We open this issue with a statement by our Editorial Collective addressing the extraordinary challenge that COVID-19 and the global protests against antiblack racism have posed for scholars working on the journal's regions of focus. Human survival itself is in question. Mass democracy has taken a sharp right turn toward authoritarian populism in nations around the world. Social scapegoating is rampant. Pervasive inequality is worsened by and exacerbates the climate crisis. This grim moment of global convergence poses profound questions for us as scholars of (and very often from) the regions about which we research and write. How does one conduct immersive research when archives are closed, access to information is uneven and patchy, and the ethics of interview and observation resemble practices of state surveillance and control?
We invite responses to our statement, with essays that address a history of our present through analytic frames sensitive to the rich...
