14.sept - hearing

Definition of sensemaking according to De Rond et al. (2019)

• Sensemaking is the process through which people notice things happening around them, interpret what those things mean, and act in response. Sensemaking is especially important when something happens that does not match what people expected.

• De Rond et al. (2019, p. 1963) define sensemaking as a process that is prompted by violated expectations. People notice and select certain cues from their environment, give those cues meaning through interpretation and action, and in doing so create a more ordered understanding of what is happening.

• In simple terms, sensemaking can be understood as:
  something unexpected happens → we notice cues → we interpret them → we act → our action helps us understand the situation further.

• A cue is something in the environment that gives a person information or signals that something is happening. A cue can be something someone says or does, but it can also be something physical or sensory, such as a change in movement, sound, temperature, or the environment.

Problem with traditional sensemaking research

• De Rond et al. argue that sensemaking research has traditionally focused too much on interpretation and cognition, meaning what happens in the mind.

• Sensemaking has sometimes become almost synonymous with interpreting information. Researchers have therefore paid much more attention to how people interpret cues than to how people notice those cues in the first place.

• The authors also argue that we need to pay more attention to the connection between noticing, interpreting and taking action. These processes do not necessarily happen separately. People can notice and respond to something physically at almost the same time.

• This means that sensemaking is not simply:
  notice → think → interpret → act.

• Instead, sensemaking can be a much more immediate and embodied process in which sensing, thinking and acting are connected.

The body and sensemaking

• The main contribution of De Rond et al. is the argument that the body is complicit in sensemaking.

• The body is not simply a physical object that carries the mind around or follows instructions from the brain. The body is actively involved in how people notice, understand and respond to their environment.

• We experience the world through our bodies and all of our senses. Therefore, bodily experiences such as touch, movement, pain, exhaustion, balance, hearing and other sensations can provide information that helps us make sense of situations.

• The authors draw on Loïc Wacquant's idea of carnal sociology, which takes bodily experience seriously. Carnal sociology sees the social actor as a person of flesh and blood who relates to and acts in the world through the senses and whose bodily experience is shaped by their social history and position.

• This is important because the body is not neutral. A person's body carries previous experiences, skills and habits. What someone notices and how they respond can therefore depend on what their body has learned through previous experiences.

Carnal sociology

• Carnal sociology focuses on understanding social life through the lived experience of the body.

• De Rond et al. use this idea to argue that researchers should not only study what people think about their experiences. They should also pay attention to what experiences feel like physically.

• The social actor is a "suffering being of flesh and blood". This means that people experience the world through bodies that can feel pain, exhaustion, hunger, pleasure, discomfort and other physical sensations.

• Our bodies also have a social biography. This means that our previous experiences, training, habits and social position shape how we experience the world.

• Therefore, bodily experience is not separate from social life. The body is one of the ways through which people understand and interact with the social world.

The Amazon rowing case

• The authors study this question through an ethnographic case involving rowing the Amazon River.

• Mark de Rond and his rowing partner attempted to row the navigable length of the Amazon. The journey was physically demanding and involved constantly changing environmental conditions.

• The situation was useful for studying embodied sensemaking because the rowers had to respond continuously to things such as water currents, boat speed, whirlpools, injuries, changing river conditions and their own physical exhaustion.

• The Amazon environment could not simply be understood by sitting down and thinking about it. The rowers had to feel and physically respond to the environment.

• Their bodies became an important source of information about what was happening.

Sensemaking of the body

• Sensemaking of the body means studying the body from the outside.

• The researchers can observe people's physical movements and analyse what their bodies are doing.

• In the article, this involved analysing 755 video fragments and interview transcripts.

• Importantly, these researchers had not participated in the actual rowing. They were therefore examining embodied sensemaking mainly from an observational perspective.

• This analysis produced four examples of sensemaking:

  • preoccupation with boat speed

  • struggling with a whirlpool

  • coping with physical injury

  • rowing in the tidal zone

• This approach is useful because researchers can observe how people physically behave and interact with their environment.

Sensemaking from the body

• Sensemaking from the body goes further because it asks what it is like to experience the situation physically.

• The authors analyse 62 audio journal entries, field notes and recollections about how the rowing experience actually felt.

• The researchers' own bodily experiences become part of the research material.

