Presentation short abstract

The presentation deals with an immersive understanding of the ways in which sound and sonic technologies can enumerate interspecies subjections. We explore discourses on welfare ecologies through this new qualitative methodology having significant merits to be deployed in political ecology studies.

Presentation long abstract

How might different technologies capturing ‘sound’ shape what can be attended to in the larger and upcoming discourses on ‘beyond the human’ political ecology? How can sound art as a method facilitate expanded understandings of ‘voice’, ‘belongingness’ and ‘agency’ for species currently termed as ‘beyond the human’? How does field recording, soundscape composition and attentive listening add to existing ethnographic methodological tools in political ecology? In this paper, we demonstrate the use of field recording of ‘sound’ as a critical and creative methodological practice to attune to more-than-human species and their subjection to ‘welfare ecologies’. Despite the widespread use of qualitative methods in political ecology, use of sonification or sound art is almost absent, leading to a substantial omission in capturing non-human ‘perceptions’, ‘movements’, ‘affective connections’ as well as ‘interdependencies’. Many prevalent sound tools, such as hydrophone recordings of crustaceans, can reveal the impact of anthropogenic noise on their lives, while soil vibrations may indicate the presence and movement of subterranean species. Different calls and movements of domesticated animals (like cows and goats) can also provide avenues to understand affective expressions and responses to physical events. Our study conceptually lends its inspiration from Donna Haraway’s ‘Chthulucene’ (which extends beyond the Anthropocene), which is an era of examining the profound and intricate connections within the animal kingdom. We explore different ways in which sound-based methods can reveal patterns of communication, stress signals, behaviors and responses, offering an altogether first-hand understanding of animal subjectivities and their lived experiences in the Anthropocene.