Call for Papers: Hinterland Forces: Architectural Responses at the Margins. International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA)
The hinterland is a realm beyond the known, beyond the confines of the urban core, or beyond the acceptable iterations of religious praxis, cultural identity, political affiliation, and ways of being. The hinterland is a notional locale and a physical one, operating as a geographical reference, a spatial designator, and a conceptual frame. Those who stray or are forced into hinterland spaces may be at the frontiers of new thought, interactions, and technologies, but they are also at the margins. In current parlance, “marginality” describes a state that is the result of societal conditions that should be ameliorated. In other words, those at the centre (of power, urbanisation, settlement, scholarship, education, religious decision making, economic stability, etc.) have superior resources to those on the margins and may even be the source and cause of their peripheralisation. The marginalised may face state and societal pressure to conform or face punitive actions, including physical relocation, or the loss of access to important shrines, prayer spaces, schools, and other resources including hospitals, banks, and government offices. The architectures of persecuted, disadvantaged, and vulnerable people showcase unique adaptive strategies, which, in the writings of French thinker Michel de Certeau, reflect “tactics” that co-exist with the long-term and therefore spatially entrenched “strategies” of those in power (de Certeau, 1984).
This special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture invites papers on architectural responses at the margins, including examinations of the forces that create the hinterland categories of marginalisation, the tactical approaches of the marginalised, and the strategic efforts to destroy sites, limit spatial agency and access, and control people. The journal particularly welcomes papers on regions and communities not widely covered in the published record of Islamic architectures, sites and responses, including but not limited to western and coastal China, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. The margins are in constant flux; this is both the result of and cause for outright conflict and restrictive policies. Indeed, scholarly emphasis is sometimes determined by the accessibility of study sites and regions. Subjects that may exist beyond the traditional scholarly scope of the field and outside what is often considered the geographical heartland of the Islamic world, and work on those living at the extremities of cultural and doctrinal expectations for communities entrenched in either predominantly Muslim or majority non-Muslim surroundings are also welcome.
The full call for papers with the journal special issue synopsis and possible themes for the papers is available here.
Articles offering historical and theoretical analysis (DiT papers) should be between 6000 and 8000 words, and those on design and practice (DiP papers) between 3000 and 4000 words. Practitioners are welcome to contribute insofar as they address the critical framework of the journal. Urbanists, art historians, anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, sociologists, and historians are also welcome. Please send a title and a 400-word abstract to the guest editor, Dr. Angela Andersen (angela.andersen.53@gmail.com), by 15 June 2020. Authors of accepted proposals will be contacted soon thereafter and will be requested to submit full papers by 30 January 2021. All papers will be subject to blind peer review. For author instructions, please consult: www.intellectbooks.com/ijia