence and Presence. University of Nebraska Press.
Edwards, E. 2002. Material beings: objecthood and ethnographic Photographs Visual
Studies, Vol 17 No1, 67 – 75.
Schwartzenberg, S. 2005. The personal archive as historical record. Visual Studies, Vol. 20,
No. 1,

Block B : The Anthropology of Sound

This second section of the course will investigate the personal and cultural meanings of
voice, sound, noise and silence, the idea of the soundscape and the practice of
soundwalking. Exercises will focus on the potential of sound as a means of anthropological
description and a subject for the analysis of topics such as space and place, time and
memory, identity and belonging. Students will begin practical exercises by engaging in
intensive periods of listening, during which identified sounds are logged and reflected upon.
Through recording and playback the responses of others may also be collected and
analysed. Students will produce an oral/aural recording of voices and/or ‘soundscapes’ as
well as engage in a ‘soundwalk’. The outcome will comprise one or two recordings each of
no longer than five minutes in duration. In all cases, it is the forms of sociality engendered by
or reflected through voices and/or environmental sounds that are being sought for and not
simply the verbal commentary of an ‘informant’ whose words will be better located in an
accompanying text.

Recommended Films to accompany lectures: ‘The Conversation’, ‘‘Listen to Britain’, ‘The

Touch of Sound’. (View in GCVA library.)

General Reading:
Attali, J. 1987. Noise, The Political Economy of Music. University of Minnesota Press.
Bull, M ed. 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. Berg Press.
Prendergast, M. 2000. The Ambient Century. Bloomsbury.
Murray Schafer, R.1977. The Tuning of the World. McLelland and Stewart.
Veit Erlmann (ed.), 2004. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity.
Berg Press
Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression.
(2nd edition) U Pennsylvania Press
Mark M. Smith (ed.), 2004. Hearing History. University Georgia Press
Timothy D. Taylor, 2001. Strange Sounds: Music, Technology, and Culture. Routledge
Press

Websites:
1. http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/nsa.html
2. http://www.filmsound.org/ , See Link ‘Sound in Context’ in Sound Links
3. WFAE website: interact.uoregon.edu/medialit/wfae/home/index.html
4. http://www.phonography.org
5. http://acousticecology.org/
6. http://www.quietamerican.org/links.html
7. http://chriswatson.net/
8. http://www.ubu.com/sound/index.html
9. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/soundanth/programme.php
10. http://www.voxlox.net/
11. http://www.cardiffmiller.com/

Lecture 6 –From Hand and Eye to Voice and Ear– Learning to Listen.
In this first session we will trace the intellectual genealogy of theories about the relations
between words, sounds and forms of sociality, knowing and being in the world. The
distinctions between the word as it is written and as it is spoken and between ‘sound’ ‘noise’
and ‘silence’ are fundamental in this respect. We will look at how the ethnography of sound
developed out of an awareness of the qualities and meaning of the spoken word through
ethno-poetics and dialogical anthropology (see journal Alcheringa) and only recently
considered what goes unsaid and the role of the aural environment. We will consider how
social science has relied on an organic and musical analogy as well as a documentary
realist aesthetic to compose ethnographic renditions of the auditory landscape.

Recordings: Tony Schwartz, ‘Sounds of the City’; Peter Cusack, ‘My Favourite London
Sounds’, ‘the horse was dead, the cow was alive.’; Lealan Jones and Lloyd Newman with
David Isay, Ghetto Life 101 and Remorse, the 14 stories of Eric Morse. Colin Turnbull, Mbuti
Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest;. John Wynne Someone Else has died
(http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=179)
Wolfman Jack (http://www.wolfmanjack.org/audio/)
Glenn Gould, The Idea of the North; archived at CBC digital archives
(http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/320-1709/)

Films: Pygmalion. (Anthony Asquith, 1938), How the Edwardians Spoke (BBC4)
Websites: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/soundanth/programme.php
http://www.britishfilm.org.uk/article.php?art=thirdcinema&page=8

Tutorial Task: Listen to the segment of Glenn Gould’s piece ‘The Idea of the North’
referenced above and read the articles by at least two of the following - Gell, Basso, Attali
and Nuckolls below. Consider the relationship proposed between the sound of words and
perceptions of the environment.

