Island Peace & Quiet - New Substack Post by Dr Andrew Jennings
Check out Dr Andrew Jennings, Associate Professor in Island Studies UHI Institute for Northern Studies, latest Substack post in which he discusses the auditory attractions of islands in the context of tourism.
For the modern urban dweller, true silence has become more than a luxury; it has become an “endangered resource.” We are sensory-deprived and noise-saturated, living in a state of “noise addiction” where the brain has forgotten how to process stillness. This is why we look toward the horizon. This is why we seek out the “silent isle.”
The study of tourism is currently undergoing a “sensory turn.” For decades, we reduced global destinations to aestheticized “visual postcards”, a series of scapes to be looked at but not heard (Carruthers-Jones, Holmes and Norum, 2025). We are now beginning to understand that the auditory environment, the soundscape, is a fundamental determinant of our “sense of place.”