14 - Disentangling Power and Order

Summary

Inviting people from the Midtown community to reflect on the soundscape revealed complexity and nuance to the various flows and channels of power, mediated and amplified by the clangs, bangs and jangles of the prison. Listening, rather than looking, altered perspective. Asking what others were hearing allowed for an understanding of how power operates within the community, between people and place. Like peeling and segmenting an orange rather than observing it in a bowl, as the pieces separated, various textures and states of matter were revealed. The impacts of individual strains of the soundscape were interpreted in the context of various associations with temporal and spatial experience. These readings transcended immediate relationships between people and place, recalling memories of other times, interconnections and locations. Recognition of the various ways in which power flowed through various conduits, as well as from them, challenged any straightforward notion of authority. Or rather, acknowledging this deeper complexity in flows and effects of power highlighted distinctions between enacting the capacity to make decisions and an answering acknowledgement of the right to do so. Correspondingly, direct associations between authority and cooperation were attenuated. There were various reasons underpinning the decision to hum along with the everyday tune, and, far from being moot these were central to the work of keeping it playing.

The soundscape rattled and clanged with the potent charge of punishment, and thrummed with the routine activity which comprised an orderly day. Listening to these aspects of prison life added respective definition to what was being heard, challenging representations of these complex phenomena as interchangeable. Learning the soundscape from within the community allowed for various accounts of power, as well as order as they featured in everyday life. Staff recounted practice which was more about maintaining control and cooperation than exercising power specifically. Officers, and other staff, rarely spoke about operations of power, nor reflected on their roles in this way but it was also less apparent in group activity than might be anticipated.