Listening to the Leafblower

More-than-human methodologies in qualitative research

This paper explores the methodological possibilities of listening to more-than-human sounds as an entry point to critical analysis through attending to the sound of a leafblower as it resonates across a university campus. Specifically, this paper draws lines between the resonances of a leafblower, higher education, and white supremacy to explore how sounds become embedded in bodies and spaces, and how listening, as a process of attunement, provokes readings beyond what is immediately heard, seen, or felt. To listen to the sound of the leafblower and what it does, how it resonates, is to attune to how that sound works, how it operates in the production and discourses of place. In other words, this paper wonders how listening, as a methodological practice, provokes critical questions about place and space, and how sound (and particularly nonhuman or more than human sounds) functions in qualitative methodology.

Flint, M. A. (2022). More-than-human methodologies in qualitative research: Listening to the Leafblower. Qualitative Research, 22(4), 521–541. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794121999028