Table Of ContentGeographies, Sociologies and Histories of Building
EDITED BY DANIEL J. SAGE & CHLOÉ VITRY
Societies under Construction
Daniel J. Sage · Chloé Vitry
Editors
Societies under
Construction
Geographies, Sociologies
and Histories of Building
Editors
Daniel J. Sage Chloé Vitry
School of Business and Economics School of Business
Loughborough University University of Leicester
Loughborough, UK Leicester, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-73995-3 ISBN 978-3-319-73996-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73996-0
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Acknowledgements
This book was inspired by a workshop on ‘Building Work: Histories,
Geographies and Sociologies’ held on the 10th October 2014 at
Loughborough University. This workshop was made possible with
the kind support of the Centre for Professional Work and Society in
the School of Business and Economics, and the School of Civil and
Building Engineering. While not all of the contributors to this book
attended that workshop, the lively and fruitful discussions at the work-
shop around the diversity and future of social studies of building con-
struction persuaded us to develop more outlets for social science and
humanities debates about building construction. We would also like
to thank Peter Ackers, Andrew Dainty and Christine Coupland who,
as well as being influential in supporting the workshop, encouraged us
more widely as to the unique value of edited interdisciplinary collec-
tions. And, finally, we must also acknowledge the considerable efforts
of all the contributors to this volume, and the guidance of Holly Finch
and Joanna O’Neill at Palgrave.
v
Contents
1 Introduction: Societies under Construction 1
Daniel J. Sage and Chloé Vitry
2 ‘This Building Is Never Complete’: Studying Adaptations
of a Library Building Over Time 51
Hiral Patel and Dylan Tutt
3 Constructing Work: Politics, Society and Architectural
History on the Paris Building Site 87
Jacob Paskins
4 Liberating the Semantics: Embodied Work(Man)ship in
Construction 115
Rikard Sandberg, Christine Räisänen, Martin Löwstedt
and Ani Raiden
5 Change and Continuity: What Can Construction Tell Us
About Institutional Theory? 151
Paul Chan
vii
viii Contents
6 Building Home Futures: Materialities of Construction and
Meanings of Home in Self-help Building Practices 185
Monika Grubbauer
7 From Relational to Regressive Place-Making: Developing
an ANT Theory of Place with Housebuilding 205
Daniel J. Sage and Chloé Vitry
8 Organizing Space and Time Through Relational
Human–Animal Boundary Work: Exclusion,
Invitation and Disturbance 237
Daniel J. Sage, Lise Justesen, Andrew Dainty, Kjell Tryggestad
and Jan Mouritsen
Index 265
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Dr. Daniel J. Sage is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour in
the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University,
United Kingdom. His research focuses upon the development of theo-
ries of materialities, geographies and power within organizational life,
particularly in relation to the built environment. He has produced over
30 publications across a wide variety of social science disciplines and
international journals.
Dr. Chloé Vitry is a Teaching Fellow in the School of Business at
University of Leicester, with a Ph.D. in Organization Studies. She pre-
viously worked as a Research Associate at Loughborough University’s
School of Business and Economics, researching the travel of innova-
tions in the construction industry. She is interested in bodies and socio-
materiality, affect and alternative forms of organizing. She is a member
of VIDA, a Critical Management Studies association.
ix
x Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Paul Chan is Senior Lecturer in Project Management in the School
of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of
Manchester, United Kingdom. Paul studies human relations in engi-
neering and construction project contexts, focussing particularly on
how people cope with social, organizational and technological change.
He is especially interested in the everyday mundane practices and
processes of ongoing change in organizational life. He is one of the
Editors of Construction Management and Economics. He co- authored
Constructing Futures (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and over 80 peer-
reviewed journal and conference articles.
Andrew Dainty is Professor of the Sociology of Construction and is
based in the School of Architecture, Civil and Building Engineering,
Loughborough University, UK. For the past 22 years he has researched
the sociologies of construction practice, focusing on the social rules and
processes that affect people working as members of project teams. He
has also led work mobilising critical perspectives on projects and the
management people within the construction sector. He has published
over 350 papers and is co-author/editor of eight books and research
monographs.
Dr. Monika Grubbauer is Professor in History and Theory of the City
at HafenCity University, Hamburg, Germany. She is a trained architect
with a Ph.D. in social and economic sciences. She is interested in the
interdependencies between economic, social and material processes of
urban change. She has published widely on urban transformation and
socio-economic restructuring in different geographical contexts, with a
particular focus on the role of architecture, planning and construction.
Her recent work explores processes of internationalization, marketiza-
tion and financialization in construction and retailing in Mexico and
the consequences for informal settlements and self-organized building
practices.
Editors and Contributors xi
Dr. Lise Justesen is Associate Professor, in the Department of
Organization at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Her research
interests encompass organizational value, critical accounting studies,
technologies, materialities, and sustainability. She has published on these
subjects in numerous journals, including: Organization, Construction
Management and Economics, Accounting Auditing and Accountability
Journal and Accounting, Organizations and Society.
Dr. Martin Löwstedt is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of
Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology,
Sweden. His research areas concern aspects of professional identity,
leadership, and strategy practices, focusing on the Swedish construc-
tion industry. His major publications in English are: “Social identity
in construction: enactments and outcomes” (Construction Management
and Economics, 2014) and “Taking off my glasses in order to see:
exploring practice on a building site using self-reflexive ethnography”
(Construction Management and Economics, 2015).
Jan Mouritsen is Professor in the Department of Operations
Management at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research
interests encompass critical perspectives of accounting, practices and
infrastructures of valuation, materiality, organizational learning, intel-
lectual capital, and technology and innovation. He has produced over
100 conference papers and publications on these and other topics.
Dr. Jacob Paskins teaches architectural history and theory at
University College London, United Kingdom. His research focuses on
architecture and urban development in post-war France and Britain.
Jacob is author of Paris Under Construction: Building Sites and Urban
Transformation (Routledge, 2016), which he completed during a
research fellowship at Girton College, University of Cambridge. He is
currently working on a project about hoverports and high-speed marine
travel during the second half of the twentieth century.
Dr. Hiral Patel’s recently completed Ph.D. research, in the School of
the Built Environment at the University of Reading (United Kingdom),
theorizes the practices of adapting buildings. Drawing from Science
and Technology Studies, her approach to studying buildings over time
