Eavesdropping: A Reader reframes surveillance as a sonic phenomenon, tracing how states and corporations capture and control our acoustic world — and how listening itself becomes a site of resistance and complicity.
About This Book
Listening is never innocent, but it is never simply guilty either. Eavesdropping: A Reader assembles critical perspectives on the politics of sound surveillance, examining how our sonic environment is increasingly subject to capture by institutional and corporate power. Edited by James Parker and Joel Stern, the collection refuses easy moral categories: eavesdropping, they argue, is a condition of social existence rather than a transgression. We all hear more than we intend. The question the book poses is not whether to eavesdrop, but how — and whose interests any given act of listening serves. Essential reading for those working across sound studies, surveillance studies, and critical legal theory.
Key Features
- 224 pages of critical essays and theoretical writing on sound, surveillance, and sonic politics
- Edited by James Parker (Melbourne Law School) and Joel Stern (Liquid Architecture)
- Published by City Gallery Wellington in association with Liquid Architecture
What You'll Discover
- How state and corporate interests have come to govern the capture and control of the sonic world
- Why eavesdropping is understood here as a structural condition of social life rather than a discrete act
- Strategies of resistance to acoustic surveillance and the politics embedded in everyday listening
- A theoretical framework that refuses to separate legal, artistic, and political dimensions of sound
About the Author
James Parker is based at Melbourne Law School, where his research addresses law, sound, and listening as political and legal phenomena. Joel Stern is a key figure in Liquid Architecture, Australia's leading organisation for experimental sound art and music. Together they bring a rare interdisciplinary rigour to the politics of sonic surveillance.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 224
- Dimensions: 165 x 234 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780995128606
- Publisher: City Gallery Wellington in association with Liquid Architecture
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Practitioners and researchers in sound studies, critical legal theory, surveillance studies, and experimental music — as well as architects and designers engaged with acoustic politics and the built sonic environment.