Abstract
This chapter seeks to bring a cultural sociology of modernity into dialogue with a recent development known as “surface studies”. The focus here is on architectural material surfaces—such as glass, steel and most centrally concrete—as a means of rethinking modernity. Existing cultural and architectural histories of concrete are examined before an analysis is offered of the material’s contingent social, political and other meanings. The latter part of the chapter deals with how concrete’s aesthetic and political associations, such as the link to State Socialism and the Western Welfare State, are being recast through a combination of nostalgia, a revaluing of material decay, photography and the onset of new consumer cultures (e.g., the “hipsterization” of Brutalism via memoir and digital platforms such as Etsy).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, P. C., Hoelscher, S., & Till, K. E. (2001). Place in context. In P. C. Adams, S. Hoelscher, & K. E. Till (Eds.), Textures of place (pp. xiii–xxxiii). University of Minnesota Press.
Alexander, J. C. (1995). Fin de siècle Social Theory: Relativism, reduction, and the problem of reason. Verso Books.
Alexander, J. C., & Smith, P. (2003) The strong program in cultural sociology: Elements of a structural hermeneutics. In The meanings of social life: A cultural sociology (pp. 11–26). Oxford University Press.
Amato, J. A. (2013). Surfaces: A history. University of California Press.
Bachelard, G. (1983). Water and dreams: An essay on the imagination of matter. Pegasus Foundation.
Banham, R. (1966). The new brutalism: Ethic or aesthetic. Reinhold Publishing.
Barthes, R. (1993). Mythologies. Vintage Books.
Bartmanski, D. (2011). Successful icons of failed time: Rethinking post-communist nostalgia. Acta Sociologica, 54(3), 213–231.
Bartmanski, D. (2012). Inconspicuous revolutions of 1989: Culture and contingency in the making of political icons. In J. C. Alexander, D. Bartmanski, & B. Giesen (Eds.), Iconic power: Materiality and meaning in social life (pp. 39–65). Polity.
Bartmanski, D., & Alexander, J. C. (2012). Introduction: Materiality and meaning in social life: Toward an iconic turn in cultural sociology. In J. C. Alexander, D. Bartmanski, & B. Giesen (Eds.), Iconic power: Materiality and meaning in social life (pp. 1–14). Polity.
Bartmanski, D., & Woodward, I. (2015). Vinyl: The analogue in the digital age. Bloomsbury.
Batchelor, D. (2014). The luminous and the grey. Reaktion Books.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity.
Beanland, C. (2016). Concrete concept: Brutalist buildings around the world. Frances Lincoln.
Bodnair, J. (2001). Fin de Millénaire Budapest: Metamorphoses of urban life. University of Minnesota Press.
Cairns, S., & Jacobs, J. M. (2014). Buildings must die: A perverse view of architecture. MIT Press.
Calder, B. (2016). Raw concrete: The beauty of brutalism. William Heinemann.
Chadwick, P. (2016). This brutal world. Phaidon.
Chayka, K. (2020). The longing for less: Living with minimalism. Bloomsbury.
Clement, A. (2011). Brutalism: Post-war British architecture. Crowford Press.
de la Fuente, E. (2018). Cosmopolitan and non-cosmopolitan surfaces. In J. Etmonspool & I. Woodward (Eds.), Cosmopolitanism, markets and consumption: A global perspective (pp. 157–181). Palgrave Macmillan.
de la Fuente, E. (2019a). After the cultural turn: For a textural sociology. The Sociological Review, 67(3), 552–567.
de la Fuente, E. (2019b). TANTO... QUANTO: Sobre a Necessidade de Uma Sociologia Textural Da Arte [BOTH-AND: On the need for a textural sociology of art]. CADERNO CRH, 32(87), 475–488.
Dekkers, M. (2000). The way of all flesh: A celebration of decay. Harvill Press.
Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and danger: An analysis of the concept of pollution. Praeger.
Ehland, C. (2007). Introduction: Northern England and the spaces of identity. In C. Ehland (Ed.), Thinking northern: Textures of identity in the north of England (pp. 15–32). Rodopi.
Fehérváry, K. (2013). Politics in colour and concrete. Indiana University Press.
Fierro, A. (2006). The glass state: The technology of the spectacle, Paris 1981–1990. MIT Press.
Forty, A. (2012). Concrete and culture: A material history. Reaktion Books.
Freedberg, D. (1989). The power of images: Studies in the history and theory of response. University of Chicago Press.
Garrison, J. (2015). Glass. Bloomsbury Academic.
Gaventa, S. (2001). Concrete design. Mitchell Beazley.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). Ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.
