Environmentalists abide: Listening to whale music – 1965–1985

Ritts, Max

doi:10.1177/0263775817711706

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Concurrently, soundscape composition and soundwalks have generated intense interest among artists seeking to engage in discussions about nature experiences, environmental change, and conservation efforts. Such practices have always been entangled with environmental activism in many ways (Ritts 2017). Underpinning such entanglements is the idea that deep or careful listening allows one to connect to nature and environmental change by becoming aware of the micro-events of life that surround us and yet seem to always pass by unnoticed.…”

Section: Sound Environment and Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Sonic Anthropocene. Sound Practices in a Changing Environment

Louro¹,

Mendes²,

Paiva³

et al. 2020

cadernosaa

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The introduction to this double issue entitled "A Sonic Anthropocene: Sound Practices in a Changing Environment" explores some of the concepts and methodological issues that inform our understanding of what we call the "Sonic Anthropocene". We argue that incorporating practices of listening and aural documentation that register the transformations in the acoustic landscape creates a space of potential for examining the increasing impact of human activity on the environment. This introduction is divided into six sections. First, we provide an overview of the notion of the Anthropocene. Secondly, we explore the relationship between sound, environment and perception as cultivated by different strands of scholarship. Thirdly, we discuss the capacity of ethnography to generate new insights into the conditions of life in the Anthropocene. With this in mind, we highlight various examples of collaboration between environmental sound artists, researchers, and activists. Lastly, we introduce the essays included in this first volume. Ultimately, this double issue seeks to contribute toward sounding the Anthropocene by placing sound at the centre of an interdisciplinary conversation about the economic, social, cultural, political and ecological processes that underlie the currently ongoing planetary transformations.

show abstract

Section: Sound Environment and Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Sonic Anthropocene. Sound Practices in a Changing Environment

Louro¹,

Mendes²,

Paiva³

et al. 2020

cadernosaa

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To examine whale strandings in Hawai'i, we must be also attentive to the dynamic between management discourses and material practices of animal management. Public encounters with whales consistently frustrate the intentions of state regulators (Ritts 2017;Zelko 2013;Rutherford, 2011). In Hawaiʻi, the procedures of NOAA's stranding response model include particular training modules, spatial restrictions, handling procedures, and chains of command.…”

Section: Whales and Hawai'i: Situating The Geopolitics Of Care And Kanaloamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8 Melon-headed whales like W ananalua have been known to strand both in individual and large group formats (Miyazaki et al, 1998); melon-headed whales are the subject of one of the first mass strandings recorded in modern history, in fact: in Hilo Bay, Hawai'i in 1841 (Peale, 1848). To gather details about strandings in sparsely populated coastlines, scientists and state regulators have long relied on informal networks of first responders (Ritts, 2017). In 1992, amendments to the MMPA led to the emergence of the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response program, led by NOAA Fisheries (AX-2 at 1-2; AX-3 at 2).…”

Section: Stranded Whales In Hawai'imentioning

confidence: 99%

The story of Wānanalua: Stranded whales and contested marine sovereignties in Hawai‘i

Ritts

Wiebe

2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper considers how systems of interspecies knowing and care in Hawai'i push against state-supported frameworks of liberal biopolitical governance. In 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a citation suing two Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) women under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, for unlawfully “tak[ing] and/or or transporting” a stranded melon-headed whale (“Wānanalua”). In the lawsuit, prosecutors deliberated on the legality of the traditional sea burial situating it within a broader context of cultural accommodations granted by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From our examination of the lawsuit, we develop the argument that marine mammal care operates in Hawaiʻi as a regulatory device for ordering interspecies relations and for pacifying Indigenous demands for greater marine political authority. To combine these claims, we consider the relation between two governance logics: liberal “recognition,” wherein accommodations regarding culture are extended to previously disenfranchised social groups, and biopolitics, pertaining in the present case to care practices governing more-than-human actors and environments. Our arguments are supported by detailed case files and interviews with local informants, including the Kanaka women accused of mishandling Wānanalua. The “ruptures” marking the Wānanalua case suggest a liberal recognition framework whose failures are connected to the biopolitics it embraces, but with an added detail: The present story reflects on how an interspecies biopolitics—an attempted management of Kānaka-whale care practices—structures strategies of liberal recognition.

show abstract

“…All these studies show that practices regarding sound are profoundly enmeshed in cultural politics. Likewise, Ritts has studied whale music and argues that it is an invention that was made possible through a combination of “animal sounds, recording techniques, consumer trends, and pervasive beliefs about nature” (: 1109), and its meaningfulness is partially ideological as its success is interwoven with environmentalist movements. We can also find a gender approach in Waitt et al's () study on car mobility, in which they investigate the feelings of men and women for cars and the motivations for driving them.…”

Section: Main Themes Of Geographical Research On Soundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sonic geographies: Themes, concepts, and deaf spots

Paiva

2018

Geography Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article poses a straightforward question: What has geography been listening to? Sonic geographies have been established as a relevant subfield in Human Geography in the last decades. During this period, a significant amount of work has been published, but there are still few reviews of these works, and most of them focus solely on Anglophone geography. In this article, I attempt to address this gap by providing an overview of the themes and concepts that have been studied within the emerging subfield of sonic geographies. My intention is to reunite a large range of works that are becoming increasingly scattered and specialized, in order to make sense of the subfield as a whole.With this in mind, I am particularly interested in identifying the "deaf spots" of the subfield, that is, the subjects, concepts, or fields that have not yet been explored thoroughly by sonic geographies.

show abstract

Environmentalists abide: Listening to whale music – 1965–1985

Cited by 5 publications

References 31 publications

A Sonic Anthropocene. Sound Practices in a Changing Environment

A Sonic Anthropocene. Sound Practices in a Changing Environment

The story of Wānanalua: Stranded whales and contested marine sovereignties in Hawai‘i

Sonic geographies: Themes, concepts, and deaf spots

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About