Welcome to AntipodeOnline.org, Antipode’s companion website/blog. First launched in 2011, rather than a repository for so many addenda, or somewhere to send material which can’t “cut it” in the pages of the journal, we wanted this to become something with a point, something of significance, working to create and support a radical geography community. Rather than a cynical exercise in advertising, or some modish initiative launched unthinkingly, we wanted this to be something with as much purpose and direction, substance and quality, and vitality and energy as its parent journal. Eight years on, we’re re-launching with a new look, and hope that the site will continue to flourish and complement the journal in all kinds of ways. We welcome the following types of content:
Interventions – The Interventions section of Antipode will now, with a few exceptions, be online. The strength of Interventions consists in part in their attitude and directness: they’re timely and pressing, and they’re often springboards for ongoing discussions. The relationship between geography, social theory, and current affairs warrant thoughtful yet expeditious commentaries. However, publication can be a slow process: Antipode appears just six times a year, and rising numbers of submissions coupled with a limited page budget means the impact of Interventions can be undermined by long waits in publishers’ queues. Migrating Interventions online will open up the possibility of thinking, writing and sharing ideas, and inciting conversation, in response to events as they unfold.
We welcome short (about 1,500-word), perhaps polemical, essays that among other things cast a radical geographer’s eye over “live” events or report on strategies for change and forms of organisation producing a more socially just and radically democratic life. We also welcome Interventions of a more “reflective” kind – commentaries on the state of radical practice and theory, or introducing debate and disagreement around politically contentious issues of the Left, or thinking creatively about our discipline’s lines of descent and possible futures, say. With these, AntipodeOnline.org will showcase some of the best and most provocative radical geographical writing available today. Essays should be sent to Andy Kent ([email protected]) in the editorial office.
Book Reviews, etc. – All pre-2013 Antipode book reviews are now freely available from our online repository, Wiley Online Library. While this digital archive will remain in place, we no longer publish book reviews in the journal; all book reviews have migrated to https://antipodeonline.org/book-reviews/ This will allow us to feature not only more reviews, but also more substantive reviews (in the style, say, of the London Review of Books), more quickly. The makeover has also transformed the book reviews section into a more capacious “Book Reviews, etc.” section, that may now feature, in addition to book reviews, reviews of film and music, grey literature, and political pamphlets–in fact, any texts that have something to say to the radical geographic imagination. We also welcome reviews of non-English-language texts–reviews that break down some of the barriers between language communities, enabling hitherto under-represented groups, regions, countries and institutions to enrich conversations and debates in Antipode. If you’ve an idea for a review, please see our guidelines and get in touch with our Reviews Editor, Andy Kent ([email protected]).
Video abstracts and interviews – These are intended to not only introduce readers to authors’ forthcoming work but also make links between it and the concerns of our times. We ask authors to sketch-out what their research is all about and why it matters (and perhaps think about where it might go to next, thus offering some notes towards further investigations or an introduction to future discussions – threads to be drawn out and spun on in new, maybe collaborative, work) and reflect on its implications for praxis, that is, how it may help change or shape the world in progressive ways. A line from Antipode’s often-quoted first editorial bears repeating: ‘That the geographer can contribute to this process in a significant way is evident to us; just what [s]he can contribute is still at issue…’. We hope our authors’ meditations will prove thought-provoking contributions to an ongoing dialogue on the meaning and value of academic labour.
Finally, we also welcome: ideas for virtual issues of Antipode that explore the digital archive and highlight groups of papers speaking to issues both timely and “timeless”; critical responses to Antipode papers (and authors’ replies); calls for papers, conference announcements and news of upcoming lectures; details of recently completed PhD theses in radical geography; any resources you’d like to share such as syllabi, teaching and learning guides, etc.; and all suggestions for other kinds of content. And while it should go without saying, let us be explicit and state that we encourage contributions of all sorts that are collaborative in nature, and that are both consequence and cause of the exchange of ideas across sectors. We encourage participation and engagement, cooperation and co-enquiry, both within and beyond the academy. We also encourage contributions that are adventurous, that explore the boundaries of established academic practice, and that trespass and disrupt disciplinary borders.
To quote David Stea’s wonderful editorial one more time: ‘Contribute what thoughts you can; criticise what you must; but if you share our sentiments, wish the endeavour success’.
Andy Kent
Editor/Moderator, AntipodeOnline.org
September 2019
Photo on homepage: Activist group Black Love Resists in the Rust (@BLRRBuffalo) lead protest outside the notorious Erie County Holding Center, 6 June 2020, Buffalo, NY