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Society for Cultural Anthropology
Oral Presentation Session
Florian Grond
postdoctoral fellow
McGill University
Based on ongoing fieldwork with a blind community organization in Montreal, this presentation
explores the potential of binaural recordings as an ethnographic tool. Binaural recordings are a
technique of recording sounds that puts a microphone on each ear of the person who records , in
order to capture closely what she hears. The recordings create a strongly immersive 3-D sound
sensation when listening to it over headphones. In line with recent studies on the anthropology of
sound, we state that binaural recordings allow ethnographers to get closer to others’ sensory
experience s of listening and to undo asymmetries between "able d" ethnographers and "dis-
abled" subjects of study. However, we also consider that binaural recordings can enrich
participant observation, the core method of our discipline. Participant observation relies on
different sensory modalities to interact with specific environments and various technologies of
data collection such as pens and notebooks, audio recorders and video cameras that are
associated to these modalities. We argue that, in contrast with these technologies, binaural
recording s not only facilitate data collection, but also capture the ethnographer’s listening
experience during fieldwork, her fieldwork soundscape. This opens new possibilities for the
practice of ethnography. For example, by re-listening to fieldwork soundscapes the ethnographer
attunes to affects associated to the experience of participant observation, which could contribute
to the thickening of her descriptions and enrichment of her reflections.