Laura Kunreuther | Bard College (original) (raw)

Papers by Laura Kunreuther

In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more refle... more In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more reflexively about our own professional ethics and the paradoxes of global capitalism within which both interpreters and anthropologists work. Like other forms of communicative labor, interpretation is often devalued, unrecognized, and uncompensated-a form of invisible labor. Professional language ideologies, some paradoxically perpetuated by the profession itself, contribute to interpreters' invisibility in their workplaces. Global and multilingual organizations depend on ideologies of transparency and the assumption that language transmission is easy; examining interpreters' labor ethnographically troubles these assumptions. Interpreters also confront an ethical tension in their position that mirrors a tension in anthropology: namely, between ideals of professional neutrality and analytic distance versus intentional advocacy. The study of interpreters offers ways to critically assess anthropologists' own professional practices and dig deeply into the contradictions of global capitalism.

The Invisible Labor and Ethics of Interpreting

Annual Review of Anthropology

In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more refle... more In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more reflexively about our own professional ethics and the paradoxes of global capitalism within which both interpreters and anthropologists work. Like other forms of communicative labor, interpretation is often devalued, unrecognized, and uncompensated—a form of invisible labor. Professional language ideologies, some paradoxically perpetuated by the profession itself, contribute to interpreters’ invisibility in their workplaces. Global and multilingual organizations depend on ideologies of transparency and the assumption that language transmission is easy; examining interpreters’ labor ethnographically troubles these assumptions. Interpreters also confront an ethical tension in their position that mirrors a tension in anthropology: namely, between ideals of professional neutrality and analytic distance versus intentional advocacy. The study of interpreters offers ways to critically assess anthrop...

Pandemic Field

Anthropology now, May 4, 2022

Publics of Heritage and Domestic Archives among Urban Nepalis of the Valley

Political Change and Public Culture in Post-1990 Nepal, 2016

Feeling the Voice Affect, Media, and Communication

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Emotion, 2019

Cultural Anthropology, 2018

This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is com... more This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is commonly associated with various forms of voicing—political speeches, shouting protesters, filibusters in the halls Congress, or heated debates in teashops, salons, and newspapers around the world. Voice thus often functions as a metaphor for political participation and representation. Political metaphors of voice are usually disembodied, and are rarely invoked in reference to the other forms for political utterance, sound, or even noise that make up the many practices of participatory democracy. In such contexts, the notion of voice depends not on a single speaker but on a mass collectivity to make any message heard. The South Asian term āwāj refers explicitly to both the sonic and metaphorical meanings of voice, which this article uses to provincialize more commonly used global metaphors of voice. I consider what democracy sounds like by following the pathways of āwāj through two examples...

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2010

This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the l... more This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the language ideology promoted by FM programs and the media ideology associated with FM radio. Speaking directly about one's desires is also critical to the process of learning to be a self-conscious individual with a complex interior life. Ideas about the direct voice are shaped by the world of international development, the emergence of new media and publics, and the democracy movements in Nepal. Through a focus on a UNICEF-sponsored youth program, I argue that direct speech and the direct voice critically shape radio listeners' subjectivity, creating the ideal neoliberal subject, at the level of the technology's material form and the content of its programs. [voice, radio, transparency, development, neoliberal subjectivity]j ola_1073 334..351 I n 2001, UNICEF initiated a new youth program that began broadcasting on radios throughout Nepal. The program, called Sāthi Sa nga Man Kā Kura, or "Chatting with My Best Friend," 1 was initially started with the objective of preventing drug use and HIV from spreading among Nepali youth. Its broader agenda, as stated on their website, is to provide a "confidential and open platform. .. where anyone can open their heart out on issues deeply related to them" (SSMK 2001). By talking with the radio hosts of this program about intimate matters, the program's designers suggest people will learn to "deal with problems on their own." Sāthi Sa nga Man Kā Kura (henceforth SSMK) seeks to create a person who can speak directly and intimately with strangers on the radio program, friends and family they meet regularly, and most importantly, with themselves. Ultimately, the program envisions that direct speech with others will have profound effects on listener's own self-perception. Communicating with others in this manner will lead to the development of an uninhibited person capable of taking matters into his or her own hands. The program thus aims to create the ideal neoliberal subject implicit in many international aid organizations like UNICEF: a subject who is self-sufficient and can make his or her own choices, often based on market logic. For such a subject, one's personal life-and most importantly, how one speaks about it-becomes the paradigmatic site of political transformation. 2 In this article, I suggest that the ideology of directness is associated with a linguistic ideology that centers on the idea and powers of the voice. Implicitly, I track the relation (and distinction) between voice and language (Feld et al. 2004; Fox 2004). I do this in three ways. In the first portion of the article, I show the voice to be both a figure and the medium of language. The voice is an index of presence and emotional connection, as well as a medium perceived to be more direct and closely tied to

