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Reading Allowed and aloud: Cultivating listening structures in a literary city

Paper acceptance!

I’m thrilled to have a paper accepted for Books and the city: the 2024 Otago Centre for the Book Annual Symposium (21-22 November, 2024). The symposium is local, so that’s always a bonus.

My paper applies “listening structures,” a theoretical framework I’ve been reading around as part of my University of Birmingham, Psychology Cross-training Fellowship Programme for Theologians, to a local activity – Reading Allowed – that I’ve enjoyed being part of for the last few years.

Paper title: “Reading Allowed” and aloud: Cultivating listening structures in a literary city

This paper analyses the benefits of reading books aloud in public city spaces. Qualitative research is used to investigate the social impact of “Reading Allowed” as a collective listening structure.

“Reading Allowed” is an event that runs monthly on the ground floor of the Dunedin Public Library. Since 2022, people have gathered in the late afternoon to hear stories for all ages. For 60 minutes, readers from the University of Otago and Friends of the Library introduce and share excerpts from classic and contemporary literature.

Listening structures is a phrase used by organisational psychologist Guy Itzchakov (2024) to advance the science of listening. Listening structures refer to the processes and practices that build the human capacity to pay attention, deepen comprehension, and amplify intention (Kluger and Guy Itzchakov, 2022). Hence, listening structures contribute to social relationships and collective flourishing between individuals and organisations.

This paper considers “Reading Allowed” as a listening structure. It draws from the researcher’s ethnographic participation as a listener at “Reading Allowed,” along with interviewing readers and listeners. Attention, comprehension, and intention are themes used to analyse the qualitative data.

New ways to conceptualise the places of books in a “literary city” are provided when “Reading Allowed” is theorised as a listening structure. The research is theoretically important in advancing scholarship regarding the public nature of listening structures. The research also has practical application for those who care about books in the lives of cities and their citizens.

Dr Steve Taylor,
Director AngelWings Ltd; Research Affiliate, University of Otago | Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka
IASH Research Fellow, Edinburgh University