In their previous work, the authors have demonstrated the importance of the acoustic dimension of everyday urban life in Cairo and showed how its ambiance is constituted as "social production." The next step was to proceed with its ethnography. In doing so, the first difficulty we encountered was with the cities inhabitants' limited ability to verbalize their experience of this sensory dimension. The authors thus developed an original methodology by testing an experimental procedure-"Mics in the Ears"-designed to provide access to the "natural language of sounds." Two tendencies emerged from this ethnography of acoustic ambiances in the Egyptian megalopolis: a socialization of sound, and a sonorization of Vincent Battesti is an anthropologist and researcher in the research unit Eco-anthropology and Ethnobiology (CNRS UMR 7206) at the Musée de l'Homme for the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, New York. His research explores themes related to ethnoecology of Saharan oases and sound dimensions of urban life, especially in Egypt.

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This study on sound perception in Cairo uses a methodological procedure described in a previous issue of this journal [11(3)]. The procedure involves equipping inhabitants of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, with binaural microphones that record the surrounding urban sounds during one of their daily journeys (without the researcher). Participants later describe and comment on the sounds while listening to the recording. Analysis of this material allowed us first to establish an organized lexicon in categories. We identified a structured "natural language of sounds". The data obtained reveal covert categories that describe three key domains of urban life: the active city, the city in movement, and the relational city. A principal finding is that sound perception systematically relates sounds to their origin, i.e. both the source and its social situation. This socialization of sound led us to the notion of "sound constructs" as products of an immediate socialization of the perception of sound. Experiment clarifies how perception operates in Cairo, notably through territory differentiation using sonic saliences and soundmarks. Finally, we propose a "sonic ecology" of the city: how residents collectively experience the sound dimensions of their urban territory, navigate between very different territories, recognize them and respond to them.

http://vbat.org/spip.php?article58International audienceIn the oases of Jerid (S.W. of Tunisia), the human sway is revealed through various practices and symbolic representations. Spatial and temporal activities are combined to create scales of the palm-grove. The intensity of the human presence is visible in the meticulousness of the agricultural activities; this is displayed also through the "sociabilities" practised in the gardens, the way to give name to places, or the modes of aesthetic expressions, even in the work.Dans les oasis du Jérid (Sud-Ouest tunisien), l'emprise humaine se révèle à travers diverses pratiques et représentations symboliques. Les spatialités et les temporalités se combinent pour créer les échelles de la palmeraie. L'intensité de la présence humaine est tangible dans la minutie des activités agricoles ; elle transparaît également à travers les sociabilités qu'abritent les jardins, les manières de nommer les lieux, ou encore les diverses modalités d'expression esthétique qui se font jour, même au sein du travail