A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In an era dominated by visual information, what can the sounds of a pandemic reveal about crisis and care? How might attuning to sonic atmospheres uncover new dimensions to states of emergency and their implications for collective life? In
Sonic Socialism, Christina Schwenkel examines the use of sound in COVID-19 response efforts in urban Vietnam. Based on "soundwork" conducted in Hanoi in 2020 during the pandemic's first year, she shows how acoustic technologies played a pivotal yet overlooked role in state efforts to achieve record-low infection rates worldwide. Across lived experiences of quarantine, lockdown, and spatial distancing, Schwenkel explores sound-based interventions to curb virus transmission, and the public's response to these auditory measures. From instant messaging alerts to public health videos and neighborhood loudspeakers, sonic governance sought to transform urban sounds and listening practices to mobilize action, drawing people into networks of care and control. As anthropology stands at a crossroads,
Sonic Socialism makes the compelling case for the value of sensory autoethnography in reimagining a more careful and caring ethnographic practice in a post-pandemic world.
Christina Schwenkel is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam.
"A well-written, keenly observed, theoretically rich, and historically unique account of life in Hanoi during the first year of the pandemic. It provides a significant expansion of our knowledge of the local-level workings of state power during the pandemic and a theoretically robust exploration of the acoustics of disaster governance."—Tine Mette Gammeltoft, author of Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam
"This is a fascinating and ambitious text that brings together the experiences of COVID, still ongoing and not quite over, across multiple temporalities and localities. Sonic Socialism does tremendous work in being one of the first ethnographic accounts coming out of the COVID era."—Jennifer Hsieh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan
"Christina Schwenkel's turn toward 'sensory attunement' and sonic relations is breathtaking. She fled the US for lockdown in Hanoi and placed her trust in Vietnamese care campaigns. Her autoethnographic soundwalks through her neighborhood and into the nation opened my ears. And how she listens! Schwenkel is already the go-to scholar on postsocialist aesthetics, humanitarian practices, and infrastructural theory. Her deep knowledge of Vietnam comes together powerfully in this book as she takes a giant step into sound studies, offering new insights into Vietnam, the pandemic, and a noisy public sphere."—Deborah Wong, Professor Emerita of Music, University of California, Riverside
226 pp.6 x 9Illus: 30 color images, 9 audio files, 6 video files (with color poster frames)
9780520416192$34.95|£30.00Paper
Nov 2025