“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 the social. Implicit in residents’ descriptions of their city’s sounds is an approach that remains to be fully developed: an acoustic ecology of the city of Cairo.