Listening “Care-Fully”: Acoustemologies of Hope in the Face of Human-Made Environmental Degradation

Abstract

The article explores a means through which eco-acoustic engagements with the environment can inspire hope in the face of human-made environmental degradation. Based on a discussion of entangled ethnographic experiences in Germany and Australia, the author shows how listening “care-fully” to people and places can foster new forms of collaboration that allow for alternative imaginings of the “buen vivir” and contest the modernist rationale and related dwellings of allegedly objective matters of fact – in this case, the exploration of natural resources through the controversial technology of fracking on sacred Aboriginal land.