Loud and Low: Public Problems of Noise and Justice Near Westchester County Airport

Abstract

This project explores the public problem of noise in communities near the Westchester County Airport (HPN). Specifically, it explores the ways in which the public problem of noise near HPN becomes composed not only of activism, meetings, and experience but also becomes h through dialogue that positions residents concerned with “livability” issues as victims of private plane noise/airport modernization/environmental risk. Class becomes a rhetorical device through which both concerned residents and airport officials rationalize and point blame, and the most pressing risk to neighborhoods is related to property values and “livability”, effectively avoiding the structural, racial, and economic inequalities that environmental justice is concerned with analyzing and correcting. Also included is a creative field recording project, answering and interacting with larger anthropological calls for "critical ethnographic field recording". While embedding these problems of noise within larger social and historical contexts, we begin to see the particularities that exist in this field site, investigate the contradictions, and develop an understanding of how the sonic character of environments can be incredibly useful resources in anthropological fieldwork.