Power in Urbanscapes: Rethinking Spatiality and Sociality
The second Issue of Volume 7 of LLIDS examines how structures of power constitute and shape urban spaces. It proposes to explore their influence in determining social values wherein varied social groups—marked by religion, class, race, gender, etc.—negotiate the power dynamics that constitute life in urban spaces. The modern, bustling city carries within itself a continuous sense of becoming. The urban dwellers, inhabiting segregated parts of the city, shape the lived experience of these spaces through their socio-cultural interactions and relationships. These lived experiences resolve themselves within urban settings through spatial politics which highlights how dominant power structures marginalise underprivileged groups from fully experiencing city spaces. Here, power is enacted through factors crucial to urban dwellers—affordability, sustainability, accessibility, and entertainment—which are attached to heterogeneous economic, social, and cultural conditions. Despite the exclusion, marginalised groups create opportunities for themselves by challenging the dominant power structures to build alternate ways of livelihood, thereby introducing a sense of unpredictability and chaos that is inherent in urban living. This compelling juxtaposition of ordered urban spaces dominating over disorderly assemblages of unacknowledged groups, transforms daily city life into a reflection of the volatile and shifting bracket of power.
Within their acquired urban spaces, members of marginalized groups strive to manufacture their own place for a sense of stability, an aspiration which aims to ‘produce’ a living experience that aligns with their economic and socio-cultural standing. They continually create lived spaces, at both individual and communal levels, while negotiating with inclusion, exclusion, and diversity within the social structures and power mechanisms. Simultaneously, the capitalist and neoliberal underpinnings of statist powers continue to undergird social systems and regulate city spaces inhabited by these disempowered groups. The fluid nature of spatial formations, their planning and accessibility, influence both literary and cultural production. Therefore, urban spaces can serve as a good lens to examine collective and individual quests for identity, territories of power, aspects of social mobility as well as stratification and independence from convention. This gives birth to a sense of transience where social ties continually mutate our perception and positionality within the chaotic city spaces.
The fundamentally social nature of space encourages the continuous rethinking and restructuring of humanist and nationalist dimensions, globalised and consumerised culture, and infiltration of sociotechnical imaginaries. To further enquire into manoeuvring the matrix of urban space, LLIDS seeks deliberations on and around the subject. The themes for consideration are as follows:
- Tangible and intangible presence of power
- Gaze of the city
- Urban confusion
- Conformist consumerism
- Questioning the well-ordered city
- Urban design and community life
- Space, place, and literature
- Smart city and environmental justice
- New displacing the old
- Cities in global south
- Spatial imaginary
- Feminist geography
- District divisions and Housing justice
- Urban citizenship
- Space of Ghettos
- Market spaces/Street life in cities
- City and modern spiritual spaces
- Modes of transportation and experience of city
Submission Process:
- Please submit your work via the Submission form: https://forms.gle/A3zdW8kY72kuMppM9.
- Each of the authors needs to sign and email a separate Author Undertaking (https://ellids.com/archives/Author-Undertaking.pdf) from their respective email IDs to complete the submission process.
Submission Criteria Checklist:
- Only complete papers along with a 150 words abstract, list of keywords, and Works Cited will be considered for publication.
- Word limit for submissions (excluding Title, Abstract, Keywords, Footnotes, and Works Cited list): 3,500–10,000 words
- The papers need to be formatted as per MLA guidelines.
- Please read the complete submission guidelines before making the submission – https://ellids.com/author-guidelines/submission-guidelines/.
- LLIDS has a Zero plagiarism policy. The Similarity Index of the submissions (Quote percentage) needs to be under 20%, unless absolutely required by the research. The similarity index is a calculation of the percentage of quotes from the word count (excluding title, abstract, keywords, footnote, works cited list)
Submission deadline: 25th May, 2025
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