Essential Reading:
Gell, A. 1995. “The language of the Forest: Language and Phonological Iconism in Umeda.”
In Hirsch, E and M Hanlon eds, The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and
Space. Oxford University Press.
Basso, K. 1972. “To give up on words: silence in Western Apache Culture.” In Language and
Social Context edited P.P. Giglioli.
Attali, J. 1977. Chapter One: “Listening.” In Noise: The Political Economy of Music.
Translated by Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press.
Nuckolls, J. 1999. “The Case for Sound Symbolism.” in Annual. Review of Anthropology
28:225.52

General Reading:
Kunreuther, Laura. 2008. “Technologies of the Voice: FM Radio, Telephone, and the Nepali
Diaspora in Kathmandu." Cultural Anthropology. Volume 21 Issue 3, pp 323 – 353
Tomas, D. 1996. Sound and Intercultural Contact Spaces, Ch 4 in Tomas, D Transcultural
Space, Transcultural Beings. Westview Press.
Miller, T R. 2004. "Object Lessons: Wooden Spirits, Wax Voices, and Collecting the Folk." In
Properties of Culture/Culture as Property: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia. Edited
by Erich Kasten. Berlin, Germany: Dietrich Reimer Verlag,
Ong, W. 1969. “World as View and as Event” Journal American Anthropologist Vol 71.
Giulianotti, R. 2005. “Towards a Critical Anthropology of Voice: The Politics and Poetics of
Popular Culture, Scotland and Football” Critique of Anthropology , Vol 25(4) 339–359
Panopoulos, P. 2003. “Animal Bells as symbols: sound and hearing in a Greek island village”
JRAI Vol 9.
Needham, R. 1967. “Percussion and Transition.” In Journal MAN ns 2: 606-14.
Jackson, A. 1968. “Sound and Ritual.” Journal MAN ns 3,2 293-299.
Seremetakis, N. 1991. "The Screaming." In The Last Word: Women, Death, and Divination
in Inner Mani. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Ireland, E.M.1993. “When a Chief Speaks Through His Silence” PoLAR: Political and Legal
Anthropology Review. June 1993, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 19-28.
Ihde, D. 1976. “Shapes, Surfaces, and Interiors” from Listening and Voice, Ohio University
Press, 1976; reprinted in Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, 2(1), 2001, pp. 16-
17.
Bauman, R. 1975. Verbal Art as Performance American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 77,
No. 2. 290-311.
Lane, Cathy. 2006. “Voices from the Past: compositional approaches to using recorded
speech.” Journal of Organised Sound, Vol 11, No 1.
Tedlock, D. 1990. From Voice and Ear to Hand and Eye. The Journal of American Folklore,
Vol. 103, No. 408. 133-156.
Christensen, P, Hockey, J & A. James.2001. “Talk, Silence and the Material World.” In The
Anthropology of Indirect Communication. eds Hendry, J & Watson, W. Routledge Press.
Bloch, M. 1992. “What goes Without Saying: the Conceptualisation of Zafimaniry Society” in
Kuper, A. ed. Conceptualising Society. Routledge Press.
Peek. P. 1981. The Power of Words in African Verbal Arts. The Journal of American Folklore.
Vol 94, No 371, 19-43.
Taylor, Jessica. 2009. "Speaking Shadows": A History of the Voice in the Transition from
Silent to Sound Film in the United States.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. Volume 19.
Issue 1. pp 1 – 20.
Roseman. 1984. “The Social Structuring of Sound: The Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia”
Journal Ethnomusicology Vol 28, No 3.
Lomax, A. 1962. Song Structure and Social Structure. Ethnology, vol. 1.
Stoller, P. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things. University of Pennsylvania.
Stoller, P. 1989. “Sounds in Cultural Experience.” In The Taste of Ethnographic Things. The
Senses in Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Peek, P. 1994. “The Sounds of Silence: Cross cultural communication and the auditory arts
in African societies” Journal American Anthropologist, Vol 21, No 3.
Erlman, V ed. 2004. “But what of the ethnographic ear ? Anthropology, Sound, and the
senses.” in Hearing Cultures Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity. Berg Press.
Bendix, R. 2000. “The Pleasures of the Ethnographic Ear: Towards and Ethnography of
Listening”. Cultural Analysis. 1: 33-50.
Ridington, R. 1983. In Doig People's Ears: Portrait of a Changing Community in
Sound. Anthropologica. Vol 25 No 1. 9-21.
Berendt, Joachim-Ernst (1985), The Third Ear: On Listening to the World, New York: Henry
Holt.
Keresenboom, S. 1995. Word, Sound, Image. The Life of the Tamil Text. Berg Press.
Sullivan, L. 1986. “Sound and Senses: Towards a Hermeneutics of Performance” Journal
History of Religions Vol 26, No 1.
Tuzin, D. 1984. “Miraculous Voices: the auditory experience of numinous objects” in Journal
Current Anthropology, Vol 25 No 5.
Williams, P (translated by Catherine Tihanyi) 2003. Gypsy World: The Silence of the Living
and the Voices of the Dead. University Of Chicago Press.
Lecture 7- Sound as object and as event.
In this lecture the work of various sound artists and sound designers will be considered for
what they can teach us about training the ‘ethnographic ear’ and of the creative possibilities
of manipulating and combining sound, voice and image. The techniques and subjects of
these artists reflect an acute perception and engagement with their auditory surroundings,
often leading to dramatised and intensely esoteric works. They suggest a range of creative
possibilities for working with sound, voice and image that have implications for what we may
understand by an ethnography composed through sound. The key debate and tension in this
work is between acknowledging the origins and context of sound (as event) and the creative
possibilities in recognising the inherent properties of sound (as object).

