Sight and sound are equally crucial to our understanding of the world, yet the visual has dominated discussions of cultural experience. The very way we relate to, and think about, our everyday world has been influenced by this emphasis on sight over sound. Providing a definitive overview of an emerging field, this pioneering reader is the first to redress a glaring imbalance by investigating how auditory culture subtly and profoundly impacts on our everyday lives.

From the evocative tolling of village bells to the grating rattle of exhaust pipes, what we hear influences how we feel and what we do. As technology advances, the world has become an increasingly noisy, confusing and disturbing place. The recent addition of mobile phones alone has irrevocably changed our auditory experiences. In order to retreat from jarring sounds, we seek new sounds sounds that calm, block, soothe. Beginning with the role of sound in historical and social thought, The Auditory Culture Reader moves on to consider city noise, music, voices, and new technologies and medias of sound. It explores, for example, the sectarian sounds of North Belfast, sounds of the powwow amongst Native Americans, football chants, recorded sermons, and the power and influence of the DJs voice.

Filling a significant gap, this groundbreaking and multidisciplinary reader combines classic texts, interviews and original contributions by leading social and cultural theorists. It represents a landmark statement on a surprisingly overlooked aspect of our everyday experience.

About the editors

Michael Bull is Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Sussex.
Les Back Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Contents

Dedications
Acknowledgements
CONTENTS PAGE
1.Introduction: Into Sound by the editors
Thinking about Sound
2. Introduction.
3. Murray Schafer. Open Ears.
4. Leigh Eric Schmidt. Hearing Loss
5. Don Ihde .Auditory Imagination
6. Steven Connor Clapping
7. Douglas Kahn. The Sound of Music
8. Paul Filmer Songtime: Sound Culture, Rhythm and Sociality


Histories of Sound
9. Introduction
10. Alain Corbin. The Auditory Markers of the Village.
11. Bruce Smith. Tuning into London c.1600.
12. Mark Smith. Listening to the Heard Worlds of Antebellum America.
13. Karin Bijsterfeld. The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age: Technology and Symbolism of Sound in European and North American Noise Abatement Campaigns, 1900-40.
14. Jonathan Sterne Medicine's Acoustic Culture: Mediate Auscultation, the Stethoscope and the 'Autopsy of the Living.'

Anthropologies of Sound
15. Inroduction.
16. Steven Feld. A Rainforest Acoustemology.
17. Cora Bender. Performing Patriotism in Native North America: Objibwa Powwow-Sounds and the Paradoxes of Identity.
18. Paul Moore. Sectarian Sound and Cultural Identity in Northern Ireland.
19. Jo Tacchi Nostalgia and Radio Sound.

Sounds in the City
20. Introduction.
21. Fran Tonkiss Aural Postcards
22. Les Back. Sounds of the Stadium
23. Jean Paul Thibaud The Sonic Composition of the City
24. Caroline Bassett 'How Many Movements'
25. Michael Bull Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Study of Automobile Habitation.

Living and Thinking with Music
26. Introduction.
27. Paul Gilroy Between the Blues and the Blues Dance. Some soundscapes of the black atlantic.
28. Vic Seidler Diasporic Sounds. Dis/located Sounds
29. Sanjay Sharma The Sounds of Alterity
30. Stuart Hall Calypso Kings
31. Susan McClary "Thinking Blues" 'Bessie Smith'
32. Les Henry Interview with Les Back: 'chatting for a change'.
33. Julian Henriques Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System
34. Richard Sennett Resistance

Afterword
35. Hillel Schwarz. The Indefensible Ear

List of Contributors