Administrative Flows

The chapter focuses on two law enforcement institutions. The first is the police, one of the most visible state actors in the city and a recurrent choice for dealing with community noise. The second institution is the Urban Silence Program (Programa de Silêncio Urbano, or PSIU), a municipal agency created in 1994. After tracing the administrative flows inside the police and the PSIU, I suggest a comparative analysis of the two institutions. By following sound as it circulates within each of these governmental bodies, I argue that, different than the groups considered so far, the main concern for the executive branch is not so much ontological or epistemological issues surrounding noise, but rather consolidating (1) legal-bureaucratic stability, (2) budgetary principles, and (3) political party affiliations.

Of Ears and Norms

This chapter focuses on several attempts to mobilize sound-politics via a range of techniques, devices, and national and international standards. I consider how experts have managed to stabilize two central actors: ears and norms. In the early twentieth century, experts generated the “average normal ear,” which I call Ear 1.0, the first actor. The second actor is the sound level meter, the Ear 2.0, a black box responsible for emulating Ear 1.0 and conveying reliable quantified information. As other authors have already traced the fascinating history of the stabilization of Ears 1.0 and 2.0 in the early twentieth century, I simply summarize some of these debates. The second section focuses on the Brazilian Technical Standards Association (ABNT). In the 2010s, experts faced the daunting task of revising two technical standards for assessing environmental noise. As I show, drawing on participant observation, interviews, and minutes of meetings between 2011 and 2017, this task was difficult because these revisions involved the input of groups with different interests and different understandings of what a technical standard should do.

The Echo Chamber

This chapter examines the São Paulo Municipal Chamber, focusing on three noise debates in São Paulo, the first two of which involve noise ordinances created in the 1990s, and enforced by the PSIU. The first debate revolves around the Evangelical lawmakers’ attempts to exclude, minimize, or hinder the impact of the noise ordinance on religious services. The second debate focuses on an ordinance that requires bars without acoustic insulation to close at 1:00 a.m.: a demand that faced strong opposition from nightlife businesses. The third debate circles back to the beginning of this article. I describe the recent attempt of a group of acoustic engineers to lobby the city administration for the systematic mapping of traffic noise. For the sound specialists, it is only with such an acoustic map that the municipal government can plan a truly sustainable city.

Introduction

What exactly is “noise” in the urban space? With limited resources, often navigating within turbulent political and economic contexts, public officials prefer to regulate sounds that they: 1) can easily specify and identify; 2) hear as imbued with negative ramifications (for health, for the economy, for political stability, for safety, for morals, etc.), especially when they have the support of the citizenry; and 3) can combat under the auspices of scientific facts. This is not an easy task, however, as all three parameters constantly undergo change. The introduction discusses noise as entailed with spatial and ontological axes. It relates the concept of sound-politics to citizenship studies, particularly insurgent citizenship, differentiated citizenship, and microcitizenship.

The “Rowdy” Teenagers

In this chapter, I focus on a youth group that since the mid-2000s has been reshuffling public spaces. The event examined here takes place in the city’s vast poor peripheries. The first part of the chapter locates music within sound-politics. I consider the spread of street parties known as “pancadões,” or “big thumps,” a term that alludes to the loudness. By following the pancadão controversy, I am interested in understanding the disposition of specific groups as they try to either maintain or eliminate this sound from the streets. In the final section, we are going to examine the actors deployed by groups interested in disarticulating the pancadão in the name of public security, good taste, family values, and quality of life.

Legal Channels

The chapter is organized into two main sections. The first part focuses on three crucial translators in this network: the lawyer, the state prosecutor, and the appellate judge. These agents will guide us through the series of procedural steps necessary for moving along the legal channels. Once we have understood how these actors build and make decisions on noise litigation (step-by-step, document-by-document), we can then approach the five legal channels more fully. The second section focuses on jurisprudence. I discuss how cases enter the Palace of Justice as legal appeals and leave the building as either the confirmation or rebuttal of the administrative fine and initial judgment sentences. The section examines the weight of legal documents in the Court of Appeals and the most frequent strategies the parties use to articulate the law to their own advantage.

Conclusion

We have identified some of the most controversial sounds in São Paulo and considered how government actors articulate mechanisms to regulate these sounds. Having compiled this information, in this conclusion I summarize the findings presented in the book and suggest potential lines of inquiry for a study of citizenship and modernity. I do this by further elaborating on the notion of sound-politics, examining how sounds have entered and left the sphere of state control in São Paulo. Integrating the book’s two analytical threads presented in the Introduction (modes of existence and governmental arrangements), I describe sound-politics in São Paulo as a field comprised of four strata: sonic complexes, debate axes, governmental dilemmas, and governmental solutions.

Anti-Noise Waves

The chapter focuses on two processes: complaints brought to the press by residents since the 1910s and the city administration’s responses to those complaints. In order to establish an inventory of contentious urban sounds and examine the successive shifts in São Paulo’s acoustic environment, I went through roughly 1,510 stories in two newspapers that used the term “noise.” This allowed me to catalog the actors and sounds that led to dissent in São Paulo and the routes through which they became public problems. The chapter also considers how the municipal administration framed the problems and what solutions (if any) it proposed. This will reveal some of the “translation gaps” between complainants and administrations in the back-and-forth between public controversies and their proposed scientific, legal, and political solutions.