Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Soundmaking and the making of worlds and territories: a case of street football games in Quinta da Piedade

2019; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 23; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649365.2019.1704046

1470-1197

Daniel Paiva, Herculano Cachinho,

Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

This paper presents a geoethnographic study of street football games in Lisbon's Metropolitan Area. The study explores how soundmaking is used by young people to generate micro-worlds and territories in street football games in urban space. The insights of the study contribute toward the field of sonic geographies by demonstrating that directing our focus away from the act of listening can provide novel insights into the role that sound plays in making space and connecting subjects. We present four related arguments to sustain this claim. First, we argue that human soundmaking must be understood as a whole, including the making of lexical and non-lexical, representational and non-representational sounds. Secondly, we argue that human soundmaking is closely related to listening, even if this relationship surpasses consciousness, but it is by no means a mere consequence of listening. Third, we show that human soundmaking is interwoven with everyday acts of worldmaking. Lastly, we posit that by taking part in everyday worldmaking, soundmaking also plays a significant role in the production of everyday urban territories. With this in mind, we point future directions for the field of sonic geographies.