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Contribution short abstract:

This contribution highlights the experience of noise in women commuters on Karachi’s roads. It argues that attending to urban noise requires an intersectional lens to draw out how existing inequalities come to bear on sensory experiences and produce an urban ground that is acoustically uneven.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution reflects on ethnographic accounts of women’s experiences of noise in the city of Karachi. Urban noise to an extent imports ideas of productivity and liveliness, while its excesses conjure a host of urban governance forms for abatement and management in many cities. In many others, however, such as Karachi, noise comes to be tolerated and accepted as a mundane facet of urban life. Karachi’s sonic landscape is dominated by sounds of road traffic and remains ungoverned. Traffic noise, therefore, permeates all boundaries: of private homes, schools, hospitals and remains unchecked by governance institutions. In this presentation, through interviews and auto-ethnography, I delineate how noise frames acoustic experiences of women on Karachi’s roads. I argue that noise touches women’s bodies in ways that engender experiences of fear. As noise of the city’s roads take over the hearing capacities of women commuters, it generates embodied experiences of “being trapped” and unable to sense danger. Attending to urban noise and its subjective experiences, therefore, requires an intersectional lens to draw out how existing inequalities come to bear on sensory experiences and produce an urban ground that is acoustically uneven.