Grindrod, J. (2013). Concretopia: A journey around the rebuilding of post-war Britain. Old Street.
Grindrod, J. (2018). How to love brutalism. Batsford.
Harris, N. (1999). Building lives: Constructing rites and passages. Yale University Press.
Harvey, D. (1989). Condition of postmodernity. Blackwell.
Harvey, P., & Cox, H. (2012). The enchantments of infrastructure. Mobilities, 7(4), 521–536.
Hicks, D. (2010). The material-cultural turn: Event and effect. In D. Hicks & M. C. Beaudry (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of material culture studies (pp. 25–98). Oxford University Press.
Higman, B. W. (2017). Flatness. Reaktion Books.
Hubert, H., & Mauss, M. (1964). Sacrifice: Its nature and function. University of Chicago Press.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge.
Jones, P. (2016). (Cultural) sociologies of architecture. In D. Inglis & A.-M. Almila (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of cultural sociology (pp. 465–480). Sage.
Jones, P. (2020). Architecture, time, and cultural politics. Cultural Sociology, 14(1), 61–79.
King, A. (2016). Writing the global city. Routledge.
Koolhaas, R. (1994). Delirious New York: A retroactive manifesto. Monacelli Press.
Landry, C. (2006). The art of city-making. Earthscan.
Latour, B., & Yaneva, A. (2008). Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move: An ant’s view of architecture. In G. Reto (Ed.), Explorations in architecture (pp. 80–89). Birkhauser.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford University Press.
Legault, R. (2006). The semantics of exposed concrete. In J. L. Cohen & G. M. Moeller (Eds.), Liquid stone: New architecture in concrete (pp. 46–56). Princeton University Press.
Löw, M., & Steets, S. (2014). The spatial turn and the sociology of the built environment. In S. Koniardos & A. Kyrtsis (Eds.), Routledge handbook of european sociology (pp. 211–224). Routledge.
Miodownik, M. (2013). Stuff matters: The strange stories of the marvellous materials that shape our man-made world. Penguin Books.
Mukerji, C. (1994). Toward a sociology of material culture: Science studies, cultural studies and the meaning of things. In D. Crane (Ed.), The sociology of culture (pp. 143–162). Blackwell.
Nietzsche, F. (1974). The gay science. Basic Books.
Pallasmaa, J. (2014). Space, place, and atmosphere: Peripheral perception in existential experience. In C. Borch (Ed.), Architectural atmospheres: On the experience and politics of architecture (pp. 18–41). Birkhauser.
Rabaté, J.-M. (2018). Rust. Bloomsbury Academic.
Rollo, J. (2004). Concrete poetry: Concrete architecture in Australia. Cement Concrete and Aggregates Australia.
Rubio, F. D. (2014). Preserving the unpreservable: Docile and unruly objects in MOMA. Theory and Society, 43(6), 617–645.
Simmel, G. (1968). Sociological aesthetics. In The conflict in modern culture and other essays (pp. 68–80). Teachers Press.
Taylor-Foster, J. (2016, January 13). British Prime Minister denounces ‘brutal’ sink estates. ArchDaily. Retrieved May 31, 2020, from https://www.archdaily.com/780253/british-prime-minister-denounces-brutal-sink-estates/
van den Hoorn, M. (2009). Indispensable eyesores: An anthropology of undesired buildings. Berghahn Books.
van der Hoorn, M. (2005). 8:01AM, 20,000 people, and 450 kilograms of explosives: Elimination of the Kaiserbau as a secular sacrifice. Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology, 46, 109–127.
Verkaaik, O. (2016). Creativity and controversy in a new anthropology of buildings. Ethnography, 17(1), 135–143.
Watts, O. (2016, August 3). In praise of the Sirius building, a ruined remnant of idealistic times. The Conversation. Retrieved February 21, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/in-praise-of-the-sirius-building-a-ruined-remnant-of-idealistic-times-63387
Winter, J. (2017). CONCRETE: Re-casting concrete. In R. Harkness (Ed.), Knowing from the inside: An unfinished compendium of materials. University of Aberdeen.
Yaneva, A. (2009). The making of a building: A pragmatist approach to architecture. Peter Lang.
Yaneva, A. (2016). Mapping controversies in architecture. Ashgate.
Young, J. E. (1999). Textures of memory. Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
de la Fuente, E. (2022). Concrete Materialities: Architectural Surfaces and the Cultural Sociology of Modernity. In: Rodríguez Morató, A., Santana-Acuña, A. (eds) Sociology of the Arts in Action. Sociology of the Arts . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11305-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11305-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-11304-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-11305-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)