Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork conducted among expert clinical listeners at a London Hospital, and following the recent burgeoning of anthropological work on auditory culture, this paper explores listening as an ethnographic methodology. It examines the implications which an acoustic ethnography might have for anthropological theory more generally.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is the product of a year of ethnographic fieldwork carried out at the cardiology unit of a London Hospital. The research involved participant observation with a group of expert stethoscopic listeners or 'auscultators', following them as they went about their work and taught the subtleties of their skill to medical students. The aim of the research was to examine the value of auditory knowledge and acoustic skill within the sensory economy of a modern Western hospital - an environment which theorists have tended to characterise as being pervaded by visual methods of clinical gazing. The research methodology involved an experiment in turning a medical technique of investigation into an ethnographic one. It took the stethoscope as a model, and organised brief moments of focused listening to structure an engagement with hospital life. Stethoscopic listening also provided the key juncture at which social interactions between doctors, patients and students were analysed. The resulting written ethnography was informed by a growing body of research in social anthropology which concerns itself with sensory perception and, in particular, with auditory culture. The proposed paper thus uses ethnographic material to inform and shape a discussion of listening as an ethnographic technique, and to raise questions about the sensory underpinnings of anthropological fieldwork and theory. As anthropologists become increasingly conscious of and sensitive to sensory politics, what will be the consequences for forms of anthropological knowledge? This paper seeks to turn the stethoscope back on the body of anthropological theory itself.