Sound and Social Worlds: “feeling” the climate in organisations with Kate Herrity
Join us to celebrate the book launch of “Sound, Order and Survival in Prison”. The book reflects on a year working with the community at a local men’s prison: HMP Midtown, exploring the soundscape and its role in social life. Sound was a barometer for the emotional climate on the wing, a means of forecasting trouble and keeping safe. In this most particular of environments, where so much of life is conducted out of view, the soundscape was central to processes of order and its disruptions, to how time was passed, and industry sought. Privileging the auditory led to theorising about the prison anew, but also holds potential for transferring these methods to other spaces. What does analysing rhythms of human behaviour in particular spaces tell us about how we can enhance health and wellbeing for those within them?
Kate Herrity will be joined by Gillian Tett (Provost of King's, author and journalist) and Anna Raverat (Kings alumna and organisation development practitioner).
Kate Herrity is the Mellon-Kings Research Fellow in Punishment. She has particular interests in music, sound and the sensory in places of punishment and social control (see previous publication here), and in worrying at the meeting places between criminology and other fields and disciplines.
Anna Raverat (King's alumna 1988-1991, English) is an organisation development practitioner with 25 years experience working in organisations of all shapes and sizes. She spent a year working in a high security men's prison and found the presenting issues to be similar to her other clients.
Gillian Tett is the Provost of Kings and was a chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US of the Financial Times. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues and co-founded Moral Money, the FT sustainability newsletter.
The book will be available to purchase at a discount at the event, with more information available here.
WHEN: Thursday 1st February 2024
5.30pm - 6pm: Drinks in the Chetwynd Room
6.00pm - 7pm: Talk in the Keynes Lecture Theatre
WHERE: King’s College, Cambridge
TICKETS: book your free ticket here