Challenging the contours: Critical cartography, local knowledge, and the public

As with many environmental issues, conflicts over airport noise are often grounded in the different experiences and knowledges of those who measure it and those who suffer its effects. The ways that airport neighbors challenge noise maps reflect the critical cartography literature, which does not take the truth of maps for granted but instead considers the political and other subjectivities behind their construction. At the same time, work in science and technology studies shows that conflicts between local residents and state officials and/or scientists are in part based on their different types of knowledge about a place, with state-centered scientific knowledge generally considered to override local knowledges. This paper brings together these two literatures in an analysis of conflicts over airport noise at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport to show how members of the public construct their own critical cartographies.