This dissertation presents an investigation of the methodology of sound environment analysis with specific concern to its relevance in modern urban space. Inspired by a growing interest in urban acoustics it investigates how sounds contribution to the urban life world is articulated within existing complexes of theory, and it outlines perspectives for alternative descriptional categories.

A major step in the tradition of sound environment analysis is the work of composer and music educator R. Murray Schafer in relation to the World Soundscape Project, where Schafer developed methods for registration, description, analysis, assessment and design of soundscapes. In the second chapter of the present dissertation a throughout reading of Schafers publications in relation with the World Soundscape Project is presented. The reading identifies cultural theoretical and normative aesthetic positions within Schafers work through which the soundscape analysis develops a distinct anti-urban perspective. In particular Schafers more or less reflected inspiration from contemporary American thinkers like Marshall McLuhan and John Cage is investigated.

In chapter three, as an alternative way into the auditory field of experience, the concept of territoriality is introduced. Konrad Lorenz’ ethological concept of territoriality is investigated taking his Das sogenannte Böse as a point of departure, and a loosely founded hypothesis about territoriality’s reliance on aggression is deconstructed using Lorenz’ own concepts. Following is a presentation of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s reconstruction of etology along a similar path displacing the substantial end aggression reliant concept of territoriality into a field of practise, which has to do with the interchanging of–primarily sonic–marks.

Following Deleuze and Guattari’s rich theory about territoriality and the ritornello, chapter four introduces another theoretical complex specifically related to the analysis of sound environments: Jean-François Augoyard’s and the research centre CRESSON’s work on the sonic effect as specific interpretations of contextual sound. By looking at Augoyard’s former work, connections are established both to theories of everyday life and Deleuze and Guattari’s work on territoriality. The concept of sonic effect is then interpreted as a way in which the environment is (re-)marked.