Halfway through reading Bangkok Is Ringing: Sound, Protest, & Constraint, I wondered how I would respond to it. I am trained in neither ethnomusicology nor sound studies, but I realize that many anthropologists are interested in the “soundscape” or sonic environment and are trying to develop an approach for their studies.
Political protests were going on when author Benjamin Tausig arrived in Bangkok to conduct research about sound. He decided to explore the sounds created not only by the protesters called the Red Shirts but also by other agents. He then became interested in the sound of dissent and proposed an approach of sound analysis to examine the protests. Sound, like political movements, is constrained. To understand its meanings, we have to analyze how the sound is consumed and the uses of media technologies and their sonic spaces, the sound's environment. Curiously, Tausig compares the sonic spaces...
