Listening

Abstract

This review examines listening as both an aspect of everyday sensory experience and a specialized mode of attention, analyzing how different cultural frameworks and social practices shape the ways people attend to, interpret, and respond to speech and sound. Drawing on recent ethnographic studies, it demonstrates how different “genres of listening” emerge through processes of professional training, political engagement, and technological mediation. The article analyzes how experts—from psychoanalysts to forensic specialists—cultivate specialized modes of listening, while also examining how listening shapes political contexts. Particular attention is paid to the methodological challenges of studying listening ethnographically and to the role of listening in anthropological research itself. By highlighting how listening practices are implicated in processes of social differentiation, professional authority, and political participation, this review advances our understanding of reception as a critical domain of anthropological inquiry, one that complements the field's traditional focus on speech and speaking.