Steven speaks on knowing through relations and how this insists that one does not simply “acquire” knowledge but, rather, that one knows through an ongoing cumulative and interactive acoustemology. I agree completely. He speaks on that knowledge isn’t just through attempting to know but through ongoing interaction with the environment as the tribe’s people, he was surrounded were doing.
He also mentions that while the idea of an anthropology of sound was meant to help decolonize ethnomusicology’s disciplinary paradigms, the presence of”anthropology” still made it too human-centric; the prepositional “of” marked too much distance and separation, and the nominal “sound” seemingly made it more about propagation than perception, more about structure than process. It was a case of”the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”
Again another great point that struck me about understanding the study of sound. And Steven makes a point here that we are still involving ourselves as humans in studies. Not understanding sound and its relationship with the environment and objects but rather its relationship with us. Deeming that all ideas stem from the human interpretation of sound. That sound doesn’t exist within itself.
Unlike acoustic ecology, acoustemology is about the experience and agency of listening histories, understood as relational and contingent, situated and reflexive.
Likewise, it refuses to replace visualist ocularcentrism with sonocentrism as any sort of determining force of essentialist sensory master plans. I also agree, one isn’t better than the other and he speaks that his goals aren’t to skew the reader’s views into believing sound is more important. That sonocentrism is better than ocularcentrism.
Overall I do believe this article allowed me a deeper understanding of knowledge within sound itself and learning from sound. That there isn’t one way of learning. Sound itself can teach us our surroundings, specific ques that dictate problems in our environment. Difficult for some of us that live in urban environments to imagine this, although we in urban environments have different ques than others for example living in a rainforest.