Technologies of the Voice: FM Radio, Telephone, and the Nepali Diaspora in Kathmandu

Cultural Anthropology, 2006

... htm. 323 Page 2. 324 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Telecom and UTL (United Telecommunications Limited... more ... htm. 323 Page 2. 324 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Telecom and UTL (United Telecommunications Limited), two companies that provide telephone service throughout the country, as well as all Internet service providers. The ...

Earwitnesses and Transparent Conduits of Voice: On the Labor of Field Interpreters for UN Missions

Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 2020

Abstract:This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two cr... more Abstract:This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two critical missions in Nepal—the UN High Commission of Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) during and after the Maoist civil war. Interpreters negotiate two different ethical stances that resonate with contrasting ethical approaches in human rights and humanitarian work. As conduits of voice, an interpreter seeks to be neutral and impartial, a non-autonomous figure of mediation within the work of human rights. Field interpreters are also earwitnesses, who bear subjective responsibility for the knowledge they convey, through their work of listening to often-traumatic testimonies. To get at the paradoxes of between being both a neutral conduit of voice and a subjective earwitness, I explore several moments that interrupt the ideology of invisible transparency within which interpreters work. Despite these constant interruptions, the ideology of transparency continues to prevail, and interpreters’ embodied labor helps preserve such ideals.

Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2021

This article takes the form of a conversation between an anthropologist and seven interpreters wh... more This article takes the form of a conversation between an anthropologist and seven interpreters who worked for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) during its mission in Nepal (2005–2011). As any human rights or humanitarian worker knows quite well, an interpreter is essential to any field mission; they are typically the means by which ‘internationals’ are able to speak to any local person. Interpreters make it possible for local events to be transformed into a globally legible register of human rights abuses or cases. Field interpreters are therefore crucial to realizing the global ambitions of any bureaucracy like the UN. Yet rarely do human rights officers or academics (outside of translation studies) hear from interpreters themselves about their experience in the field. This conversation is an attempt to bridge this lacuna directly, in the hope that human rights practitioners and academics might benefit from thinking more deeply about the people upon wh...

Voicing Subjects

Voicing Subjects

Himalaya the Journal of the Association For Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2001

Since the jan andolan in 1990, there has been an impressive turn towards the public expression of... more Since the jan andolan in 1990, there has been an impressive turn towards the public expression of personal or social discontent. While this has been the subject around which new political parties form, it is also a vital part of the emerging media in Kathmandu. The commercial FM radio, for one, has become a place to voice one's troubles. So different are the FM programs from the state Radio Nepal, established in 1953, that people do not even refer to the media as the 'radio'. "I don't listen to Radio," many people told me. "I listen to FM." The FM radio presenters see themselves as proponents of democratic 'free speech', and many advertise their programs as potent salves to personal or social trouble. The boundaries of this specifically 'Kathmandu listening community' are based on an imagined sense of emotional proximity and an accentuation of social and geographical distances between people. This effect, which I call intimate distance, has become a vital form of social power in Kathmandu today. Intimate distance helps cultivate the feelings of social isolation, loss, and the desire to reach outwards towards a new social world. The solution offered is to turn inwards towards one's personal concerns. Looking to the FM radio to understand this political moment means looking to the question of what such narratives, confessions, and sentimental testimonies provide for people, and what they hide.

