This document discusses soundscape tourism and the role of silence within it. It defines soundscape tourism as capitalizing on experiences of the acoustic environment and its cultural interpretations. Silence is identified as a key aspect, including the silence of nature, silence for listening, and silence to escape busy lives. The document also discusses soundscapes as "commons" that are shared heritage for both locals and tourists. It explores how soundscapes can be both non-consumptively listened to and consumptively used by making sounds, with noise pollution representing an appropriation of the aural commons. Justified temporary appropriations of the commons for economic benefit are proposed, requiring balance between noise-making and noise-avoiding economies through local

1. Juhana Venäläinen
University of Eastern Finland
juhana.venalainen@uef.fi

2. ! What is soundscape tourism, and what is the
role of silence in it?
! What does it imply to understand soundscapes
as “commons”?
! What are the justified conditions for
appropriating these commons?

3. { 1 }
The genre of
soundscape tourism

4. ! Capitalises on the experiences of the acoustic
environment and its cultural interpretations
! One of the “background tourism elements” (Jafari 1982)
! Proposes a shift of focus from the visual to the auditory
! One of the adjectival tourisms, and/or a
transversal principle
! Silence as a fix-point of the discourse

5. ”There is not such thing as an
empty space or an empty time.
There is always something to see,
something to hear.”
(John Cage, “Experimental Music”, in Silence, p. 8)

6. Silence
of mind
• Escaping busy lives
• Spiritual retreats
Silence
of nature
• Soothing, familiar
natural and
”authentic”
soundscapes
• Birdsong, wind,
waves…
Silence
for
listening
• Exceptional and
surprising sounds
• Distinctive acoustic
phenomena

7. { 2 }
Soundscapes
as commons

8. ! Garrett Hardin (1968): “The Tragedy of the
Commons”. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248.
! Unrestricted use of open-access resources “brings ruin to
all”
should be marketized or brought into state control
! However, empirical studies have shown that
sustainable and effective commons
arrangements are possible and existing (e.g.
Ostrom, 1990)

9. Charlotte Hess (2008):
“Mapping the New Commons”

10. Tourism commons =
”the whole spectrum of resources that host areas
and their surrounding regions possess […]”
“heterogenous and variably composed of natural
and built material […] and immaterial […]
elements”
(Briassoulis, 2002, p. 1068)

11. ! lat. auris: pertaining to ear
! The shared heritage of sounds and silence,
provided by the host area for tourists as well as
for the locals
! Emphasizes the subjective experience of
listening

12. Aural commons =
"a life-like acoustic space, where
people interact and on occasion
intrude, deliberately and accidentally,
into one another's space”
(Haag 2002, p. 119–120)

13. “Sampling is a way of appropriating
this property, of subverting the
proprietary status of sound and allows
for a new kind of poaching on the
aural commons”
(Schumacher 1995 )

14. ! Two ways of using the aural commons:
! Non-consumptive: listening
! Consumptive: making sounds
! Pollution of the aural commons: making noise

15. { 3 }
Economies
of the silent

16. Making noise
=
appropriation of the aural commons
as private property

17. John Locke:
Two Treatises on Government (1689),
II.5, “Of Property”:
A philosophical
justification for the
birth of private
property

18. ! The right to the common is not absolute or
universal, but temporary and contextual
! This temporary appropriation is justified by the
purpose of using it ”to the best advantage of
Life, and convenience”(TToG, § 2.26)
! Private ownership comes about from mixing
one’s own (= body, labor) to what is not one’s
own (= nature)

19. ! To appropriate only as much as one can use
! To leave ”enough and as good” for others
! To maintain or improve the common

20. ! Aural commons as a source of economic value
! “Possibilities of growth in leisure and recreation sectors are
opened up by the more and more common lifestyles that give
value to experiences and silence” (North Karelia Regional
Master Plan 2014)
! Soundscape tourism relies on
! 1) freedom of listening (-> freedom to roam)
! 2) restraints on “unnecessary” noise
! Coordination between noise-making industrial
economies and noise-avoiding “economies of the
silent” require both local and supralocal
institutions of governance

21. ! Literature
! Bollier, D. (2007). The Growth of the Commons Paradigm. In C. Hess & E. Ostrom (Eds.), Understanding Knowledge as a
Commons. From Theory to Practice (1st MIT Press pbk. ed., pp. 27–40). Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.
! Briassoulis, H. (2002). Sustainable tourism and the question of the commons. Annals of Tourism Research, 29(4), 1065–1085.
! Cage, J. (1961). Silence: lectures and writings. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.
! Haag, S. (2002). Listen and be Touched: Aural Space in “Wandering Rocks.” In A. Gibson & S. Morrison (Eds.), Joyce’s
“Wandering Rocks” (pp. 107–120). Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi.
! Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243
! Hess, C. (2008). Mapping the New Commons. SSRN eLibrary. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=1356835
! Locke, J. (1960). Two treatises of government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
! Jafari, J. (1982). The Tourism Market Basket of Goods and Services. In T. Singh, J. Kaur, & P. Singh (Eds.), Studies in Tourism
Wildlife Parks Conservation (pp. 1–12). New Delhi: Metropolitan Book.
! Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
! Schumacher, T. G. (1995). `This is a sampling sport’: digital sampling, rap music and the law in cultural production. Media,
Culture & Society, 17(2), 253–273. doi:10.1177/016344395017002006
! Thoreau, H. D. (2008). The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau. Wilder Publications.
! Image credits: Eetu Haverinen, Alberto Ortiz