Sage and Vitry introduce this collection by first elaborating how construction has been historically circumscribed as an object of knowledge serving technical, managerial, physical and financial means and ends, thus marginalized as an object for social sciences and humanities scholarship. They then critically interrogate the extent to which the ‘social turn’ in Anglophone construction management research offers a challenge to this situation. Turning then to studies of the built environment in human geography, sociology and history, they review the increasing, if still marginal and fragmented, receptivity to considering the places, people and politics of building construction within those disciplines. Sage and Vitry conclude by reflecting back on aims of the volume to propose a more integrated, interdisciplinary, social studies of building construction.