MACMILLAN Societies under Construction: Geographies, Sociologies and Histories of Building

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.  Review “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) From the Back Cover 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 h