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Beyond the Organic Intellectual: Politics and Contestation in the Planning Practice

Stefanelli, Alice

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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
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 32
Issue 3
Pages 649-669
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12340

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Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (139 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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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