• Instead of only asking:
  "What did the rowers do?"

  they also ask:
  "What did the experience feel like?"

• This leads to what they call an enactive ethnography, where bodily participation and experience are important ways of producing knowledge.

Enactive ethnography

• Enactive ethnography is an approach where the researcher gains knowledge by actively participating in and experiencing the phenomenon being studied.

• Instead of treating the researcher as completely separate from the research setting, the researcher's own bodily experience can become an important source of knowledge.

• In this case, actually rowing the Amazon allowed the researchers to understand things that might have been difficult to discover through interviews or observation alone.

• The body can reveal information that is difficult to put into words. A person might feel that something is wrong before they can explain exactly what has changed.

• This means that participation can provide access to forms of knowledge that are sensory, practical and embodied.

From the "How" to the "Who" of sensemaking

• De Rond et al. argue that we need to move from asking only how sensemaking happens to also asking who is doing the sensemaking.

• The "how" refers to the process through which people notice cues, interpret them and act.

• The "who" matters because people have different biographies, experiences, skills and bodily histories.

• Therefore, the same situation may be experienced differently by different people.

• A person's previous experiences become sedimented in the body. In other words, repeated experiences and learned skills become part of how the person automatically responds to new situations.

• The person's body is also situated. It is always experiencing the world from a particular physical and social position.

• Therefore, we cannot completely separate the process of sensemaking from the person who is doing it.

• The authors do not argue that we should choose either the "how" or the "who". They argue that we need both.

Sedimented

• Sedimented means that previous experiences become built into the body over time.

• For example, an experienced rower's body has learned how to respond to the movement of a boat and water.

• The rower does not have to consciously think through every single movement because some knowledge has become part of their bodily practice.

• This means that past experience influences present sensemaking through the body.

Situated

• Situated means that sensemaking always happens in a particular situation and environment.

• The rowers were not making sense of the river from a neutral position. They were physically located in a particular boat, on a particular river, dealing with particular currents, weather, depth and geographical conditions.

• Their physical surroundings therefore became part of the sensemaking process.

Sensemaking and action

• A major point in the reading is that sensemaking and action are closely connected.

• People do not necessarily first understand a situation completely and then act.

• Often, people act while they are still trying to understand what is happening.

• Their actions then provide new information, which helps them make further sense of the situation.

• The body is important in this cycle because physical action and sensory information are constantly connected.

Sensemaking does not always require words

• Sensemaking can happen through physical interaction, not only through language.

• For example, rowers can coordinate with each other through changes in movement and rhythm.

• One rower's movement affects the boat, which the other rower can physically feel and respond to.

• This means that people can sometimes understand and coordinate with each other through bodily cues without having to explicitly explain what they are doing.

• This challenges an understanding of organizational communication that focuses only on spoken or written language.

The body as a synthesizing medium

• The authors, following Wacquant, describe the body as a synthesizing medium of sensory awareness.

• This means that the body brings together information from different senses and physical experiences.

• We do not necessarily experience things as separate pieces of information such as "I see this," "I hear this," and "I feel this."

• Our body brings these experiences together into an overall sense of what is happening.

• This can help explain why people sometimes say that a situation "feels wrong" even before they can explain exactly why.

What the article adds to sensemaking theory

• The article does not argue that previous sensemaking theories are completely wrong.

• Instead, it extends them by showing that sensemaking should not be understood as purely cognitive.

• Traditional sensemaking research has often focused on interpretation and the mind.

• De Rond et al. argue that we also need to examine:

  • how cues are physically noticed;

  • how bodies respond to cues;

  • how sensory experiences influence action;

  • how previous bodily experiences shape what people notice;

  • and how the physical environment becomes part of sensemaking.

• Sensemaking is therefore cognitive, sensory, embodied, situated and connected to action.

Emotion and hearing

• Hearing affects emotion: sounds can trigger feelings, memories and bodily reactions, sometimes before we consciously understand why.

• Music and memory: music from childhood/youth can bring back strong emotions because sounds become connected to past experiences.

• Vocal cues: we interpret not only words but also:

  • Tone – emotional quality of voice

  • Pitch – high/low

  • Volume – loud/quiet

  • Pace – fast/slow

  • Silence/pauses – can also communicate meaning

• Collective listening: people can experience sounds together, creating shared emotions, connection and collective mourning.

