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The Sociology of Architecture and the Politics of Building:

The Discursive Construction of Ground Zero

University of Liverpool

Because architecture provides a ‘concrete’ focus for many debates pertinent to collective identities, then the rebuilding of the Ground Zero site by architect Daniel Libeskind is hugely significant from the perspective of sociology. So-called ‘starchitects’ such as Libeskind are increasingly conscious of the complex identity discourses within which their work is situated, with competing identity claims evidenced not only in the actual form of buildings, but also in the abstract narratives architects use to situate their work in a way that avoids (symbolically) privileging one identity over another.The capacity of architects to position their buildings in this way provides the focus of this article, which argues that architects’ discourses frequently reveal many tensions between culture, politics, power, and identity.The symbolic nationalization of the architecture at the Ground Zero site has, in part, been achieved by the narrative, highly symbolic links between the buildings there and an ‘American’ collective identity.

Key Words: architecture • collective identities • culture

Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 3, 549-565 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/003803850663674


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