Recordings:
Luc Ferrari, Presque Rien; Trevor Wishart, Voiceprints; Katherine Norman, London; Steve
Reich, Different Trains;

Films:
Frank Watson and Dave Lawrence. Isles of Grain
Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation (see alsohttp://filmsound.org/murch/murch.htm )
Listen to Britain, Humphrey Jennings (1942).

Website:
John Wynne Anspayaxw
(http://www.sensorystudies.org/?page_id=509) AND
(http://moa.ubc.ca/borderzones/wynne.html)
John Wynne Hearing Voices http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Hearing_Voices.htm

Tutorial
Listen to the recordings of John Wynne - Anspayaxw and Hearing Voices and in the context
of the essential readings, consider how they are art and how they are anthropology.

Essential Reading
Connor S. 2005. Ears Have Walls: On Hearing Art
(http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/earshavewalls/)
Drever, J. 1999. The exploitation of ‘tangible ghosts’: conjectures on soundscape recording
and its reappropriation in sound art. Organised Sound Vol 4(1): 25–9
Carter, P. 2004. ‘Ambiguous traces, mishearing, and auditory space’, In Hearing Cultures,
ed V. Erlmann, Oxford and New York, Berg: 43-65.
Wynne, J. 2010. “Hearing Faces, Seeing Voices: Sound Art, Experimentalism and the
Ethnographic Gaze”. In Between Art and Anthropology edited A Schneider and C Wright.

General Reading
Cox, C and Daniel Warner (eds). 2004. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music.
Continuum Press, New York, (see SECTION 1)
Kahn, D. 1997. John Cage: Silence and Silencing. The Musical Quarterly Vol 81 (4):556-
598
Cameron, E.W. (1976) (ed), Sound and the Cinema, New York: Redgrave Publishers.
E. Weis & J. Belton, eds. Film Sound, Columbia University Press,
Altman, R. 1992. Sound Theory, Sound Practice. AFI. Routledge Press.
Chion, M. (1994), Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press.
Piergiorgio G. The Art of the Spectator: Seeing Sounds and Hearing Visions Diogenes 2002;
49; 77
Heon, L. 2005. “In Your Ear: hearing art in the twenty-first century”. Journal of Organised
Sound
0(2): 91–96. Cambridge University Press.
Scanner. 2001. “Remembering How to Forget: An Artist’s Exploration of Sound”. Leonardo
Music Journal, Vol 11 pp. 65–69.
Sinclair,C 2003. Audition: Making Sense of/in the Cinema. The Velvet Light Trap, Number 51,
17-28.
Kahn, D. 1999. Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge: The MIT
Press,
Metz, C. 1985. “Aural Objects”. In E. Weis & J. Belton, eds. Film Sound, Columbia University
Press,
Toop, D. 2001. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds.
Serpent’s Tail Press
Born, G. 1995. Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the
Musical Avant-garde University of California Press
Born, G. 2000. “Techniques of the Musical Imaginary” in Western Music and Its Others:
Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. University of California Press.

