Towards a praxiology of sound environment

Résumé En

Instead of dealing with the aesthetic aspects of the acoustic environment, the evolution of listening habits or cultural representations of urban noise, sound will be considered as a means for action and social practice. This paper tries to develop a praxiological approach to sound. To do so, two major obstacles must be overcome. On the one hand, it is necessary to challenge the three main socially recognized categories of sounds: music, speech and noise. Some fields of research have widened their domains or even reconsidered their basic premise in order to integrate certain phenomena previously neglected by the traditional scientific disciplines. We will convey that even if these new perspectives bring us closer to our daily experience of sounds, they still remain insufficient to fully account for sounding as acting. On the other hand, the pragmatic dimension of the acoustic environment has been largely under-estimated until now. Most research studies focus on symbolic, aesthetic or cultural aspects of audition, but very rarely recognizes it as a practical and contextual accomplishment. From this point of view, anthropology of everyday sounds could take advantage of what sociology of action and ecological psychology have to offer in this matter. It becomes more and more urgent to open the field of acoustics to the most recent results of human sciences. How is it possible to consider sounding as acting ? How does the acoustic environment afford and implement coordinated action ? What is the relationship between everyday sounds and ordinary practices ? These questions aim at overcoming a purely representational approach to the acoustic environment and raise a number of issues that can be briefly reviewed