Himalaya the Journal of the Association For Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2001

Domestic archives : memory and home in Kathmandu

Aurality under Democracy

Anthropology and Wireless Sound in the 21st Century, 2012

Humanity, 2020

This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two critical mi... more This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two critical missions in Nepal—the UN High Commission of Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) during and after the Maoist civil war. Interpreters negotiate two different ethical stances that resonate with contrasting ethical approaches in human rights and humanitarian work. As conduits of voice, an interpreter seeks to be neutral and impartial, a non-autonomous figure of mediation within the work of human rights. Field interpreters are also earwitnesses, who bear subjective responsibility for the knowledge they convey, through their work of listening to often-traumatic testimonies. To get at the paradoxes of between being both a neutral conduit of voice and a subjective earwitness, I explore several moments that interrupt the ideology of invisible transparency within which interpreters work. Despite these constant interruptions, the ideology of transparency continues to prevail, and interpreters’ embodied labor helps preserve such ideals.

Cultural Anthropology, 2018

This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is com... more This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is commonly associated with various forms of voicing—political speeches, shouting protesters, filibusters in the halls Congress, or heated debates in teashops, salons, and newspapers around the world. Voice thus often functions as a metaphor for political participation and representation. Political metaphors of voice are usually disembodied, and are rarely invoked in reference to the other forms for political utterance, sound, or even noise that make up the many practices of participatory democracy. In such contexts, the notion of voice depends not on a single speaker but on a mass collectivity to make any message heard. The South Asian term āwāj refers explicitly to both the sonic and metaphorical meanings of voice, which this article uses to provincialize more commonly used global metaphors of voice. I consider what democracy sounds like by following the pathways of āwāj through two examples of participatory democracy on the streets of Kathmandu: a performance art piece and a political protest called Occupy Baluwatar. Āwāj and the sonic motifs I explore in these performances offer a conceptual rubric for breaking open the discourse of voice used in global human-rights organizations, humanitarian discourse, and liberal understandings of the public sphere, bringing forward a political subjectivity based on both intention and affect in a transmission of sound that is at once mass-mediated and acutely embodied. The article is best read/ listened to on the online Cultural Anthropology version available here: https://culanth.org/articles/932-sounds-of-democracy-performance-protest-and

In this short paper, I ask a simple question that resonates with a common chant in recent U.S. pr... more In this short paper, I ask a simple question that resonates with a common chant in recent U.S. protests: What does democracy sound like? To answer this question, I focus on the democratic soundscape created by Nepal's renowned performance artist, Ashmina Ranjit, on the streets of Kathmandu. The concept of a democratic soundscape is departure from Murray Schafer’s original use of the term ‘soundscape’ as a way to catalogue catalog an entire acoustic environment as an object of reflection. Rather than nostalgically mourning sounds that are thought to be lost with modernity, as Schafer implicitly does, democratic soundscapes ask us to think about how the material sounds of democracy are produced through specific media, ranging from voices to performed silence to noise to mass media. In its popular understanding, democracy is identified with various forms of voicing: from political speeches to the shouts of public protest; from filibusters in the halls of the US Congress to heated debates in cafés, salons, and newspapers around the world. More broadly, such voicing is seen as rhetorically constituting the democratic subject itself, through metaphors such as finding voice, raising voice, and having one’s voice heard. The concept of democratic soundscape conjures other forms for political utterance, sound, or even noise—voices shouting, collective chanting, the production of noise for political effect, or, significantly, the active performance of silence. Democratic soundscapes unsettle normative relationships between passionate utterance and articulate speech, human discourse and inanimate noise. Hearing them in new ways encourage us to rethink how they enhance, alter, or undermine the meaning of being participating citizens and subjects in a democracy.

This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the l... more This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the language ideology promoted by FM programs and the media ideology associated with FM radio. Speaking directly about one's desires is also critical to the process of learning to be a self-conscious individual with a complex interior life. Ideas about the direct voice are shaped by the world of international development, the emergence of new media and publics, and the democracy movements in Nepal. Through a focus on a UNICEF-sponsored youth program, I argue that direct speech and the direct voice critically shape radio listeners' subjectivity, creating the ideal neoliberal subject, at the level of the technology's material form and the content of its programs. [voice, radio, transparency, development, neoliberal subjectivity]j ola_1073 334..351

In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more refle... more In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more reflexively about our own professional ethics and the paradoxes of global capitalism within which both interpreters and anthropologists work. Like other forms of communicative labor, interpretation is often devalued, unrecognized, and uncompensated-a form of invisible labor. Professional language ideologies, some paradoxically perpetuated by the profession itself, contribute to interpreters' invisibility in their workplaces. Global and multilingual organizations depend on ideologies of transparency and the assumption that language transmission is easy; examining interpreters' labor ethnographically troubles these assumptions. Interpreters also confront an ethical tension in their position that mirrors a tension in anthropology: namely, between ideals of professional neutrality and analytic distance versus intentional advocacy. The study of interpreters offers ways to critically assess anthropologists' own professional practices and dig deeply into the contradictions of global capitalism.

