The Politics of Listening

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Why a Politics of Listening?

   • Leah Bassel

   Pages 1-15

3. They Only Listen When We Bash Our Culture

   • Leah Bassel

   Pages 17-36

4. ‘We Are Only Remembered When We Riot’

   • Leah Bassel

   Pages 37-52

5. Creative Alternatives

   • Leah Bassel

   Pages 53-70

6. Listening as Solidarity

   • Leah Bassel

   Pages 71-87

7. Conclusion

   • Leah Bassel

   Pages 89-91

8. Back Matter

   Pages 93-112

   PDF

This book explores listening as a social and political practice, in contrast to the more common focus on voice and speaking.  The author draws on cases from Canada, France and the United Kingdom, exploring: minority women and debates over culture and religion; riots and young men in France and England; citizen journalism and the creative use of different media; and solidarity between migrant justice and indigenous activists. Analysis across these diverse settings considers whether and how a politics of listening, which demands that the roles of speakers and listeners change, can be undertaken in adversarial and tense political moments. The Politics of Listening argues that such a practice has the potential to create new ways of being and acting together, as political equals who are heard on their own terms.

The book will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology and political theory.

• Muslim women
• riots
• sociology
• France
• Canada

“What is it to take seriously in actual political practice the ideal of equality which motivated so many struggles for democracy? It is to take seriously the politics of listening, as Leah Bassel argues in this very cogent and sharp new book. Through nicely balanced case studies, Bassel succeeds in taking the abstract ideal of listening into those moments when people confront those in the media who portray them, or fight to be visible at all, as in the recent migrants crisis. A valuable contribution to the growing literature on voice.” (Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science, Author of Why Voice Matters)

“This beautiful and compelling book argues engaged scholarship today requires a mutually reinforcing commitment to both listening and politics. For Leah Bassel, how we listen to people – from First Nation Peoples in Canada to young Muslim women in France – is as important as why we want to hear them. What she offers us is a politics of listening committed to deep forms of dialogue that challenge unequal distributions of voice and power. We have never needed a book like this one more than now.” (Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of The Art of Listening)

“Leah Bassel's work illuminates listening as a site of political struggle between and among citizens, non-citizens, and the state. Her careful case studies show how audibility is organized through particular constructions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the impact this has on both the form and content of political action. While the first two case studies demonstrate the narrative strategies through which not-listening is reproduced, the second two prefigure what political listening as a practice of equality might look (or sound) like. The insights provided by Bassel's discerning treatment of these cases will be valuable for researchers in a wide variety of fields, and hopefully inspiring to us as political actors as well.” (Susan Bickford, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, author of The Dissonance of Democracy)

• School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

  Leah Bassel

Leah Bassel is Associate Professor in the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK.  Her research interests include the political sociology of gender, migration, race and citizenship.

Policies and ethics