Resumen de Sound-Politics in São Paulo: Noise Control and Administrative Flows
In this article, I discuss community noise in São Paulo, Brazil�s wealthiest, largest, and most emblematic modern metropolis. I draw on ethnographic research conducted between 2012 and 2015 with the antinoise agency and the police, the two main institutions responsible for dealing with community noise in the city. I present law enforcement assemblages as both unstable and heterogeneous, managed by people with different (and often diverging) expectations regarding how the city should sound. I expand on Bijsterveld�s notion of �paradox of control� and show that the heterogeneity of �noise� as an umbrella concept, the complexity of its scientific mensuration, and the unsteadiness of its legal encoding make this a particularly difficult object for the state to grasp. After describing the institutional flows inside the antinoise agency, I examine the troublesome ordeal of community noise for the São Paulo police department. The third section of the article introduces the concept of sound-politics, which I define as the ways in which sounds enter (and leave) the sphere of state control. I am particularly interested in how sounds turn into objects susceptible to state intervention through the establishment of specific regulatory, disciplinary, and punishing mechanisms.