The Invisible Labor and Ethics of Interpreting

Annual Review of Anthropology

In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more refle... more In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more reflexively about our own professional ethics and the paradoxes of global capitalism within which both interpreters and anthropologists work. Like other forms of communicative labor, interpretation is often devalued, unrecognized, and uncompensated—a form of invisible labor. Professional language ideologies, some paradoxically perpetuated by the profession itself, contribute to interpreters’ invisibility in their workplaces. Global and multilingual organizations depend on ideologies of transparency and the assumption that language transmission is easy; examining interpreters’ labor ethnographically troubles these assumptions. Interpreters also confront an ethical tension in their position that mirrors a tension in anthropology: namely, between ideals of professional neutrality and analytic distance versus intentional advocacy. The study of interpreters offers ways to critically assess anthrop...

Pandemic Field

Anthropology now, May 4, 2022

Publics of Heritage and Domestic Archives among Urban Nepalis of the Valley

Political Change and Public Culture in Post-1990 Nepal, 2016

Feeling the Voice Affect, Media, and Communication

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Emotion, 2019

Cultural Anthropology, 2018

This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is com... more This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is commonly associated with various forms of voicing—political speeches, shouting protesters, filibusters in the halls Congress, or heated debates in teashops, salons, and newspapers around the world. Voice thus often functions as a metaphor for political participation and representation. Political metaphors of voice are usually disembodied, and are rarely invoked in reference to the other forms for political utterance, sound, or even noise that make up the many practices of participatory democracy. In such contexts, the notion of voice depends not on a single speaker but on a mass collectivity to make any message heard. The South Asian term āwāj refers explicitly to both the sonic and metaphorical meanings of voice, which this article uses to provincialize more commonly used global metaphors of voice. I consider what democracy sounds like by following the pathways of āwāj through two examples...

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2010

This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the l... more This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the language ideology promoted by FM programs and the media ideology associated with FM radio. Speaking directly about one's desires is also critical to the process of learning to be a self-conscious individual with a complex interior life. Ideas about the direct voice are shaped by the world of international development, the emergence of new media and publics, and the democracy movements in Nepal. Through a focus on a UNICEF-sponsored youth program, I argue that direct speech and the direct voice critically shape radio listeners' subjectivity, creating the ideal neoliberal subject, at the level of the technology's material form and the content of its programs. [voice, radio, transparency, development, neoliberal subjectivity]j ola_1073 334..351 I n 2001, UNICEF initiated a new youth program that began broadcasting on radios throughout Nepal. The program, called Sāthi Sa nga Man Kā Kura, or "Chatting with My Best Friend," 1 was initially started with the objective of preventing drug use and HIV from spreading among Nepali youth. Its broader agenda, as stated on their website, is to provide a "confidential and open platform. .. where anyone can open their heart out on issues deeply related to them" (SSMK 2001). By talking with the radio hosts of this program about intimate matters, the program's designers suggest people will learn to "deal with problems on their own." Sāthi Sa nga Man Kā Kura (henceforth SSMK) seeks to create a person who can speak directly and intimately with strangers on the radio program, friends and family they meet regularly, and most importantly, with themselves. Ultimately, the program envisions that direct speech with others will have profound effects on listener's own self-perception. Communicating with others in this manner will lead to the development of an uninhibited person capable of taking matters into his or her own hands. The program thus aims to create the ideal neoliberal subject implicit in many international aid organizations like UNICEF: a subject who is self-sufficient and can make his or her own choices, often based on market logic. For such a subject, one's personal life-and most importantly, how one speaks about it-becomes the paradigmatic site of political transformation. 2 In this article, I suggest that the ideology of directness is associated with a linguistic ideology that centers on the idea and powers of the voice. Implicitly, I track the relation (and distinction) between voice and language (Feld et al. 2004; Fox 2004). I do this in three ways. In the first portion of the article, I show the voice to be both a figure and the medium of language. The voice is an index of presence and emotional connection, as well as a medium perceived to be more direct and closely tied to

Technologies of the Voice: FM Radio, Telephone, and the Nepali Diaspora in Kathmandu

Cultural Anthropology, 2006

... htm. 323 Page 2. 324 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Telecom and UTL (United Telecommunications Limited... more ... htm. 323 Page 2. 324 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Telecom and UTL (United Telecommunications Limited), two companies that provide telephone service throughout the country, as well as all Internet service providers. The ...

