On mediation: ethnographic and statistical analysis of an Indian helpline for reporting "Sound Abuse in Public Spaces"

This paper focuses on the Indian program "National Initiative for Safe Sound", a non-profit group based in Kerala. One of NISS's main actions is running a telephone helpline for residents "to report sound abuse in public spaces." It provides the population with its first opportunity to speak out about the disturbing noises they endure, and is an invitation to nurture sonic citizenship via intermediation with noise-makers. Unlike governmental services that gather data in pre-established categories, the helpline foregrounds the fundamentally sociological aspects of sound annoyance. As part of its telephone exchange, the helpline maintains a register recording some personal information, details on the context of the noise, and the indicated sound sources. Ethnographic and statistical analyses are combined to precisely identify the social and geographical origin of callers, categories of sound sources, and the nature of the conflicts that emerge from the experience of unwanted sound. This paper describes local singularities and remarkable differences with comparable, earlier studies based on "official" noise complaints in other countries. We favored an anthropological approach, offering an initial analysis of the profile of people calling in with complaints, and their highly conflictual relationship with the sounds entering the public space from places of worship.