His Masters Voice, painting by F. Barraud, 1898
His Masters Voice, painting by F. Barraud, 1898

His Masters Voice, painting by F. Barraud, 1898
Terrain (online), section “Symposia and Debates”.

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This essay identifies and describes three ways of listening that are available to all human beings. Beforehand, we argue that the concept of “sound”, as borrowed from acoustics and commonly used in anthropology, is too vague and too limited. In order to be able to understand the full range of human auditory experiences as found in ethnography, as well as the social interactions which they afford, we propose a distinction of at least three postures of listening. We define these as “indexical”, “structural” and “enchanted”, by contrasting their interactional salience in various settings. The auditory “things” that exist for each of the three stances (their ontologies) are also shown to be different. This trichotomy provides a promising theoretical framework for some longstanding problems in anthropology. After discussing some critical questions and possible shortcomings of our model, we conclude by looking closely at one of these issues: the definition of “music” and its ethnographic relevance throughout the world.