Editorial
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1One of the endeavours of ABE Journal-Architecture Beyond Europe has been to unravel the relations between colonial pasts, twentieth-century building cultures, and the “global” present, not only in terms of the materiality of built environments but also epistemically. One dimension of the latter entails interrogating the particular relationships and interactions between groups and individuals connected by colonial or postwar developmental constellations. Ten years after the thematic dossier Global Experts “off radar” in issue 4 of ABE Journal, it is clear that historiographical shifts are opening up new avenues to look at some of the same phenomena. The current and forthcoming issue of ABE Journal, therefore, open with a dossier investigating Architecture in the Foreign Aid-Funded Economy. These dossiers engage explicitly with questions of the postcolonial/decolonial by critically examining but also going “beyond” the sole figure of the (white) expert and engaging more intensely with the views and contributions of those who have for too long been thought of as being located at the “receiving” end of knowledge exchange. Each issue also takes the theme further in the interviews published in their debate sections.
2In the present volume that deals with the sub-topic of “Expertise” two articles offer detailed accounts of top-down processes representing the “asymmetrical power dynamics at work in the knowledge economies of international development:” Lee Stickells’s article on the Minimum Cost Housing Group’s “ECOL Operation” at McGill University and Frederike Lausch’s article on self-help manuals published by the UN-funded Communication Centre of Scientific Knowledge for Self-Reliance. As is clear in hindsight, lasting inequalities and preconceived notions about the needs of “self-help recipients” prevented the initiatives from appealing to their proclaimed audiences, reaching unexpected ones instead.
3A different, bottom-up perspective on self-building—one that highlights the expertise of those colonized and “working in the shadow” in British Guiana—comes to the fore in Michelle Wilkinson’s intimate account of her grandfather-builder. The article brings colonial archives into conversation with family memory and mementoes. That such unconventional sources are valuable to current research on built environment histories is extended by Pamudu Tennakoon’s article, in the Varia section, which reflects upon today’s afterlives of colonial remnants—physical as well as in terms of inhabitation and spatial practices—in Sri Lanka’s boutique hotels. Both authors’ methods and cross-temporal approach help point to lingering inequalities in processes of production and occupation of built environments that are often missed.
4Above all, the biographical sketches of the historical figures in the articles gathered in this issue demonstrate that simplistic correspondences between the geopolitical origin and ideological positioning of individuals rarely hold water. This point is also elaborated by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni in the interview and is well worth repeating at a time when nuance is all too often missing in media debates on post- and decoloniality.
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Sarah Melsens, Ricardo Costa Agarez, Johan Lagae et Tania Sengupta, « Editorial », ABE Journal [En ligne], 21 | 2023, mis en ligne le 07 juillet 2023, consulté le 10 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/14408 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.14408
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