Noise as “sound out of place”: investigating the links between Mary Douglas’ work on dirt and sound studies research

Hugh Pickering

“Noise” is an important subject in sound studies research. However, due in large part to the fact that judgements about what constitutes noise are highly subjective, researchers have often struggled to define it. Where attempts have been made, many have settled on a definition of noise as “sound out of place,” a reformulation of Mary Douglas’ definition of “dirt” as “matter out of place” (Douglas 1966: 44). Beyond this, however, no effort has been directed towards exploring the link between dirt and noise or seeing how far the analogy between the two extends. This article corrects this omission by undertaking a close reading of Douglas’ writing on “dirt” and linking it to contemporary sound studies research. It argues that far more than simply giving rise to the definition “sound out of place,” Douglas’ classic anthropological work can be used as the basis for an integrated “theory of noise,” deepening our understanding of what it means when we describe a sound as “noise” and drawing attention to the ambiguous, transgressive and dangerous qualities and potentials of noise.

Conclusion: a Dirty Theory of Noise

References

Atkinson, Roland (2007). “Ecology of Sound: The Sonic Order of Urban Space.” Urban Studies 44/10: 1905-1917.

Attali, Jacques (1985). Noise: The Political Economy of Music (trans. Brian Massumi). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bailey, Peter (2004). “Breaking the Sound Barrier.” In Mark M. Smith (ed.), Hearing History: A Reader (pp. 23-35). Athena, GA: University of Georgia Press.

Bijsterveld, Karin (2003). “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age.” In Michael Bull and Les Back (eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader (pp. 165-189). New York: Berg.

Bijsterveld, Karin (2008). Mechanical Sound: technology, culture, and public problems of noise in the twentieth century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burke, Peter (1978). Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. London: Temple Smith.

Calder, Jenni (1977). The Victorian Home. London: Batsford.

Chandola, Tripta (2012). “Listening into others: moralizing the soundscapes in Delhi.” International Development Planning Review 34/4: 391-408.

Chang, Kevin O’Brien and Wayne Chen (1998). Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Chapman, Mark (2014). Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cockayne, Emily (2007). Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England 1600-1770. Bury St. Edmunds: St. Edmundsbury Press Ltd.

Davis, Stephen and Peter Simon (1977). Reggae Bloodlines: In Search of the Music and Culture of Jamaica. London: Heinemann Educational Books.

Destrée, Pauline (2013). “‘Dirty Dirt’ and sonic relationality: The politics of noise in a London estate community.” Ethnographic Encounters 3/2.

Douglas, Mary (1966). Purity and Danger. London: Routledge.

Douglas, Mary (1968). “Pollution.” In David L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (pp. 336-341). London: Macmillan.

Douglas, Mary (1975). Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Elbow, Peter (1993). “The Uses of Binary Thinking.” Journal of Advanced Composition 13/1: 52-76.

Erlmann, Veit (ed.) (2004). Hearing Cultures: essays on sound, listening and modernity

Oxford: Berg.

Fardon, Richard (2013). “Citations Out of Place.” Anthropology Today 29/1: 25-26.

Feld, Steven (1990). Sound and Sentiment: birds, weeping, poetics, and song in Kaluli expression. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Feld, Steven (1996). “Waterfalls of Song: an acoustemology of place resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea.” In Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place (pp.91-135). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Feld, Steven (2003). “A Rainforest Acoustemology.” In Michael Bull and Les Back (eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader (pp. 223-39). Oxford: Berg.

Friedner, Michele, and Helmreich, Stefan (2012). “Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies.” The Senses & Society 7/1: 72-86.

Goddard, Michael, Benjamin Halligan and Paul Hegarty (eds.) (2012). Reverberations: The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise. London: Continuum.

Goldsmith, Mike (2012). Discord: The Story of Noise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Greene, Paul, D. and Thomas Porcello (eds.) (2005). Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.

Hegarty, Paul (2007). Noise/Music: A History. New York: Bloomsbury.

Helmreich, Stefan (2007). “An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, Submarine Cyborgs and Transductive Ethnography.” American Ethnologist 34/4: 621-641.

Helmreich, Stefan (2010). “Listening Against Soundscapes.” Anthropology News 51/9: 10.

Henriques, Julian (2003). “Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System Session.” In Michael Bull and Les Back (eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader (pp. 451-480). New York: Berg.

Ingold, Tim (2007). “Against soundscape.” In Angus Carlyle (ed.), Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice, (pp.10-13). Paris: Double Entendre.

Kaye, George W.C. (1931). “The Measurement of Noise.” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 26: 435-488.

Kahn, Douglas (2001). Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Keizer, Garret (2010). The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.

Kim-Cohen, Seth (2009). In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. New York: Continuum.

Levarie, Siegmund (1977). “Noise.” Critical Inquiry 4/1: 21-31.

Marriott, McKim (1966). “The Feast of Love.” In Milton Singer and Daniel H. H. Ingalls (eds.), Krishna: Myths, Rites and Attitudes (pp. 200-231). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Moore, Hilary (2007). Inside British Jazz: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation and Class. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Novak, David (2015). “Noise.” In David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny (eds.), Keywords in Sound: Towards a Conceptual Lexicon (pp. 125-138). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Noise Abatement Act (1997) (Jamaica).

Noise Act 1996 (UK).

Oosterbaan, Martijn (2009). “Sonic Supremacy: Sound, Space and Charisma in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro.” Critique of Anthropology 29/1: 81-104.

Passchier-Vermeer, Willy and Wim Passchier (2000). “Noise Exposure and Public Health.” Environmental Health Perspectives 108/1: 123-131.

Picker, John M. (2003). Victorian Soundscapes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Porcello, Thomas (2004). “Speaking of Sound: language and the professionalization of sound recording engineers.” Social Studies of Science 34/5: 733-58.

Roberts, Seb (2013). “Make a Joyous Noise: The Pentecostal Nature of American Noise Music.” In Michael Goddard, Benjamin Halligan and Nicola Spelman (eds.), Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music (pp. 107-120). New York: Bloomsbury.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1943). L’être et le néant. Paris: Gallimard.

Schafer, R. Murray (1977). The Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf.

Schwartz, Hillel (2004). “On Noise.” In Mark M. Smith (ed.), Hearing History: A Reader (pp. 51-53). Athena, GA. University of Georgia Press.

Thompson, Marie (2017). Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism. New York: Bloomsbury.

Turner, Victor (1964). “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In New Approaches to the Study of Religion (Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1964) (pp. 4-20). Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Weiner, Isaac (2014). Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism. New York: New York University Press.

Willis, Jonathan (2010). Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities. Farnham: Ashgate.

Tip

Tip