Everyone’s a different kind of alien: An anthropology of sound

Abstract

This editorial presents an introduction into the field of an anthropology of sound, with a special focus on the research strand of Historische Anthropologie or Historical Anthropology as developed at the Interdisciplinary Center for Historical Anthropology in Berlin since the 1980s. The differences of this approach to a philosophical or biological anthropology are highlighted via its main focus on the plasticity and transformation of cultural concepts of the human. This transformation is triggered by media, by history, by imagination, and by sensory experiences. This sensory plasticity of humanoid aliens like you or me is thus the starting point for an anthropology of sound.