• Misophonia: strong negative emotional/physical reactions to particular sounds, showing that sounds can affect people differently.

• Organizations and sound: workplace sounds can influence mood, stress and behaviour. Examples include music, alarms, machines, shouting, silence and people's voices.

• Trauma: sounds associated with traumatic experiences can later trigger memories, emotions or bodily reactions.

• Multispecies: sound is also important between species. Whales, for example, communicate through sounds that travel long distances through water

Current state of emotional affairs

• Eurobarometer (2025): 46% of Europeans reported emotional or psychosocial problems.

• 54% of those experiencing these problems did not seek help, with stigma, discomfort and barriers to care being possible reasons.

• People may avoid showing emotions because they fear:

  • appearing weak;

  • burdening others;

  • being "too much";

  • being judged.

• The manosphere can reinforce ideas of emotional toughness and traditional masculinity.

• Western society can over-prioritize the rational self, sometimes treating emotions as less valuable.

• Loneliness: humans need connection, but many people experience isolation. This raises the question: where is the collectiveness and connection?

Coloniality of power

• Coloniality = the continuing effects of colonial systems of power after formal colonialism ended.

• Quijano, Mignolo, Wynter: colonialism created hierarchies between Europeans and colonized peoples.

• Colonial othering: Indigenous people were described as "savages" and constructed as inferior to Europeans.

• Colonialism controlled not only land and people but also knowledge, identity and ideas about what is normal or rational.

Eurocentrism

• Eurocentrism = treating European/Western ways of knowing as the central or universal standard.

• European ways of knowing were associated with:

  • reason;

  • objectivity;

  • self-determination;

  • self-consciousness.

• Other forms of knowledge could therefore be treated as less rational or legitimate.

Coloniality of gender

• Colonial systems also imposed and reinforced particular ideas about gender and gender hierarchy.

• Gender roles are socially and historically shaped rather than simply universal "truths."

• Gender inequality can still appear in organizations through issues such as pay, leadership and expectations around care and work.

The "ideal worker"

• The ideal worker is an organizational image of the employee who is:

  • fully committed to work;

  • always available;

  • productive;

  • rational;

  • emotionally controlled;

  • independent.

• The ideal worker is often based on a white, male, cisnormative worker without major care/domestic responsibilities.

• This reflects patriarchal and capitalist assumptions about professional life.

• The expectation of constant availability can disadvantage people who have responsibilities outside work.

Emotional imperialism

• Archer & Matheson (2022): emotional imperialism occurs when a powerful group imposes its emotional norms on a less powerful group and treats the other group's emotional norms as deviant or inferior.

• This means that dominant groups can influence what counts as:

  • appropriate emotion;

  • professionalism;

  • emotional control;

  • acceptable behaviour.

Iris Young – cultural imperialism

• Dominant meanings become treated as normal and universal.

• Other groups can become invisible or stereotyped and marked as the "Other."

Hearing, listening and colonial knowledge

• Colonial systems have often dismissed Indigenous knowledge and ways of relating to the environment.

• Descartes / Cartesian divide: Western thought has often separated:

  • mind / body;

  • reason / emotion;

  • nature / culture;

  • human / non-human.

• These divisions can make sensory, embodied and relational forms of knowledge appear less legitimate.

• Kanngieser (2023): Eurocentric systems of knowledge have shaped which sensory experiences and ways of knowing receive authority.

Hearing vs. listening

• Hearing = a sense.

• Listening = an active process of paying attention, interpreting and relating to sound.

• Therefore Hearing receives sound; listening creates meaning from sound.

• We can hear something without actually listening to it.

Listening, nature and relationality

• Nature can be understood as more than a resource. It can also be something humans need to listen and respond to.

• Attunement = becoming sensitive and responsive to what is happening around us.

• Relationality = understanding the world through relationships between people, environments, animals and other beings.

• Rasch (2026) and Koopman (2026) connect listening with attunement and relationality.

• Polyphonic assemblage: many different voices, beings and processes exist together and affect one another.

  • Encourages us to move beyond a single human perspective.

• Undrowned: Uses marine mammals to think about relationships between humans and other species, survival and environmental harm.

  • Raises questions about how we can listen across species, extinction and harm.

Emotions and hearing in organizations

• Organizations are not only systems of rules, tasks and rational decision-making. They are also emotional and sensory environments.

