The architect-sociologist Garry Stevens suggests it would take one day to read sociology's contribution to our understanding of architecture (1998: 12), and while this is an exaggeration it is only a slight one. With the exception of some of the notable contributions assessed throughout this book, the relationship between architects, their work, and social order has not been subject to sustained scrutiny by academic sociologists. In the light of this book's title it is perhaps unsurprising that I feel this represents something of a missed opportunity, and what follows here is my attempt to contribute to this underdeveloped field of inquiry. A central contention of The Sociology of Architecture is that the application of a critical ‘sociological imagination’ (Wright-Mills 1959) to architects and their work is one way in which the tensions associated with the political mobilization of culture can be revealed.

By using ‘sociology’ in the title of the book, and elsewhere, I am ascribing some significance to the term. Sociology, by now a heavily contested and increasingly fragmented disciplinary label, is used here as a proxy for a critical approach to the connections between the architectural field, political power, and the construction, maintenance and mobilization of collective identities. Using the label ‘sociology’ represents one way to foreground the social production of architectural practice and form from the perspective of a research tradition that can make a distinctive contribution to such questions.