One distinctive feature of modernity is the proliferation of constructed sound, to the point where noise pollution is regarded as one of the greatest threats to human well-being. An ecology of violence invests the modern soundscape, encompassing the noise of industry, transport, and recreation. It is not simply organic damage but, insofar as the distinction remains viable, psychic damage. While this is especially true in situations of armed conflict, the threat is not confined to an abnormal “elsewhere.” The distinctiveness of the damage caused specifically by sound in armed conflict is one of degree and frequency, as documented in studies of the effects of both high volume and Low Frequency Noise (LFN).1 There is, as Daughtry says, a “kernel of potential violence that exists within all sounds” (p. 165). As in the general soundscape, so too in its bellicose sites, modernity has brought a new level of trauma, especially...

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