• Organizations create expectations about:

  • which emotions are acceptable;

  • how people should speak;

  • who gets to speak;

  • whose voices are taken seriously.

• Emotion + hearing = questions of power.

• We can ask:

  • Who is heard?

  • Who is ignored?

  • Whose emotions are considered professional?

  • Whose emotions are dismissed?

  • Whose knowledge is treated as legitimate?

Alternative and activist organizations

• Alternative organizations can use different forms of communication, such as:

  • clapping;

  • whistling;

  • talking sticks.

• These practices can create more collective and participatory ways of communicating.

Indigenous organizing

• Indigenous approaches can emphasize listening, relationships and attunement to the environment.

• This challenges the idea that nature is simply an object or resource.

• Examples include:

  • listening to the environment;

  • listening to stones;

  • songs as communication;

  • relationships between people, place and non-human beings

Nadal, 2020 – Chapter 3: DogsEstimated number of dogs in India

• Estimates suggest that India has tens of millions of pet dogs and free-ranging/street dogs, but these numbers should be treated carefully. The figures found in different sources vary considerably.

• Nadal emphasizes that statistics on the number of dogs in India are notoriously inaccurate. The problem is partly that researchers and authorities do not always use the same categories. For example, “pet,” “stray,” “street,” “feral,” “owned,” and “free-ranging” dogs can overlap. Therefore, it is difficult to produce one reliable number for the street-dog population (Nadal, 2020, p. 89).

The central problem: humans and dogs have an ambiguous relationship

• One of the main arguments of the chapter is that human–dog relationships in India are highly contradictory and ambiguous.

• People can simultaneously love, feed, protect and care for dogs while also fearing, rejecting, beating, removing or killing them.

• Nadal gives examples of street dogs being killed through extremely violent methods, including clubbing, shooting, poisoning, starvation and electrocution. At the same time, dogs are among the animals most commonly fed by people in India.

• A 2009 Wildlife SOS survey found that 66% of Delhiites said that they fed street dogs more or less regularly. Nadal also found in her own survey of university students that 69% fed street animals at least occasionally, and dogs were the most commonly fed animals among them (63%).

• This shows a structural ambiguity in human–dog relations: the same society can see dogs as both valuable and unwanted, loved and dangerous, sacred and dirty.

• This connects directly to Chapter 2, “Food in the Middle.” Food is one of the things that connects humans and dogs. People give dogs food intentionally because of religion, compassion or affection, while humans also unintentionally provide food through garbage and waste.

• Therefore, dogs are not simply “living outside human society.” They are deeply embedded in the human social and material environment.

“Stray dog” vs. “street dog”

• Nadal questions the simple distinction between pet dogs and stray dogs.

• In many Western contexts, the word “stray” suggests a dog that is lost, unowned, or somewhere it should not be. In India, “street dog” is a more useful term because many dogs living on the street have some kind of relationship with people. They may be regularly fed, protected or cared for by particular people or communities even though they are not formally owned.

• This means that the simple categories owned/unowned or pet/stray do not fully describe the reality Nadal observes.

• Dogs can exist along a spectrum of dependence:

  • Some dogs are completely dependent on owners and live inside homes.

  • Some dogs are family pets but are allowed to roam freely.

  • Some are neighbourhood/community dogs that live outside but are regularly fed or cared for.

  • Some are much more independent and survive mainly through scavenging.

Dogs, caste, class and social status

• Nadal also examines how Indian dogs are given different social meanings depending on their appearance and perceived status.

• The Indian indigenous dog has often been labelled a “pariah dog.” Nadal questions this terminology because “pariah” is connected historically to social marginalization and caste. The term therefore does not simply describe an animal; it carries human ideas about low status, dirt, exclusion and social hierarchy.

• In contrast, foreign breeds can become symbols of wealth, modernity and status. Wealthier urban residents may purchase breeds such as Labradors, pugs, Saint Bernards or other foreign breeds because they are fashionable or associated with a particular lifestyle.

• This creates an important distinction between:
  foreign/purebred pet dog = desirable, expensive, status symbol and Indian street dog = dirty, unwanted, dangerous, low-status.

Street dogs as a “menace”

• Street dogs are often described as a major public problem because they are associated with bites, rabies, noise, garbage, traffic accidents, dirt and fear.

