Here we are at the start of 2017 with a new look for the journal’s 49th volume (issue 1 is freely available online). Antipode has had a number of facelifts since 1969 as radical geography has become an integral part of the discipline. We’ve expanded and multiplied in content and membership, as an increasingly diverse set of Left geographers have gained legitimacy and positions of power in universities, and as the range of “valid” approaches has become ever wider. Antipode has always welcomed the infusion of new ideas and the shaking-up of old positions through dialogue and debate, never being committed to just one view of diagnosis or critique. We might say, borrowing Linda Peake and Eric Sheppard’s words, that the journal’s pages have been “bound together by a shared no – rejection of the…status quo – and diverse yeses”.

As Antipode approaches it’s 50th anniversary, we look at its past without illusions, and at its present without becoming disillusioned. Neither unquestioningly bound to what’s come before, nor wilfully distant and adrift from it, we are inspired by the radicalism of the 1960s – and the range of struggles that reimagined place, space, and geography – while also proposing new questions that seek to challenge longstanding practices of marginalization. With this, we continue to look outwards and respond to changing situations while remaining self-critical. We continue the tradition of striving, with passion, to know and understand the difficulties facing us without underestimating the possibilities – neither despairing about domination and oppression nor naively hopeful about resistance and alternatives.

So while we look different, we continue to push Geography’s radical and critical edge in a number of ways, many of which will be familiar, inspired as they are by Marxist, socialist, anarchist, anti-racist, anticolonal, feminist, queer, trans*, green, and postcolonial thought. Others, however, will be less so given that we are also committed to the new, the innovative, the creative, and the heretofore unthought radical edges of spatial theorisation and analysis. After all, it has long been a necessity that Antipode papers are groundbreaking, that their clear arguments develop geographical thinking, and that they do much more than simply add examples to support what we already know. Antipode papers have always reflected upon and extended the debates of our time, they have pushed literatures, knowledge and politics to and beyond their extant boundaries, exploring new themes and agendas, and putting new research or critical analysis to work to make interventions in the order of things. Though we look different, this much will not change going forward.

There is much to look forward to, much on the horizon, as the journal approaches an important birthday. In addition to the daily work of the journal – articles, interventions, reviews, the book series, website, and public lectures – our upcoming projects include a book on the writings and thought of Neil Smith (2017), a special issue on keywords of/in radical geography (2019), and a fête to celebrate 50 years of Antipode! For now, though, the Editorial Collective (past and present) extend warm appreciation to Ray Zilli, who designed the new cover.

Sharad Chari, Tariq Jazeel, Andy Kent, Katherine McKittrick, Jenny Pickerill and Nik Theodore

January 2017