Aims and scope

AIMS

This journal aims to advance the social scientific use of, and critical reflections on, audio as a method for exploring society, systems, practices and cultures – and as a medium for disseminating the results of those explorations. The journal aims at becoming a resource for all disciplines that engage with sounds, listening, and society, and aims to set a standard for the scholarly use of audio materials to advance the understanding of social realities. Listening as a central practice in social research should thus come to the fore. By doing so, Echographies seeks to fill a gap in scholarly publishing and establish rigorous guidelines for evaluating and creating ethnographic sound-based productions. All submissions to the journal will be peer-reviewed in a manner identical to that of print journals.

The aims of Echographies are to:

Promote sound materials as a legitimate, heuristic, and subversive way to circulate social scientific knowledge.
Foreground sonic research methods and the exploration of acoustic means of transmission about social and cultural worlds.
Foster critical dialogue around the production, uses, and interpretations of sound materials in ethnographic research (e.g., field recordings, interviews, documentary film sound design and soundtrack, podcasts).
Provide an international forum for the development of sonic research in social sciences.
Provoke discussion of a wide range of methods, approaches, theories and paradigms that constitute sound-based research, including by encouraging experimental sound art practice in ethnography.

Reduce the disparity in emphasis between audio and other forms of outlets in scholarly research (including visual and written).
Encourage research that employs a mixture of sonic methods, theoretical insights, and analytical approaches.
Critically reflect and contribute to the dialogue surrounding ‘the sonic’ across the social sciences and the arts.
Engage with listening positionalities as a way to further develop reflexivity in ethnography and related social scientific methods, beyond the more developed issues of visual and fieldwork ethics and to introduce listening as a tool/method in social sciences;
Educate around listening sensibilities and their further development.

Scope

Echographies exclusively publishes sonically oriented materials and represents the ongoing development of sound-based empirical research across a range of disciplines and theoretical approaches (e.g., sonic art, sonic environmental studies, sound studies, sonic colonialities, psychoanalysis, sound ethnography, queer sonicalities, acoustemology, etc.).

The journal thus publishes scholarship that features audio as a central methodological component and the primary form of output, favoring ethnographic and other field-informed and practice-based research. Audios published in the journal should address a social scientific research question or subject whose study is best, differently, or supplementary undertaken by the collection and exhibition of sonic data, as opposed to studies where sound is incidental or merely illustrative. In addition to the audio pieces themselves, the editors may consider accompanying text documents that help contextualize and critically reflect on the sound material submitted for publication.

The editors welcome audio submissions in any language other than English. However, submitting authors may submit a written translation to materials submitted in a language other than English. For more information about what and how to submit, please consult the submission guidelines.