Earwitnesses and Transparent Conduits of Voice: On the Labor of Field Interpreters for UN Missions

Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 2020

Abstract:This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two cr... more Abstract:This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two critical missions in Nepal—the UN High Commission of Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) during and after the Maoist civil war. Interpreters negotiate two different ethical stances that resonate with contrasting ethical approaches in human rights and humanitarian work. As conduits of voice, an interpreter seeks to be neutral and impartial, a non-autonomous figure of mediation within the work of human rights. Field interpreters are also earwitnesses, who bear subjective responsibility for the knowledge they convey, through their work of listening to often-traumatic testimonies. To get at the paradoxes of between being both a neutral conduit of voice and a subjective earwitness, I explore several moments that interrupt the ideology of invisible transparency within which interpreters work. Despite these constant interruptions, the ideology of transparency continues to prevail, and interpreters’ embodied labor helps preserve such ideals.

Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2021

This article takes the form of a conversation between an anthropologist and seven interpreters wh... more This article takes the form of a conversation between an anthropologist and seven interpreters who worked for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) during its mission in Nepal (2005–2011). As any human rights or humanitarian worker knows quite well, an interpreter is essential to any field mission; they are typically the means by which ‘internationals’ are able to speak to any local person. Interpreters make it possible for local events to be transformed into a globally legible register of human rights abuses or cases. Field interpreters are therefore crucial to realizing the global ambitions of any bureaucracy like the UN. Yet rarely do human rights officers or academics (outside of translation studies) hear from interpreters themselves about their experience in the field. This conversation is an attempt to bridge this lacuna directly, in the hope that human rights practitioners and academics might benefit from thinking more deeply about the people upon wh...

Voicing Subjects

Voicing Subjects

Himalaya the Journal of the Association For Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2001

Since the jan andolan in 1990, there has been an impressive turn towards the public expression of... more Since the jan andolan in 1990, there has been an impressive turn towards the public expression of personal or social discontent. While this has been the subject around which new political parties form, it is also a vital part of the emerging media in Kathmandu. The commercial FM radio, for one, has become a place to voice one's troubles. So different are the FM programs from the state Radio Nepal, established in 1953, that people do not even refer to the media as the 'radio'. "I don't listen to Radio," many people told me. "I listen to FM." The FM radio presenters see themselves as proponents of democratic 'free speech', and many advertise their programs as potent salves to personal or social trouble. The boundaries of this specifically 'Kathmandu listening community' are based on an imagined sense of emotional proximity and an accentuation of social and geographical distances between people. This effect, which I call intimate distance, has become a vital form of social power in Kathmandu today. Intimate distance helps cultivate the feelings of social isolation, loss, and the desire to reach outwards towards a new social world. The solution offered is to turn inwards towards one's personal concerns. Looking to the FM radio to understand this political moment means looking to the question of what such narratives, confessions, and sentimental testimonies provide for people, and what they hide.

Himalaya the Journal of the Association For Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2001

Domestic archives : memory and home in Kathmandu

Aurality under Democracy

Anthropology and Wireless Sound in the 21st Century, 2012

Humanity, 2020

This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two critical mi... more This essay considers the labor of field interpreters who worked for the UN during two critical missions in Nepal—the UN High Commission of Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) during and after the Maoist civil war. Interpreters negotiate two different ethical stances that resonate with contrasting ethical approaches in human rights and humanitarian work. As conduits of voice, an interpreter seeks to be neutral and impartial, a non-autonomous figure of mediation within the work of human rights. Field interpreters are also earwitnesses, who bear subjective responsibility for the knowledge they convey, through their work of listening to often-traumatic testimonies. To get at the paradoxes of between being both a neutral conduit of voice and a subjective earwitness, I explore several moments that interrupt the ideology of invisible transparency within which interpreters work. Despite these constant interruptions, the ideology of transparency continues to prevail, and interpreters’ embodied labor helps preserve such ideals.

