Silence of Mauá: An Atmospheric Ethnography of Urban Sounds

Jean-Paul Thibaud (1)

1 CRESSON - Centre de recherche sur l'espace sonore et l'environnement urbain

In 2015 a group of Brazilian and French researchers carried out a field investigation at the Condominío Barão de Mauá. 1 The condominium is located in the town of Mauá, some 30 kilometres from São Paulo, Brazil. The complex, built in 1996, consists of 54 buildings housing about 7,000 people and stands on land contaminated by industrial waste buried there. The residents became aware of the contamination in April 2000 when an explosion occurred during maintenance work on one of the pumps for the condominium's underground water reservoirs. It was probably caused by the presence of methane gas. A worker was killed in the explosion, another one badly burned. Legal proceedings have been underway ever since, leaving the residents exposed to the risk of contamination by carcinogenic substances and another explosion.

Domaines: Sociologie; Architecture, aménagement de l'espace; Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Géographie; Philosophie

Jean-Paul Thibaud. Silence of Mauá: An Atmospheric Ethnography of Urban Sounds. Bull, Michael; Cobussen, Marcel. Handbook of Sonic Methodologies, Bloomsbury, 2021, 9781501338779. ⟨hal-03500319⟩