Lecture 8- Soundscape
The identification of a discrete and coherent sound environment, known as ‘the soundscape’,
is the result of the work of a Canadian composer and theoretician Murray Schafer. In this
lecture we will investigate the impact and development of his ideas in anthropology where it
has become significant for understandings of senses of place. The early imperative of
soundscape projects, to salvage vanishing sounds and to change our acoustic awareness of
the world have given way to new possibilities in cultural analysis for historical reconstruction,
for ethnographic representation, primarily as a form of narrative and description, elicited
through recording and playback. The concept of soundscape has also come in for
considerable criticism and we will look at some of the debates.

Recordings: Helen Westerkamp, ‘Transformations’; Steve Feld, ‘Rainforest Sound Walks’;

Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea; Tese ‘The Sounds of Harris and Lewis’;
Sarah Peebles, ‘Walking through Tokyo at the turn of the century’. John Levack Drever,
Phonographies, ‘Glasgow, Frankfurt, Exeter’ ; ‘Sounding Dartmoor’..Marina Roseman,
Dream Songs and Healing Sounds. In the Rainforests of Malaysia. Chris Watson, ‘Outside
the Circle of Fire’; David Dunn, ‘The Sound of Light in Trees’;

Web sites
1. http://www.phonography.org
2. http://acousticecology.org/
3. http://chriswatson.net/
4. http://www.voxlox.net/

Film:

Tutorial Task:
This assignment is to deliver a sound-based artifact — a recording, an audio essay, a piece
of sound art that you feel describes a sonic community, which is to say an example of how a
community uses sound (speech or music or even silence) to express or enact its identity You
may use any mode of sound representation/reproduction you like - an audiotape, a digital
file, sound notation, but bring it in a form that can be presented to the class. Read the
articles under essential reading and be prepared to discuss what we could understand by
the concepts soundscape and acoustemology in the case you present.

Essential Reading
Chuengsatiansup, K. 2004. “Sense, Symbol, and Soma: Illness experience in the
soundscape of everyday life” Journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Vol 23, No 3.
Feld, S, and D Brenneis. 2004 "Doing Anthropology in Sound." American Ethnologist 31, no.
4: 461-474.
Samuels, D, L Meintjes, A M Ocha and T Porcello. 2010.“Soundscapes, towards a sounded
anthropology”. Annual. Review. Anthropology. 39:329–45
Feld, S. 2000. “A Rainforest Acoustemology.” In Bull, M. Sounding out the City: Personal
Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Berg Press.

