PPLMEC · Politics and Practices of Listening in Mao era People's Republic of China.

This research, drawing on state archives, private memoirs, and literary materials provides the first dedicated history ofauditory cultures of the People's Republic of China (PRC). By focusing on the act of listening across three pivotal andtransitional moments of PRC history and at three levels of state, locality, and individual, it explores the role of sound fromthree perspectives: as a tool of nation-building deployed by the state; as a medium through which the Chinese revolutionwas experienced at an individual level; and in the contestation between these two domains as the soundscape became asite of contention and negotiation between the state and the citizen. The researcher's background in social, cultural, andpolitical history of the Mao era, along with the supervisor's expertise on Chinese modern history and experience researchingthe history of sound and broadcasting in the Republican Era (1911-1949), will be deployed to provide the ideal backgroundfor this innovative but delimited project. The key questions asked will be threefold: 1) How, and under what understanding ofthe act of listening, did the state deploy sound as a political and social tool in the People’s Republic of China? 2) How weresuch state initiatives deployed at the local level and with what results? 3) How was the act of listening among individualstransformed in response to state initiatives? The resulting interdisciplinary research will expand the field of global soundstudiesbeyond its current Eurocentrism, apply Sound-Studies to China for the first in-depth and long term empirical study,and enhance European knowledge of modern China.