Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for November 2022, Mickey Vallee (Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Athabasca University, Canada). His article for Current Sociology Do we need a posthumanist sociology? Notes from the COVID-19 pandemic is Open Access.

Mickey Vallee

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

M. Vallee: I hold a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Sound Studies at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada. It's an honour to be published in Current Sociology and to be named sociologist of the month.

I went to university initially to learn about music theory and composition, mainly to help me improve my accordion playing. But after a couple of courses on the sociology and philosophy of music, a whole flood of questions opened up for me about the unique sound worlds that we individually and collectively inhabit. I thereafter pursued an interdisciplinary PhD on the creative economy of sound recording practices, and kept working in this area as I taught and researched in my first contract position in a sociology department at another university before Athabasca generously took me on board.

Around the same time I presented at a conference on posthumanism at Brock University, which hosted feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti as their keynote speaker – her idea for a cartographic perspectivism, and her kindness and affirmative ethics really grabbed me by the gut. And so I’ve been following developments in posthuman philosophy ever since. Her energy is something that’s never really left me, inspiring me to even change the infrastructure and architecture of my research approach. My whole research program was widened to include bioacoustics, geoacoustics, and ecoacoustics, all non-anthrocentric perspectives on sound and environment. My empirics are still in these areas.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “Do we need a posthumanist sociology? Notes from the COVID-19 pandemic”?

M. Vallee: When COVID-19 hit, I, like many others, was curious about the posthuman themes that were starting to emerge in public discourse, especially with how our anthropocentric domination of animals was subverted by a sudden zoonotic transmission – it felt we were just a cough away from facing a terminable fate. With how closely connected deforestation is to the rise and frequency of pandemics, as it’s been noted by critical epidemiologists, I thought this was humanity’s turning moment. It seemed like one of those times where we would see clearly the connection between individual action and global consequence. And so I think the article I wrote for Current Sociology was prompted by a lot of these feelings and observations I was making in my notebook at the time.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

M. Vallee: I’m not certain whether the article has any findings, but in it I try to elucidate a lot of the posthumanist themes in the context of this unprecedented historical event. There are other sociologists that are doing amazing work with posthumanist philosophy; Nick Fox and Pam Alldred especially. And there’s increasing interest in the posthuman framework, since it widens the periphery of empirics, embraces perspectivism and diversity, includes non-human entities as social agents, and tends to promote an affirmative ethic that embraces the possibility for a better future.

It’s an honour and genuine surprise to be Sociologist of the Month. Thanks very much for the opportunity to share my work.