5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

This session explores how the built environment—through housing, infrastructure, and heritage—functions as both a site of resistance and a battleground for urban justice in cities marked by conflict. This encompasses various forms of social, economic, political, and environmental conflicts that arise or are influenced by decisions, policies, and practices related to urban development. Navigating the built environment-conflict nexus, we seek to reflect on housing, infrastructure, and heritage, as material and immaterial structures mirroring larger social and political conflicts, and revealing entrenched disparities in access to resources, and to deepen our understanding of how the built environment can mitigate or exacerbate conflicts within communities or societies, e.g., causing ‘infrastructural harm’. Against this backdrop, we invite contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes and questions: (i) (Post-)Conflict urban justice: How do housing, heritage, and infrastructures facilitate or hinder peacebuilding and reconciliation in (post-) conflict-affected cities? How does preservation or neglect of cultural heritage impact social healing and slow violence? (ii) Infrastructure as a catalyst for socio-environmental (in)equality: How do infrastructure fuel disparities, and/or environmental (in)justice? What are the intersections of infrastructure with political and cultural tensions? (iii) In what ways does the ‘conflict potential of concrete’–as a metaphor of how tourism infrastructure shapes and sometimes destabilizes local communities—manifest in tourism development, affecting social and environmental sustainability in destination cities? To discuss key insights into the built environment-conflict nexus, this session welcomes case studies and comparative analyses from diverse regional contexts.