• Nadal gives examples of newspapers presenting street dogs as a serious urban threat. Some headlines strongly emphasize the number of bites and portray Delhi as experiencing a “canine crisis.”

• A survey in Kerala found that 80% of respondents believed that all street dogs were rabid, showing how strongly fear can influence people’s understanding of dogs.

• However, Nadal does not simply ask whether people’s fear is justified or unjustified. She asks how this fear becomes socially produced through:

  • media stories,

  • personal experiences,

  • cultural beliefs,

  • statistics,

  • political debates,

  • representations of dogs,

  • and everyday encounters between humans and dogs.

• The dog therefore becomes a “menace” through a combination of actual risks and social meanings surrounding those risks.

The problem with simply removing or killing dogs

• A major part of the chapter discusses attempts to control street-dog populations by removing, relocating or killing dogs.

• Nadal shows that large-scale removal does not necessarily solve the problem because dog populations are strongly connected to the environment around them.

• If an area contains enough food, water and shelter, dogs will continue to survive there.

• Even when many dogs are removed, other dogs can move into the available ecological space. Nadal therefore argues that removing dogs can fail to reduce the overall population because the conditions supporting the population remain unchanged.

• The problem is therefore not simply “too many dogs.” It is also the environment humans have created that allows large populations of dogs to survive.

“Food in the middle” again

• Nadal returns to the importance of food from Chapter 2.

• The largest source of food for street dogs is garbage. Municipal waste therefore contributes to maintaining street-dog populations, and Nadal discusses research connecting waste availability with dog populations and dog bites.

• Humans also deliberately feed street dogs.

• People may feed dogs because of:

  • Hindu religious beliefs,

  • charity,

  • compassion,

  • affection,

  • a feeling of responsibility toward particular neighbourhood dogs,

  • or personal relationships with the animals.

Dogs in Hinduism

• Nadal explains that dogs have a complicated symbolic position in Hinduism.

• Dogs have historically been represented both positively and negatively. They can be associated with protection, loyalty and companionship, but they can also be associated with death, impurity and dangerous spaces.

• A particularly important figure is Bheru/Bhairava, a Hindu deity associated with dogs.

• Because of this religious connection, feeding dogs can have a religious meaning rather than being viewed simply as “feeding a stray.”

• This helps explain why attempts to regulate or prohibit dog feeding can become cultural and religious conflicts, rather than being purely technical questions of public health.

• This is another example of how something that looks simple “above ground”—a person giving food to a dog—can have much deeper meanings below the surface, such as religion, morality, compassion, duty and cultural beliefs.

Poor people and dogs

• One of Nadal’s most interesting observations is that poor people do not necessarily hate street dogs, even though they may be among the people most exposed to dog bites.

• A garbage collector tells Nadal that poor people and dogs are “in the same boat” because both struggle for food, safety, shelter and affection.

• They may even share physical spaces: both search through garbage, and humans and dogs may sleep near one another for warmth and protection.

• Nadal also encountered people who had been bitten and had killed the dog responsible. However, some of them did not develop a general hatred toward dogs afterward.

Middle-class and wealthy dog ownership

• Wealthier communities also have complicated relationships with street dogs.

• In some affluent neighbourhoods, people spend considerable time and money feeding and caring for street dogs. Some dogs therefore have a very high quality of life despite technically being “street dogs.”

• At the same time, Nadal criticizes forms of middle-class pet ownership in which foreign-breed dogs become status symbols.

• Some people purchase attractive or fashionable breeds without fully considering the responsibility involved in caring for them. Some dogs are eventually abandoned or end up in shelters.

Animal Birth Control–Anti-Rabies Vaccination (ABC-ARV)

• Nadal discusses Animal Birth Control–Anti-Rabies Vaccination (ABC-ARV) as an important strategy for managing street dogs and reducing rabies.

• The basic idea is to:

  1. catch the dogs,

  2. sterilize them,

  3. vaccinate them against rabies,

  4. care for them during recovery,

  5. return them to the place where they were captured.

• The purpose is to reduce reproduction while increasing immunity against rabies rather than simply killing dogs.
  Nadal argues that dog vaccination is more useful for controlling rabies than simply killing dogs because vaccinated dogs can act as a barrier to transmission.

• This is an important shift in perspective: Dogs are not only potential carriers of rabies; vaccinated dogs can become part of the solution to rabies.