Listening and Social Structure: A Durkheimian Theory of Listening

Most of the existing literature on listening overlooks the underlying social structures in which listeners are embedded, as if listening were unaffected by the normative demands and pressures imposed by the social environment. Such a social isotropic view of listening fails to account for how listening is oriented by the normative demands of the social world. We do not enter a motionless, ahistorical social world devoid of structure and orientation; rather, the social world exerts pressures that guide us to orient ourselves in ways that serve societal interests. Consequently, we do not listen to anyone for anything, but to someone for something, such that society’s work is to be done. Behind listening there are interests, but what those interests are – and whom they serve – is shaped, and sometimes fully determined, by the social environment. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to theoretically unfold the full range of social structures and their relationship to listening, showing how these structures orient listening and confer different social meanings. This analysis is conducted through a Durkheimian macrostructural (social network) account of society. From this perspective on society, four types of listening emerge: altruistic listening, egoistic listening, fatalistic listening, and anomic listening.