Societies under Construction

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction: Societies under Construction

   • Daniel J. Sage, Chloé Vitry

   Pages 1-49

3. ‘This Building Is Never Complete’: Studying Adaptations of a Library Building Over Time

   • Hiral Patel, Dylan Tutt

   Pages 51-85

4. Constructing Work: Politics, Society and Architectural History on the Paris Building Site

   • Jacob Paskins

   Pages 87-114

5. Liberating the Semantics: Embodied Work(Man)ship in Construction

   • Rikard Sandberg, Christine Räisänen, Martin Löwstedt, Ani Raiden

   Pages 115-149

6. Change and Continuity: What Can Construction Tell Us About Institutional Theory?

   • Paul Chan

   Pages 151-184

7. Building Home Futures: Materialities of Construction and Meanings of Home in Self-help Building Practices

   • Monika Grubbauer

   Pages 185-204

8. From Relational to Regressive Place-Making: Developing an ANT Theory of Place with Housebuilding

   • Daniel J. Sage, Chloé Vitry

   Pages 205-236

9. Organizing Space and Time Through Relational Human–Animal Boundary Work: Exclusion, Invitation and Disturbance

   • Daniel J. Sage, Lise Justesen, Andrew Dainty, Kjell Tryggestad, Jan Mouritsen

   Pages 237-264

10. Back Matter

    Pages 265-267

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This edited collection explores building construction as an inspiring, yet often overlooked, place to develop new knowledge about the development of human societies. Eschewing dominant engineering and management perspectives on construction, the book is purposefully broad in its scope, both empirically and theoretically, as reflecting the rich underexplored potential of studies of building construction to inform a wide span of intellectual debates across the social science and humanities. The seven chapters encompass contributions to theories of: spatiotemporal organization with wildlife on building sites; institutional change with building ruins; home with Mexican self-help housing; place with a suburban housing development; socio-materiality with the adaptation of a university library; migrant labour with the Parisian postwar construction boom; and gender with a female site manager in Sweden. 


This book seeks to develop a new critical sub-area for construction studies that focuses on the actual processes and practices of ‘constructing'. Bringing together diverse members of construction research communities working in a variety of contexts, it develops empirical engagements with building work to challenge its marginalization, relative to architectural studies, to provoke novel understandings of human history, geography and sociology. 

• Human Geography
• Urban Sociology
• Urban Studies
• Housing
• architectural history
• institutional theory
• institutional theory
• institutional change with building ruins
• spatiotemporal organization
• Mexican self-help housing
• socio-materiality
• suburban housing development
• Parisian postwar construction boom and migrant labour
• construction and gender
• women in construction
• construction studies
• architectural studies

“The construction industry is the largest or second largest industry (only surpassed by health care) in most OECD countries, and yet its economic weight is insufficiently mirrored in the social science and economic literature. Furthermore, construction management research would benefit from closer collaborations across disciplinary boundaries to rejuvenate the interest in the built environment and its non-material relations and implications. Societies under construction: Geographies, Sociologies and Histories of Building offers a variety of theoretical views and empirical studies of the built environment and offers inspirational reading for scholars in construction management studies and related disciplines.” (Alexander Styhre, Chair of Organization & Management, School of Business, Economics, and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

“This book constitutes a vital intervention into interdisciplinary scholarship about construction. It offers an impassioned plea to theorise with construction, given that building work has often been marginalised, overlooked, silenced or under-valued in academic research. Bringing together theoretical traditions from sociology, history and human geography, and case studies ranging from an interrogation of gender norms in the Swedish construction industry to self-build housing in Mexico City, this book will be of interest to a diverse range of scholars and practitioners working on or in construction. The book also offers an excellent set of analyses of the ways in which construction work frames and articulates key, pressing contemporary issues - from climate change to rapid urban growth.” (Professor Peter Kraftl, Chair in Human Geography & Director of Internationalisation, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK, and Honorary Professor, School of Education, RMIT, Australia)

• School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom

  Daniel J. Sage

• School of Business, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

  Chloé Vitry

Daniel J. Sage is Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour in the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University.   


Chloé Vitry is Research Associate in the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University. 

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