Presentation short abstract

How do soundscapes intersect with diverse forms of environmental justice? This contribution articulates different notions of “sonic environmental justice”. It explores how the acoustic environment may mediate power, politics and privilege as a key dimension within sensorial political ecologies.

Presentation long abstract

How do soundscapes intersect with diverse forms of justice? This contribution articulates different notions of sonic environmental (in)justice and explores how the acoustic environment constitutes a critical factor in social-ecological relations. By attuning to key analytical axes in environmental justice scholarship—recognition, representation, distribution, regeneration, and resistance—this contribution interrogates the diverse ways in which soundscapes, sonic practices and sonic environmental change may intersect with power, politics and privilege. Methodologically, the contribution echoes diverse stories that reveal the roles of sounds in shaping environmental justice. Theoretically, it develops the concept of sonic environmental justice beyond distributional concerns to encompass plural forms of environmental justice. It also explores how struggles for socially just worlds mobilize sonic practices of resistances, challenging dominant paradigms and worldviews while amplifying multisensory relations of diverse human and more-than-human natures. By listening to soundscapes and sound as sites of struggles and dynamic sources of power and contestation, this contribution explores the role of the acoustic environment as a key dimension within sensorial political ecologies.