Cultural Anthropology, 2018

This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is com... more This article asks a deceptively simple question: what does democracy sound like? Democracy is commonly associated with various forms of voicing—political speeches, shouting protesters, filibusters in the halls Congress, or heated debates in teashops, salons, and newspapers around the world. Voice thus often functions as a metaphor for political participation and representation. Political metaphors of voice are usually disembodied, and are rarely invoked in reference to the other forms for political utterance, sound, or even noise that make up the many practices of participatory democracy. In such contexts, the notion of voice depends not on a single speaker but on a mass collectivity to make any message heard. The South Asian term āwāj refers explicitly to both the sonic and metaphorical meanings of voice, which this article uses to provincialize more commonly used global metaphors of voice. I consider what democracy sounds like by following the pathways of āwāj through two examples of participatory democracy on the streets of Kathmandu: a performance art piece and a political protest called Occupy Baluwatar. Āwāj and the sonic motifs I explore in these performances offer a conceptual rubric for breaking open the discourse of voice used in global human-rights organizations, humanitarian discourse, and liberal understandings of the public sphere, bringing forward a political subjectivity based on both intention and affect in a transmission of sound that is at once mass-mediated and acutely embodied. The article is best read/ listened to on the online Cultural Anthropology version available here: https://culanth.org/articles/932-sounds-of-democracy-performance-protest-and

In this short paper, I ask a simple question that resonates with a common chant in recent U.S. pr... more In this short paper, I ask a simple question that resonates with a common chant in recent U.S. protests: What does democracy sound like? To answer this question, I focus on the democratic soundscape created by Nepal's renowned performance artist, Ashmina Ranjit, on the streets of Kathmandu. The concept of a democratic soundscape is departure from Murray Schafer’s original use of the term ‘soundscape’ as a way to catalogue catalog an entire acoustic environment as an object of reflection. Rather than nostalgically mourning sounds that are thought to be lost with modernity, as Schafer implicitly does, democratic soundscapes ask us to think about how the material sounds of democracy are produced through specific media, ranging from voices to performed silence to noise to mass media. In its popular understanding, democracy is identified with various forms of voicing: from political speeches to the shouts of public protest; from filibusters in the halls of the US Congress to heated debates in cafés, salons, and newspapers around the world. More broadly, such voicing is seen as rhetorically constituting the democratic subject itself, through metaphors such as finding voice, raising voice, and having one’s voice heard. The concept of democratic soundscape conjures other forms for political utterance, sound, or even noise—voices shouting, collective chanting, the production of noise for political effect, or, significantly, the active performance of silence. Democratic soundscapes unsettle normative relationships between passionate utterance and articulate speech, human discourse and inanimate noise. Hearing them in new ways encourage us to rethink how they enhance, alter, or undermine the meaning of being participating citizens and subjects in a democracy.

This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the l... more This article explores the ideas of directness and transparency that are fundamental to both the language ideology promoted by FM programs and the media ideology associated with FM radio. Speaking directly about one's desires is also critical to the process of learning to be a self-conscious individual with a complex interior life. Ideas about the direct voice are shaped by the world of international development, the emergence of new media and publics, and the democracy movements in Nepal. Through a focus on a UNICEF-sponsored youth program, I argue that direct speech and the direct voice critically shape radio listeners' subjectivity, creating the ideal neoliberal subject, at the level of the technology's material form and the content of its programs. [voice, radio, transparency, development, neoliberal subjectivity]j ola_1073 334..351

Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2021

This article takes the form of a conversation between an anthropologist and seven interpreters wh... more This article takes the form of a conversation between an anthropologist and seven interpreters who worked for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) during its mission in Nepal (2005–2011). As any human rights or humanitarian worker knows quite well, an interpreter is essential to any field mission; they are typically the means by which ‘internationals’ are able to speak to any local person. Interpreters make it possible for local events to be transformed into a globally legible register of human rights abuses or cases. Field interpreters are therefore crucial to realizing the global ambitions of any bureaucracy like the UN. Yet rarely do human rights officers or academics (outside of translation studies) hear from interpreters themselves about their experience in the field. This conversation is an attempt to bridge this lacuna directly, in the hope that human rights practitioners and academics might benefit from thinking more deeply about the people upon whom our knowledge often depends.