General Reading
Schafer, R. Murray. 1993. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the
World. Destiny Books, pp. 3-99.
Rice, T. 2003. “Soundselves: An Acoustemology of sound and self in the Edinburgh Royal
Infirmary” Journal Anthropology Today Vol 19 No 4
Stoller, P. 1989. "Sound in Songhay Possession, Sound in Songhay Sorcery." In The Taste
of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press. pp. 102-122.
Thompson, E. 2004 "The Origins of Modern Acoustics." In The Soundscape of Modernity:
Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press pp. 13.-57.
Corbin, A.1998. Village Bells – Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth Century French
Countryside. transl Martin Thom, New York: Columbia University Press.
Schafer, M. 1977. The Tuning of the World. Alfred A Knopf Press.
Thompson, Emily. 2002. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the
Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933. Cambridge: The MIT Press,
Bijsterveld K. 2001. “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age: Technology and
Symbolism of Sound in European and North American Noise Abatement Campaigns, 1900-
40” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 31, No. 1. pp. 37-70
Kolber, D. 2002. Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk: shifting perspectives in
real world music. Organised Sound Vol 7 No1. 41–43
Ouzman, S. 2001. Seeing is deceiving: Rock Art and the Non-Visual. World Archaeology,
Vol 3, No 2, Archaeology and Aesthetics, 237-256.
Ridington, R. (1983) “In Doig Peoples’ Ears: Portrait of a Changing Community in Sound.” in
Anthropologica Vol 25, No 1.
Feld, S. 1996. “Waterfalls of Place: An acoustemology of place resounding in Bosavai,
Papua New Guinea.” In Feld, S & K. Basso, eds. Senses of Place. School of American
Research Advanced Seminar Series.
Arkette, S. 2004. Sounds Like City. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 21(1): 159–168
Regev, M. 1986. The Musical Soundscape as a contest area, Media Culture and Society.
Vol 8. 343-55.
Kun, J. 2000. The Aural Border Theatre Journal Vol 52 1–21
Emmerson, S. 1999. Aural landscape: musical space. Organised Sound Vol No 2. 135–40
Feld, S. 1982. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression.
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Blesser, B and Linda-Ruth Salter (eds) 2006. Spaces Speak, Are you Listening ? MIT Press.

Lecture 9 Sound Technology

Soundscape is a concept which has been criticised for not taking into account being
dependent upon and even determined by the technology and techniques of the sound
production process and the mediated nature of sound transmission. In this session we will
investigate the technological and political arguments that have been made for a more critical
attitude in the use and appreciation of sound recordings and for our understanding of the
use of sound media (the radio, the walkman/i-pod etc). We will discuss the technology of
sound relay or reproduction in connection with these two matters: the question of retrieving
sound from other places and times.

Recordings: Toshiya Tsunoda ‘Extract from Field Recording archive no 2’; Jake Tillson,
‘City, Picture Fiction; Ultrared, ‘Structural Adjustments’; Rupert Cox ‘The Sounds of
Freedom’.
Tutorial Task: Listen to the recordings listed below and available on the web. Choose a
particular example and think through how your particular example shapes or is shaped by its
intellectual/political economic context. Also, how do these contexts create ethical
consequences for the act of listening? Use the essential readings and be prepared to refer to
them in class.

Website recordings: Recordings from ESA / NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

1. Radar echoes from Titan's surface, 2005. (MP3)
2. Speeding through Titan's haze, 2005. (MP3)
The Conet Project. Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. Irdial-Discs, 1997. [Listen to
audio or download mp3s from the Internet Archive.]
Cobra Mist, Emily Richardson.http://apl.myzen.co.uk/films/by_date/films_2008/cob_mist
Alvin Lucier, I am sitting in a Room, http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/adlib/stories/s873159.htm
Disinformation, Joe Banks.
http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/002/001/articles/jbanks/index.php
Australian wire music by Allan Lamb (http://www.abc.net.au/arts/adlib/stories/s873159.htm)

Films: (clips will be shown from the following films)

David Lynch, Eraserhead, Francis Coppola Apocalypse Now. Wolfgang Peterson Das Boat.
George Gittoes, Rampage.

Essential Reading
Helmreich, S. 2007. “An anthropologist underwater: Immersive soundscapes, submarine
cyborgs, and transductive ethnography.”American Ethnologist, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 621–641
Hirschkind, C. 2001. "The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary
Egypt." American Ethnologist 28, no. 3: 623-649.
Mody, C. C. M. 2005. "The Sounds of Science: Listening to Laboratory Practice." Science,
Technology, and Human Values 30, no. 2: 175-198.
Cox, R. “Sounds of Freedom”/ Flagg Miller “Lessons from the Art of an Egg: The Ethics of
Sound in the Osama bin Laden Audiotape Collection.”/ David Novack. “Listening to
Kamagasaki”. Helmreich, S. 2010. “Listening Against Soundscapes” in Anthropology News,
(special issue on Sound and Music) American Anthropological Association. Vol 51
Rice, T. 2009.”Learning to listen: ausculation and the transmission of auditory knowledge.”
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol 16.. pp41-61.

