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 'sounding'; health and environmental science

Silencing and the politics of sound

Ownership and intellectual property

 

Readings/Bibliography

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.

Brabec De Mori, Bernd, and Anthony Seeger. ‘Introduction: Considering Music, Humans, and Non-Humans’. Ethnomusicology Forum 22, no. 3 (December 2013): 269–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2013.844527 .

Feld, Steven.  Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression. Third edition. Thirtieth anniversary edition with a new introduction. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012.

Goodale, Jane C. To sing with pigs is human: the concept of person in Papua New Guinea. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. Howes, David. ‘The Misperception of the Environment: A Critical Evaluation of the Work of Tim Ingold and an Alternative Guide to the Use of the Senses in Anthropological Theory’. Anthropological Theory 22, no. 4 (December 2022): 443–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996211067307

 Ingold, Tim. ‘Cutting through and Going along: A Comment on Knowing by Singing’. American Anthropologist 124, no. 4 (December 2022): 885–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13786 .

 Mirza, Saadia. ‘Glacial Sensing: Entanglements of Sound and Vision’. Visual Anthropology Review, 23 November 2023, var.12312. https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12312 .

Rice, Tom, and Steven Feld. ‘Questioning Acoustemology: An Interview with Steven Feld’. Sound Studies 7, no. 1 (2 January 2021): 119–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2020.1831154

Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, Vt: Destiny Books [u.a.], 2006.

Seeger, Anthony. ‘Focusing Perspectives and Establishing Boundaries and Power: Why the Suyá/Kïsêdjê Sing for the Whites in the Twenty-First Century’. Ethnomusicology Forum 22, no. 3 (2013): 362–76.

Sykes, “The Anthropocene and Music Studies,”. Ethnomusicology Review 22, no. 1 (2020): 1–2.Taylor, Hollis. Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird. Music, Nature, Place. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2017.

Veeraraghavan, Lee. ‘What Is “Heard” at a Pipeline Hearing?: The Gerrymandering of Aurality in British Columbia, Canada’. American Anthropologist, 2 March 2024, aman.13965. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13965 .

 Weaver, Lara. ‘Listening to and through Petrosonics’. Sound Studies 9, no. 2 (3 July 2023): 311–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2023.2238956 .

Further readings and PDFs are available on Virtuale.

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. 2000 words, and an original field recording, containing sounds collected by the student which are to be disucssed in the essay. Recording and essay must engage with themes from the course, and must be submitted at least one week before the examination. The sound recording should be stored online on a platform such as soundcloud, and the essay should contain a link to the recording.

The exam will also include questions on the course as a whole.

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

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).

Be informed that the use of generative artificial intelligence is considered a form of plagiarism.

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 who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD), must first contact the appropriate office: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students .

Office hours

See the website of Marc Andrew Brightman