Spatial Practice

Spatial practice(s) in the context of Nilgiri Irulas:
Spatial practices:
As seen earlier the role of space is an embodiment of knowledge and action in accordance to the existing mode of production. As with that of the designs of the abstract space, according to Lefebvre is the space of capitalism that keeps continuously providing with dominant conventional modes of the modern architectural practices on a large scale. The varied contradictions of abstract space could find its replications or repercussions upon the humble concrete space(s) of the users especially in their routine everyday life at large. The emergences of the new forms of commodities, segregation of labour, new forms of capital and dominant means of the landscape taming constitute

It serves not only as a prescription but to be the bedrock of the assumptions about the spatial practices of such (its) users, their understandings of the space along with other symbolic intentions that carry the load of the designers intention(s). According to Lefebvre; “a spatial practice is something which embraces production and reproduction, and the particular locations and spatial sets characteristic of each social formation. Spatial practice ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion” (33). Spatial practice(s) hence by creating a new social space makes each user of that given space to be in constant relationship with that created space. This newly formed or created cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and a standard level of unrestricted spatial performance. Space thus acts as to be a means of control of domination and power that keeps reiterating itself firmly through its repeated spatial

Hence the pure everyday life of the Irulas according to Lefebvre’s theory could be taken by his romantic notion “as the space (everyday life) that contains traces and memories of spatial practices that were untouched by modernity’s estrangements…”(Gregory 363). Lefebvre has a romantic and almost a nostalgic vision of those traditional practices, seeing in them an innocent life that is now being unabatedly impoverished and humiliated by the intensive Hegemonic representations of modernity. The early innocence of this space as a space of precious use-value, formed itself to be as the “space of desire where desire died of satisfaction” (Goonewardena 122). Hence to re-iterate the old concreteness of the everyday life according Lefebvre it