General Reading
Lysloff, Rene. 1997. “Mozart in Mirror Shades: Ethnomusicology, Technology and the
Politics of Representation”. Journal Ethnomusicology. Vol 41, No2.
Porcello, Thomas. 1998. “Tails Out”: Social Phenomenology and the Ethnographic
Representation of Technology in Music-Making. Journal Ethnomusicology Vol 42, No 3.
Greene, P. 1999. “Sound Engineering in a Tamil Village: Playing Audio Cassetes as
Devotional Performance” Journal Ethnomusicology, Vol 43, No 3.
Feld, S. 1987. “Dialogic Editing: Interpreting How Kaluli Read Sound and Sentiment”.
Cultural Anthropology, Vol 2, No 2.
Lee, T.S. 1999. “Technology and the production of Islamic Space: The Call to Prayer in
Singapore” Journal Ethnomusicology, Vol 43, No 1.
Benschop, Ruth. 2007. “Memory machines or musical instruments?: Soundscapes,
recording technologies and reference.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 10; 485-502
Sterne, J. 1997. “Sounds like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architronics
of Commercial Space” Journal Ethnomusicology Vol 41, No 1
Gammeltoft, Tine. 2007. “Sonography and Sociality: Obstetrical Ultrasound Imaging in Urban
Vietnam.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Volume 21. Issue 2. pp133 – 153.
Anderson Sutton. 1996. “Interpreting Electronic Sound Technology in the conctemporary
Javanese soundscape.” Journal Ethnomusicology, Vol 40, No.2
Polunin, I. 1970. “Visual and Sound Recording Apparatus in Ethnographic Fieldwork.” In
Current Anthropology, Vol 11, No 1.
Schmidt Horning S. 2004. Engineering the Performance: Recording Engineers, Tacit
Knowledge and the Art of Controlling Sound. Social Studies of Science 34/5(October) 703–
731
Rawson, E. 2006. Perfect Listening: Audiophilia, Ambiguity, and the Reduction of the
Arbitrary. The Journal of American Culture. Volume 29, Number 2.
Sterne, J. 2003. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Duke Univ.
Press.
Krims, A. 2001. Marxism, Urban Geography and Classical Recording: An alternative to
Cultural Studies. Music Analysis, 20/iii 347-363.
Skuse, A. 2005. “Enlivened Objects: The Social Life, Death and Rebirth of Radio as
Commodity in Afghanistan” Journal of Material Culture Vol. 10(2): 123–137.
Kun, J D. 2000. The Aural Border. Theatre Journal 52 1–21
Tacchi, J. 2002. “Radio Texture: Between Self and Others.” In Askew, K and R. Wilk (eds)
2002. The anthropology of media: a reader. Blackwells Publishing.
Spitulnik, D. 2002. “Mobile Machines and Fluid Audiences: Rethinking Reception through
Zambian Radio Culture.” In Ginsberg, F and L. Abu Lughood (eds.) 2002. Media Worlds:
Anthropology on New Terrain. University of California Press
Geraint Ellis, G. 2000. “Stereophonic nation. The bilingual sounds of Cool Cymru FM”
International journal of Cultural studies Volume 3(2): 188–198.

Lecture 10 – Sound-walking
Sound is discernable by the movement and pressure of air and mediated fundamentally by
the mechanism of the body in motion. It is the perceiving body over and above the operation
of recording technology that makes sound knowable and known. ‘Sound-walking’ is a
practice that utilises the body as a perceiving mechanism and is not necessarily dependent
on the exigencies of the sound recorder. It may have the potential to become a particular
ethnographic craft or skill as well as a form of political activism and protest. It has important
antecedent forms in Walter Benjamin’s flaneur and the practises of the Situationists. In this
last session we will look at the work of some sound-walking artists and consider how the
environment, particularly the urban environment, becomes knowable not through one sense
acting alone but by the flow of elements (air and light) acting with and against each other.
The experience, through sound, of the world in motion, lends itself to flights of the
imagination, to reverie, to the investigation of memory; but may also be a form of political
engagement.

