Dr Alice Stefanelli alice.stefanelli@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor
Beyond the Organic Intellectual: Politics and Contestation in the Planning Practice
Stefanelli, Alice
Authors
Abstract
Critical scholarship often presents technical experts such as architects and urbanists as unidimensional “organic intellectuals” in the Gramscian sense. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted among architects‐turned‐campaigners in Lebanon, this article argues that this portrayal of experts is partial, and inadequate to represent and make sense of the composite coalitions that animate contemporary urban politics worldwide. This will be clarified by a close examination of the Hakmeh Axis Campaign, where architects and urbanists have initiated a vigorous civic campaign to oppose the construction of a motorway bridge through a historical neighborhood in Beirut. By exploring the politics of planners—rather than that of planning—the article will show the alignment between expertise and authorities to be a matter of political affiliation rather than natural necessity.
Citation
Stefanelli, A. (2020). Beyond the Organic Intellectual: Politics and Contestation in the Planning Practice. City & Society, 32(3), 649-669. https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12340
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Sep 8, 2020 |
Publication Date | 2020 |
Deposit Date | Sep 10, 2020 |
Publicly Available Date | Sep 10, 2020 |
Journal | City and Society |
Print ISSN | 0893-0465 |
Electronic ISSN | 1548-744X |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 32 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 649-669 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12340 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1256402 |
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Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2020 The Authors. City & Society published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
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