Sound and Noise: A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life

Sound and Noise: A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life

Sound and Noise: A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life

Sound and Noise: A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life

Hardcover

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Overview

This book is about how you listen and what you hear, about how to have a dialogue with the sounds around you. Marcia Jenneth Epstein gives readers the impetus and the tools to understand the sounds and noise that define their daily lives in this groundbreaking interdisciplinary study of how auditory stimuli impact both individuals and communities. Epstein employs scientific and sociological perspectives to examine noise in multiple contexts: as a threat to health and peace of mind, as a motivator for social cohesion, as a potent form of communication and expression of power. She draws on a massive base of specialist literature from fields as diverse as nursing and neuroscience, sociology and sound studies, acoustic ecology and urban planning, engineering, anthropology, and musicology, among others, synthesizing and explaining these findings to evaluate the ubiquitous effects of sound in everyday life. Epstein investigates speech and music as well as noise and explores their physical and cultural dimensions. Ultimately she argues for an engaged public dialogue on sound, built on a shared foundation of critical listening, and provides the understanding for all of us to speak and be heard in such a discussion. Sound and Noise is a timely evaluation of the noise that surrounds us, how we hear it, and what we can do about it.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780228003885
Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date: 10/30/2020
Pages: 448
Sales rank: 1,156,222
Product dimensions: 9.00(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Marcia Jenneth Epstein is a musicologist and historian at the University of Calgary.

Table of Contents

Tables and Figures ix

Foreword xi

Preface in Mid-Pandemic xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Abbreviations xix

Introduction 3

1 Life without Earlids 10

2 Sound Science 19

3 Studying Sound 35

4 Thunder, Rooster, Hammer, Hum 45

5 Why Noise Annoys 58

6 The Hearing Body 80

7 The Mind's Ear 89

8 Born Loud 108

9 Growing Up Loud 122

10 Working with Noise 142

11 Quiet, Please: Noise Abatement 163

12 Power and Danger 175

13 The Cacophony of the Commons 192

14 Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Noise and the Law 217

15 Hearing and Healing: Soundscapes in Health Care 238

16 Creating a Culture of Listening 252

17 Tuning a Future 275

Notes 297

References 315

Index 383

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