A Resonant Ecology

“This superb book is the first work of which I am aware to bring sound studies directly into dialogue with a thorough and grounded ethnography of place and identity in the context of ecological being. Delivering a thick, rigorously described sonic materialist ethnography, A Resonant Ecology is a model of and for how anthropologically angled sound studies can open up fresh ways of engaging in participant observation as well as novel ways of apprehending and representing social, political, and multispecies worlds, especially in a time of climate distress.” - Stefan Helmreich, author of A Book of Waves

“Max Ritts’s focus on the region of the North Coast, where he charts the complex relations between whales, scientists, environmentalists, governments, and Indigenous communities, offers a great richness of sites and stories. By taking a close look at community knowledge and creative initiatives in the face of corporate, governmental and technological developments, Ritts makes a vivid contribution to musicology and sound studies, environmental politics, science and technology studies, Indigenous studies, and animal studies.” - Jody Berland, author of Virtual Menageries: Animals as Mediators in Network Cultures

"A Resonant Ecology makes a compelling contribution to research on interactions between environmental governance, capitalist-colonial practices, and local geo-physical conditions by tying together the transitional nature of sound with deep-seated, potentially harmful, local entanglements. The book adds an often-neglected institutional perspective to debates on embodied sonic experience and promotes scholarship at the intersection of sound studies, environmental science, and politics." - Franziska Strack, Conservation and Society

"Rich and urgent. . . . There is so much that is valuable and inspirational about this book." - Laura Jean Cameron, BC Studies

"A Resonant Ecology is a nuanced and beautifully written book. . . . Ritts’s text offers a new register from which to do political ecology." - Gabe Schwartzmann, AAG Review of Books

"A Resonant Ecology is empirically rich, theoretically innovative, and carefully tuned to the complex politics of capitalist-colonial development. . . . It is, without doubt, one of the best books in political ecology I have read in the past decade." - Bruce Braun, AAG Review of Books