Recordings
Toby Butler, Memoryscape; Janet Cardiff, The Walk Book; Edmund Eagan, The Course: a
sonic ambience of Southern Ontario Trains; Steve Feld, Primo Maggio Anarchico; Chris De
Laurenti ‘N 30’;

Film: London Orbital (Patrick Keillor 1994), Wim Wenders: Wings of Desire
Thomas Riedelsheimer The Touch of Sound.

Website: http://www.cardiffmiller.com/

Essential Reading
Butler, T. 2006. “A walk of art: the potential of the sound walk as practice in cultural
geography” Social & Cultural Geography, 7:6, 889 – 908
Pinder, D. 2001: “Ghostly Footsteps: Voices, Memories and Walks in the City. Cultural
Geographies; 8; 1
Cox, R. 2008. Wandering without purpose: auditory journeys through History and Memory in
Nagasaki. Special issue of ‘Journeys’: ‘The Map is not the territory, Mind, Body and
Imagination as Globally Human. Edited by Andrew Irving.

General Reading
Butler T. 2007. “Memoryscape: How Audio Walks Can Deepen Our Sense of Place by
Integrating Art, Oral History and Cultural Geography”. Geography Compass :10.11
Bassett, Keith. 2004. “Walking as an Aesthetic Practice and a Critical Tool: Some
Psychogeographic Experiments.” Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 28: 3, 397 —
410
Marla Carlson, M. 2006. “Looking, Listening, and Remembering: Ways to Walk New York
after 9/11”. Theatre Journal 58. 395–416.
Ingold, T. 2004. “Culture on the Ground: The World Perceived through the Feet”. Journal of
Material Culture, Vol 9 (3): 315-340. Sage Publications.
Pinder, R. 2007.”On movement and stillness”. Ethnography 2007; 8; 99
Butler T and Graeme Miller. 2005. “Cultural geographies in practice: Linked: a landmark in
sound, a public walk of art”. Cultural Geographies 12; 77
Pinder D. 2005. Arts of urban exploration Cultural Geographies 12; 383.
Cohen E and Cynthia Willis. 2004. “One nation under radio: digital and public memory after
september 11”. New Media & Society Vol6(5):591–610
Thibaud, J. 2004. “The Sonic Composition of the City.” in Erlman, V, ed. Hearing Cultures
Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity. Berg Press.
Bull, M. 2000. “Sounding out the city: an auditory epistemology of urban experience.” Ch 9 in
Bull, M. Sounding out the City. Berg Press.
Bull, M. 2000. Sounding out the City. Berg Press
Bull, M. 2004. Automobility and the Power of Sound. Vol 21(4/5): 243–259
Journal of Theory, Culture & Society.
Corringham, V. 2006. Urban Song Paths: place resounding. Organised Sound 11(1): 27–35
Jenks C and Neves T. 2000. A Walk on the Wild Side: Urban Ethnography Meets the
Flâneur. Cultural Values, Vol 4, No 1, January.1-17
Wylie, J. 2005. A single day’s walking: narrating self and landscape on the South West
Coast Path. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers No 30. 234–247.
Lucas, R. 2004. Inscribing the city: a flâneur in Tokyo, Anthropology Matters Journal, Vol 6
(1).
Edensor T. 2000. Walking in the countryside: reflexivity, embodied practices and ways to
escape Body and Society Vol 6. 81–96.
Dubow J 2001. Rites of passage: travel and the materiality of vision at the Cape of Good
Hope in Bender B and Winer M eds Contested landscapes: movement, exile and place Berg,
Oxford 142–61
Stewart K. 1996 A space on the side of the road: cultural poetics
Sebald W G. 1998 The rings of Saturn Harvill Press, London
Sinclair I. 1997 Lights out for the territory Granta, London
Sinclair I. 2003 London orbital Penguin, London
Solnit R. 2001 Wanderlust: a history of walking Verso, London