B1848 - SOUND ECOLOGIES AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY

Learning outcomes

This course introduces a new perspective on sustainability by exploring anthropological ideas through case studies focusing on sound and music. Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have long been interested in how sound and music express different ways of being in the world, of experiencing and imagining existence, and of communicating across species divides. From ancient cosmological ideas about the music of the spheres to the spiritual and medical effects of trance, music may offer alternative ways of knowing and being. Imitation of birdsong and animal calls is important for forest peoples’ hunting techniques, and the ‘silent spring’ heralded the birth of the environmentalist movement. Drumbeats and protest songs animate demonstrations of resistance to environmental destruction. Technological listening and ‘sounding’ are among the tools scientists use to monitor biodiversity and environmental change. The course will train students to pay attention to the ways in which different senses can condition their perceptions of the environment, and to the part in which music and sound, and the materialities of musical production and sound making, play in human lived worlds. They will develop awareness of the insights that an acoustic approach can bring to questions of environmental sustainability. Students will also have the opportunity to learn to use sound recording to carry out ethnographic research.

Course contents

The course will cover topics such as the following: 

Music, ritual, and social organisation

Sound, knowledge, and the senses

Music, sound, and communication with nonhumans

Rhythm and trance

Sound and biodiversity science

Sound and environmentalism

Sound and music in political activism and protest

Materiality and sustainability of instruments

Ownership and intellectual property

 

Readings/Bibliography

Andreoni, Federico. “Music and Anthropogenic Climate Change: An Evolutionary Perspective.” Journal of the Council for Research on Religion 2, no. 1 (December 30, 2020): 124–36. https://doi.org/10.26443/jcreor.v2i1.42 .

Bakker, Karen J. The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Blacking, John 1973. How Musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Born, Georgina 2013. Music, sound and space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dimock, Wai Chee. “Chapter 5. Vanishing Sounds: Thoreau and the Sixth Extinction.” In Neither the Time nor the Place, edited by Christopher Castiglia and Susan Gillman, 95–106. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812298277-006 .

Frederika Malmström, Maria. “Making and Unmaking Masculinities in Cairo through Sonic Infrastructural Violence.” Urban Studies 59, no. 3 (February 2022): 591–607. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211020963 .

Helmreich, Stefan 2015. Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Howard, Keith, and Catherine Ingram, eds. Presence through Sound: Music and Place in East Asia. SOAS Studies in Music. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

Sieben, Alois. “‘Staying with’ the Anxiety: The Ecological Objet Petit a of Inuit Throat Singing.” In Lacan and the Environment, edited by Clint Burnham and Paul Kingsbury, 39–57. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67205-8_3 .

Sioli, Angeliki, and Elisavet Kiourtsoglou, eds. The Sound of Architecture: Acoustic Atmospheres in Place. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2022.

Stévance, Sophie. “Analysis of the Inuit Katajjaq in Popular Culture: The Canadian Throat-Singer Superstar Tanya Tagaq,” no. 2386 (2010).

Taylor, Hollis. Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird. Music, Nature, Place. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2017.

 

 

Teaching methods

The course will be taught on the Ravenna campus only. It will rely mostly upon the discussion of ethnographic case studies, and all students must therefore attend the classes. The sessions will alternate between lectures, followed by open discussion, and student-led seminars, based on readings for that week. Before lecture classes, all students must read at least three of the texts in advance, and prepare notes and a set of points for discussion. For seminar classes, two or more students will prepare a class presentation for each seminar, based on that week’s theme, using class readings, accompanied by slides, lasting between 8 and 10 minutes. This material will form the basis of an open discussion to delve more deeply into the themes that emerge.

Assessment methods

Assessment will be through oral examination, during which students must discuss an essay of c. 3000 words, or an original field recording, on a theme based on the course, to be agreed with Prof. Brightman, which they must submit at least one week before the examination.

Students will also present and discuss their own ethnographic sound recordings during the course, and these will be taken into account for final assessment.

The best essays will be published on the SCALa (anthropology lab)website. Students should demonstrate initiative and are strongly encouraged to explore readings beyond the course bibliography, and to draw on their own experience, fieldwork etc. The argument of the essay must engage with anthropological theory, and points must be substantiated with ethnographic evidence.

Students are also recommended to familiarise themselves with one or two detailed ethnographic case studies, which they can use to illustrate ideas discussed during the course.

As well as book length monographs, it is vital to explore recent work published in major journals of relevant disciplines (especially anthropology and ethnomusicology).

The ability of the student to achieve a coherent and comprehensive understanding of the topics addressed by the course, to critically assess them and to use an appropriate language will be evaluated with the highest grades (A = 27-30 con lode).

A predominantly mnemonic acquisition of the course's contents together with gaps and deficiencies in terms of language, critical and/or logical skills will result in grades ranging from good (B = 24-26) to satisfactory (C = 21-23).
A low level of knowledge of the course’s contents together with gaps and deficienciesin terms of language, critical and/or logical skills will be considered as ‘barely passing' (D = 18-20) or result in a fail grading (F).

Teaching tools

Students with a form of disability or specific learning disabilities (DSA) who are requesting academic adjustments or compensatory tools are invited to communicate their needs to the teaching staff in order to properly address them and agree on the appropriate measures with the competent bodies.

Office hours

See the website of Marc Andrew Brightman