aurality, film sound, listening, Music, recording technology, Sound Art 

A generation of scholars in multiple disciplines has investigated sound in ways that are productive for anthropologists. We introduce the concept of soundscape as a modality for integrating this work into an anthropo- logical approach. We trace its history as a response to the technological mediations and listening practices emergent in modernity and note its absence in the anthropological literature. We then trace the history of technology that gave rise to anthropological recording practices, film sound techniques, and experimental sound art, noting productive inter- weavings of these threads. After considering ethnographies that explore relationships between sound, personhood, aesthetics, history, and ide- ology, we question sound’s supposed ephemerality as a reason for the discipline’s inattention. We conclude with a call for an anthropology that more seriously engages with its own history as a sounded disci- pline and moves forward in ways that incorporate the social and cultural sounded world more fully. 

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-anthro-022510-132230