A timely exploration of whether sound and listening can be the basis of political change. In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? This timely and important book from Goldsmiths Press highlights sound's invisible, disruptive, and affective qualities and asks whether the unseen nature of sound can support a political transformation. In Sonic Agency, Brandon LaBelle sets out to engage contemporary social and political crises by way of sonic thought and imagination. He divides sound's functions into four figures of resistance—the invisible, the overheard, the itinerant, and the weak—and argues for their role in creating alternative “unlikely publics” in which to foster mutuality and dissent. He highlights existing sonic cultures and social initiatives that utilize or deploy sound and listening to address conflict, and points to their work as models for a wider movement. He considers issues of disappearance and hidden culture, nonviolence and noise, creole poetics, and networked life, aiming to unsettle traditional notions of the “space of appearance” as the condition for political action and survival. By examining the experience of listening and being heard, LaBelle illuminates a path from the fringes toward hope, citizenship, and vibrancy. In a current climate that has left many feeling they have lost their voices, it may be sound itself that restores it to them.

Global and local contestations are not only gendered, they also raise important questions about agency and its practice and location in the twenty-first century. Silence and voice are being increasingly debated as sites of agency within feminist research on conflict and insecurity. Drawing on a wide range of feminist approaches, this volume examines the various ways that silence and voice have been contested in feminist research, and their impact on how agency is understood and performed, particularly in situations of conflict and insecurity. The collection makes an important and timely contribution to interdisciplinary feminist theorizing of silence, voice and agency in global politics. Interrogating the intellectual landscape of existing debates about agency, silence and voice in an increasingly unequal and conflict-ridden world, the contributors to this volume challenge the dominant narratives of agency based on voice or speech alone as a necessary precondition for understanding or negotiating agency or empowerment. Many of the authors have engaged in field research in both the Global South and North and bring in-depth and diverse gendered case studies to their analysis, focusing on the increasing importance of examining silence as well as voice for understanding gender and agency in an increasingly embattled and complicated world. This book will contribute to and deepen existing discussions of agency, silence and voice in development, culture and gender studies, political economy, postcolonial and de-colonial scholarship as well as in the field of International Relations.

This novel volume investigates the motivations behind disruptive pupil behaviour and offers practical guidance through discussion of a novel theoretical framework that explores how students perceive schooling, uncovering what their behaviour can tell us about how to adjust the school environment. Drawing on cutting-edge research and internationally relevant themes, chapters argue that non-compliant behaviour by students is not mindlessly reactive but is purposeful – a means to make themselves heard. The book explores a dynamic understanding of the processes of placemaking and offers insights on how students create 'student-friendly' places by re-appropriating spaces within schools and why they might behave in certain ways. Arguing that the wider implications of a failure in educational policy is detrimental to student retainment and success, the book will ultimately have ramifications across disciplines and classroom contexts in improving student engagement. This book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and policy makers working in the fields of the sociology of education, teaching and teacher education, educational change and reform more broadly. Those looking into behaviour management, youth studies, and education policy will also find this book of interest.

Built on the foundation of their landmark Handbook of Qualitative Research, it extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explore the indigenous and non-indigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice.

This book explores the epistemic side of racial and sexual oppression. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from listening to each other.

A survey of the empowering poetry of politically active women in El Salvador, South Africa, and the United States.