"Sound, meaning and politics, The social construction of aircraft noise annoyance"

Humans produce sounds and they hear each other’s sound. What is seen as noise, how much noise can be tolerated and who is allowed to produce the din, is not given with the sound itself. Aircraft noise annoyance is in part a social construction. Not so long ago, aircraft sound was highly regarded. These days, it is often linked to annoyance. The meaning of aircraft sound has changed. Growing noise exposure has contributed to that. But the growth alone does not account for irritation. I assume that the way we deal with annoyance politically has contributed to a change in perception. Noise policies, social movements and regulating institutions influence the way in which we think and feel about noise and annoyance. In the political process a definition of a problem emerges and is spreads. The public will adopt it, reject it or modify it. Policy measures and institutions shape private perception as well. If Swiss citizens are allowed to vote for or against public financing of Swiss airline in a referendum, this creates a sense of control. This feeling of control inhibits part of the annoyance. If, on the other hand, neighbors of London Heathrow, Frankfurt Airport or Amsterdam Schiphol get dissatisfied with their role in the policy process, this contributes to misfeasance and annoyance. In this paper I am focusing on the political context in which aircraft noise annoyance is defined and regulated. Hopefully, this contributes to a better understanding of noise annoyance. Furthermore, it might reveal some of the reasons why current noise policies often seem so ineffective. To analyze the interplay between political context and private troubles, I will conduct a comparative study. Two neighborhoods with the same noise-exposure in the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and Switzerland (Zürich) are compared. The hypothesis is, that the difference in political context, leads to differences in the kind of problem people have. The political context also might explain why, given the same exposure, Swiss citizens seem to be less annoyed than Dutch. At this moment, data are generated. Therefore, in this paper I will focus on the conceptual framework of my research.