Paper short abstract:

This paper charts a series of experiments, combining an animal tracking methodology with sonic field recording as a method for ethnographic capture, whilst working with mole catchers in rural North Yorkshire.

Paper long abstract:

“Tracking means following worldly entanglements”, writes Anna Tsing. This paper charts a series of experiments, combining an animal tracking methodology with sonic field recording as a method for ethnographic capture, whilst working with mole catchers in rural North Yorkshire.

When seeking to capture an elusive wild animal such as the mole, pest control trappers are tasked to employ their full range of senses in order to engage with the behaviours, perceptions and affordances that define that animal’s world. Moles themselves navigate using a language of vibrations, reading the movements of earthworms through sensitive hairs on their bodies, and using the architectural acoustics of their tunnels to channel infrasonic sound. In order to bridge this perceptual distance, mole catchers use a variety of tools and techniques that sensitise their own human bodies, extending their reach into the vibratory umwelt of the mole. What equivalent tools and techniques might an ethnographer need to reach into the mole-catcher’s world?

This paper documents my own attempts to ‘tap in’ to this realm of human-mole communication using sonic media. Whilst anthropology’s historical tendency has been to contrast the study of ‘tacic’ (lit. silently) embodied knowledge with linguistic comprehension (Ingold 2021), I argue that a quieting of our own conscious monologue whilst engaging in the field can draw us into a deeper state of awareness and attunement with a more-than-human landscape of attention. From here, as any animal tracker will tell you, the moles, worms, soil, stones and wind have much to say.