Making noise in urban Taiwan

Abstract

ABSTRACT During Taiwan's transition from authoritarian rule to liberal governance in the 1970s–80s, the government introduced a noise‐control system that uses technological instruments to manage citizens’ everyday noise problems. Rather than reducing noise problems, however, the system has amplified the disparity between a sound that is heard and one that is measured, calling into question the efficacy of noise control to attend to citizens’ needs. For residents and state actors in Taipei, the contradiction underlying noise control forms a lived condition of urban life, one that has initiated sono‐sociality, or social relations that emerge through efforts to communicate and interact with sound. [ sound , noise , acoustemology , environment , governance , urban , Taipei , Taiwan ]