More-than-human methodologies in qualitative research: Listening to the Leafblower

Abstract

This paper explores the methodological possibilities of listening to more-than-human sounds as an entry point to critical analysis. Through attending to the sound of a leafblower as it resonates across a university campus, this article draws lines between the resonances of the leafblower, higher education, and white supremacy to explore how sounds become embedded in bodies and spaces. In addition, this article offers a methodology of listening as a process of attunement that provokes readings beyond what is immediately heard, seen, or felt. To listen to the sound of the leafblower and what it does, how it resonates is to attune to how that sound works, how it operates in the production and discourses of place. In other words, this article wonders how listening, as a methodological practice, provokes critical questions about place and space, and how sound (and particularly nonhuman or more than human sounds) functions in qualitative methodology.

Beyond voice: An onto-epistemological analysis of maternal transition inquiry

“…Whilst such research, broadly sitting within the realm of postqualitative inquiry (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013), can hold no promise of set procedures or approaches, existing work invites with exciting opportunities for what might be possible. For instance, attuning to smells and sounds may act as entry points for critical analysis of resonances between human and nonhuman beyond the immediacy of sensory perception (Flint, 2021). Cottingham and Erickson (2020) use audio diaries in an attempt to capture the discrete, ephemeral, ineffable, and spontaneity of emotions and how these emerge as unfinished selves.…”

Sonic methodologies for more-than-human geographies: the politics of listening in a traditional slaughterhouse in the UK

“…Emplacing the sounds of a space that is characterized as 'no-place' and that largely operates out of sight in contemporary society and yet whose operations produce products that the majority of the population routinely consume reflects the deep societal disconnection between public perceptions of animals and animals as food. In thinking with the relationship between sound and space, 24 I communicate how listening and non-listening reproduces the politics of a space. In juxtaposing the comprehensively concealed with a proliferation of embodied affective sounds from the floor, I collapse the distance between the consumer and the consumed as readers are invited to reflect on the disconnect, to sit with the presence of those workers and those animals in the soundscape of slaughter.…”

“…45 This speaks to Flint's provocation to move away from the constructivist or interpretivist perspective on what sounds are, instead calling on us to attune to what sounds do. 46 Through listening to animals, slaughterworkers believe that they provide better animal welfare than their industrial counterparts. In the traditional slaughterhouse, fewer than eight cattle, twelve pigs, and fifteen sheep were housed at a time, thus sounds are not a cacophonous multitude but moments of intersubjective communication, when individual animals, both human and more-than-human, are in dialog.…”

The Sound of Social Studies Job Searches: The Possibilities of Posthuman Listening

“…Listen, (re)listen as it plays and rearranges in my social imaginary (Asar Brown, 2022;Freeman, 2016) I was preoccupied with material relation when I tune back in (Guyotte & Flint, 2021) change the dial like a radio station I realize that sound opens up and I can pay attention to the tension of the candidates in this session wanting to teach social studies but not wanting to coach the overlapping voices rapidly speak about their attempts to gain employment sharing their stories of the horrors of conversations with principals "Could you coach tennis, please?" listening I hear the more-than-human gender as a construction limiting the possibilities of social studies (Busey & Waters, 2015;Conner & Bohan, 2018;Chiodo, Martin, & Rowan, 2002;Fitchett, 2010;Knowles, Hawkman, & Nielsen, 2020;Stacey, 2014) in Southern cities it is a resonance of resistance to the potestas (Braidotti, 2006;2011;2017;2019) of structures meant to stifle meant to stop certain bodies (Hansen et al, 2018) (re)listening I hear the strangling of hope in the net of the soccer coach because it matters more to have goals than to attend to our students' souls as they navigate the world of white supremacy and gender inequality it sounds like social studies curriculum is thrown out so that a football can be thrown across a field of turf and even in hearing this dismal connection I realize sound allowed an attention to that which is not always questioned during the social studies job hunt this posthuman sound and listening (Flint, 2021a;2021b) brings in relation the social studies teacher coach, patriarchy, sports, and frustration and listening, I hear difference, or at least desire for difference in the myriad of voices challenging the status quo (Hawkman & Shear, 2020;Utt, 2018) and this difference is potentia (Braidotti, 2006;2011;2017;2019) which is an essential for affirmative future(s)…”