Sonic Citizenship

We propose that the concept "sonic citizenship" is a fruitful framework for the multitude of ways in which we form the aural backgrounds to each other in the rhythms of our daily lives, where citizenship is practiced, negotiated, and maintained through our everyday sonic activities.

Sonic citizenship opens a discussion on how we aurally take part in, and attune to, our community and who in the community has the privilege to raise their voice (to talk and make sound), a right to be heard (listened to), and how we conform to each other through attunement and regulation, thereby assuming the role of citizens. Sonic citizenship, as a concept, extends across various levels of the collective. It encompasses the micro-social intricacies of attunement – everyday, often unnoticed, habits of sonic interaction that shape our connections with those in our immediate vicinity. On a meso-level, it encompasses public negotiations within shared sonic spaces within a city. At macro-social levels, sonic citizenship pertains to the imagined communities of nations. It also involves our relation to the other 'companion species' we inhabit the earth with and depend on, and whose voices are threatened due to the global biodiversity and climate crisis.