Sound-politics in São Paulo

'Sound-Politics in São Paulo' is an ethnographic study of controversial sounds and noise control debates in Latin America's most populous city. It discusses the politics of collective living by following several threads linking sound-making practices to governance issues. Rather than discussing sound within a self-enclosed 'cultural' field, the author examines it as a point of entry for analyzing the state.

In São Paulo during Brazil's post-dictatorship period, noise control became a recurrent controversy, and the ecological agenda against noise as a harmful pollutant has significantly reconfigured the presence of environmental sounds in the city. Sound-Politics in São Paulo argues that the framing of specific sounds as unavoidable, unnecessary, or as harmful "noise" has been an effective strategy to organize spaces and administer group behavior in this rapidly expanding city.