Alliances and Urban Precarity
Edited by Marina Volpe & Cristina Mattiucci
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In the context of a rapid expansion of global conflict and crisis, the precarity of the urban environment has emerged as a dynamic phenomenon, both produced and induced, which has resulted in the growth of conditions of inequality and vulnerability, leading to a subsequent fragmentation of fragile subjectivities.
This process can be readily discerned in the polarization in access to fundamental spatial rights – as housing, employment, education, and healthcare – upon which the precarisation makes its transversal presence. In this context, the formation of multiform subjectivities and the alliances that can arise among them can play a key role in challenging urban inequalities and developing alternative models and practices of inhabiting transitioning territories, encompassing ecological, economic, and social dimensions.
In line with Judith Butler’s conceptualisation, an alliance is understood as a process that starts with the mutual acknowledgement of a shared affinity, which can unite disparate and sometimes conflicting social groups in a collective claim of rights.
The conceptualisation of alliances in terms of practices of assemblage, community and sharing can facilitate a subversive and generative approach.
Thinking about spatial dynamics for and by which potential alliances are activated, and understanding what themes and methods of action arise from their constitution in pursuing a shared urban justice and in struggling against the precarity affecting the urban condition, is essential in acknowledging whether and how these forces are able to modify the territories they traverse, physically and otherwise. The urban, then, becomes an opportunity and a ground where observing interactions, cohabitations as well as conflicting alliances.
Consequently, multiple potential questions emerge.
What are the factors that lead to the formation of multitudes and alliances among the many different subjectivities?
In what timeframe do they activate and persist?
How does the precarisation of basic spatial rights affect the formation of alliances?
How do alliances take shape in relation to power dynamics occurring both among the multiple subjectivities themselves, and between them and the opposite objects they are facing with?
Starting from these questions, we invite papers exploring the nexus between alliances and urban precarity, through the lens of praxis and experiences, and we also welcome theoretical and reflexive contributions engaged in a critical reflection on the issue.
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|Deadline for Abstracts: include a brief description outlining how your submission addresses themes outlined in the call for papers. The abstract should be no more than 300 words. | 10 November 2024
| Notification of acceptance | 15 November 2024
| Final submission deadline | 15 January 2025
| Articles’ length | 2,000 words
| Submit to | losquaderno≤at≥gmail≤.≥com
| Information about the Journal | http://www.losquaderno.net/?page_id=2
| Information about the Editorial Process + Author’s Submission Checklist | http://www.losquaderno.net/?page_id=1082
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