The Sonic Surrogate

Interrogating the proliferation of audio apps, smart speakers, sleep aids, and prenatal sound systems that promise a better life through sound, this book explores how these technologies came to be promoted as a cheap solution for capitalism’s inevitable crisis of reproduction. Marie Thompson shows how—at a time when, for many, accessing and providing care are increasingly under pressure—sound and music are sold as tools to support caregiving, childrearing, domestic management, and pregnancy. Connecting this phenomenon to shifting gendered, racial, and global divisions of labor, the making of the modern family, the changing political economy of music, and evolving discourses of automation, The Sonic Surrogate sheds light on the many reproductions implicated in sound reproduction.