Concept Note for Call for Papers LAW, LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE: EPISTEMOLOGIES OF JUSTICE 
Background

Law is not merely a formal system of rules and institutions but also a cultural and narrative practice shaped by language, literature, memory, and everyday experiences of power. Legal meanings are produced, negotiated, and contested through stories, testimonies, literary traditions, oral histories, folklore, religious texts, and cultural representations that extend beyond courts and statutes. Across India and the Global South, these cultural forms have long articulated sophisticated understandings of justice, dignity, rights, authority, and social order. Yet, such intellectual traditions continue to remain underrepresented within mainstream legal scholarship, which has historically privileged frameworks of law and justice from the Global North.

The Symbiosis Culture, Language, Law & Justice Centre (SCLLJC), in collaboration with the Symbiosis Centre for Advanced Legal Studies and Research (SCALSAR), Symbiosis Law School, Pune, initiated scholarly discussions through its interdisciplinary workshop, "Law, Literature, Language, and Culture: A Digital Ethnography Approach," held on 26 February 2026. The workshop brought together scholars from law, sociology, literature, anthropology, media studies, and related disciplines to explore the intersections of law, culture, language, and justice. Building upon these discussions, the present Call for Papers broadens the thematic focus to invite scholarship on decolonial, vernacular, indigenous, and Global South perspectives on justice.

The proposed publication aims to create an interdisciplinary platform for examining how law is imagined, narrated, interpreted, and contested through literature, language, culture, memory, religion, media, and everyday social practices. It particularly encourages contributions that recover marginalized intellectual traditions, foreground non-Western frameworks of justice, and engage critically with decolonial approaches to legal thought. The volume welcomes theoretical, empirical, historical, doctrinal, ethnographic, interpretive, literary, and comparative scholarship.

Indicative Themes

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Law as narrative, socio-cultural practice, and lived experience

• Decolonial approaches to law and justice

• Global South epistemologies and plural traditions of justice

• Indigenous and vernacular literatures as sites of legal imagination

• Literature, folklore, mythology, and oral traditions as sources of legal meaning

• Human dignity, rights, and justice beyond Western paradigms

• Language, translation, multilingualism, and linguistic hierarchies in legal institutions

• Legal consciousness, memory, testimony, and community narratives

• Religion, ethics, and culturally grounded conceptions of justice

• Representation of law and justice in literature, cinema, theatre, visual culture, and popular media

• Law, identity, marginality, and non-elite rights-claiming practices

• Ethics of interpreting and representing marginalized voices

• Cultural heritage, conflict, reconciliation, and justice

• Mediated and digital spaces as sites of legal expression, memory, and contestation

• Comparative perspectives on law, culture, language, and justice

Submission Guidelines

Authors are requested to submit an abstract of 250–300 words, accompanied by 5–7 keywords. The abstract should clearly state the research question, conceptual or theoretical framework, methodology, and the proposed contribution to scholarship.

Important Deadlines

• Abstract Submission (250–300 words with 5–7 keywords):3 August 2026

• Notification of Acceptance:20 August 2026

• Full Article Submission:30 November 2026

Submission Link: Click Here 

Publication Opportunity

Selected papers will be considered for publication for a Scopus-indexed edited volume, subject to peer review and editorial decision.

Submission and Queries

Please send queries to: Dr. Mohit Joshi,  Email: mohit.joshi@symlaw.ac.in

          Dr. Sanchari Basu Chaudhuri, Email:sanchari.chaudhuri@symlaw.ac.in