Abstract

Listening involves an embodied sensitivity to the environment we are with/in. We might not register it as sound, but rather as movement, as vibration, or an echo of the relations that draw us into the collective atmosphere of a space. An ‘echo’ is a way of tracing relationships and listening to the sensations that are at the margins of our attention, and are indicative of how spaces can be considered as ‘communal’ and co-produced. This chapter explores ‘echoing’ as a more-than-representational process that traces human–material encounters in communal tourist spaces. I draw on ethnographic reflections and documentation of interactions in hostel dormitory accommodation, where numerous people share sleeping and living space. I explore how attention to sound connects movements across multi-scalar and human–nonhuman modes of action. Such instances have the capacity to redraw our understandings of how social and material relations are produced, and the role that sound plays in our everyday practices and experiences.