“The Sound of Society”: a Method for Investigating Sound Perception in Cairo

Abstract

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.

Towards a sonic ecology of urban life: ethnography of sound perception in Cairo

“…The purpose of the "Mics in the Ears" experiment was to get as close as possible to the sound perceptions of Cairo's residents in order to shed light on what constitutes a sensory experience of the city. To achieve this goal, we devised a new ethnographic tool as part of the sonic methodologies (Battesti forthcoming 2020) baptized "Mics in the Ears," which we describe in a previous article published in this same journal (Battesti and Puig 2016). The results obtained are particularly rich, and part of the material remains open to exploration, which is why we are submitting the whole set of audio and written data as supplementary material.…”

“…The work and results presented in this text expand on a previous article, of which it forms a second part. In the first article, we described a procedure and method for investigating sound perceptions, which we called "Mics in the Ears" (Battesti and Puig 2016;Battesti 2017). In short, the procedure consists in equipping the residents of a place, here the Egyptian capital Cairo, with binaural microphones that record sound during a walk along a familiar route.…”

“…The methodological procedure first enabled us to collect sound recordings in situ, as close as possible and specific to each resident's everyday urban experience (equipped with binaural microphones, the way a person moves, maneuvers his or her body in the urban space, is registered in the audio recordings). It then provided access to this natural language and to participants' reflections when listening to the recording of their own walk, as well as to their comments, which sometimes take the form of a sonic semantics of social life (Battesti and Puig 2016;Battesti 2017).…”

“…The recording campaigns were conducted between 2011 and 2013 in different neighborhoods of Cairo: Wast al-Balad (downtown), Duwiqa, Darb al-Ahmar, Bashtil, Garden City, Ghamra (see location map in supplementary material). For more detail on the methodological aspect, we refer you to our previous publications (Battesti and Puig 2016;Battesti 2017). In part 1 of this article, we present the data and analyze the results obtained with this procedure.…”

À la recherche des rythmes sonores d’un square menacé de Montréal

“…Le son possède sa propre charge subjective et son interprétation, tout comme l'interprétation de l'espace physique repose sur « [...] la conscience sociale de ceux qui l'expérimentent et l'habitent » (Arkette 2004 : 160) 4 . En tant que tel, le paysage sonore des parcs joue un rôle non négligeable dans leur appréciation (Whyte 1980 ;Tse et al 2012) et affecte à la fois les sens donnés aux lieux et comment les gens y déambulent (Battesti 2009 ;Battesti et Puig 2016). Par exemple, le bruit de l'eau peut évoquer la pureté, la fraîcheur, le renouvellement, l'éternité et la réincarnation, notre relation passée à la mer, les rituels anciens et les mythes longtemps oubliés (Schafer 2010(Schafer [1977).…”