FUAIM Lecture: On acoustic violence and environmental loss: hearing deforestation in Mexico City. 15/02/24, Ó Riada Hall, 11:00

8 Jan 2024

Happening On 15/02/2024

How do people listen at the frontlines of environmental crisis? In this presentation I explore sounding and listening in contexts of deforestation, implicated both in environmental conflict and responses to it. I explore the forested mountainous region to the south of Mexico City, commonly described as the “lungs” of Mexico’s capital, severely deforested in recent years by clandestine loggers. Here, sound practices accumulate around deforestation across overlapping registers of knowledge, especially regarding the sound of chainsaws – the first indication that logging is occurring.

I apply the concept of “acoustic violence”, as discussed by Daughtry, to deforestation in this setting. Here, forest guards and police listen out for chainsaws as a key aspect of disciplinary strategies to halt deforestation. Yet chainsaws are also heard by some as a marker of historical time, and by others as a signal of helplessness, indignation, and despair. Equally, the notion of acoustic violence draws our attention to how, in a context not just of environmental loss but of urban encroachment and dispossession, modalities of listening become simplified, instrumentalized, or lost. I argue that attentiveness to acoustic violence allows us to cut through sensationalist media presentations of deforestation, to recognize local populations not as the perpetrators of environmental devastation, but as its most direct victims.

Dr Andrew Green is an anthropologist, popular music scholar, and Associate Professor at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Artes Liberales. His work focuses on musical engagements with politics, activism, and the natural environment, with particular attention to the context of Mexico City. He has published work in peer-reviewed journals including Cultural Sociology, Cultural Studies, Media, Culture and Society, Popular Music and Society, Ethnomusicology Forum and the International Journal of Cultural Policy.

Andrew will be presenting remotely, and you can watch his talk here.