Editor's Preface

In the imaginary world of Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange, geography is a literally shifting terrain as spaces are foreshortened, borders crowd into the city, and the state pushes back to keep more than people in place. Everything is in motion, even the proximity of the palm trees that line the freeway. Although this vision was conjured for us in the mid-1990s, it remains a vivid way to think about how geography has always been something in flux. There are, of course, powerful forces at work that enable this flux, and also seek to contain it somehow. As Gordon Chang, Lalaie Ameerier, and Donald Goellnicht remind us, the intellectual tasks we collectively undertake—such as, to make sense of the nature, the trajectory and the confluence of these forces—are not always easy, and require on our part a persistent plasticity of mind and an unusual degree of perspicacity. Familiar historical narratives might not help explain more interesting questions that were there right in front of us all along; we might be paying too much attention to men at the border when women are also subject to special scrutiny; and what at first seems marginal to our primary concerns might prove startlingly illuminating.

These capsule summaries do not do justice to the richness of the articles in this issue. They each individually represent how our own field continues to be in its own state of flux, as the knowledge we produce does not simply add to what we already know but also challenges, dislodges, and knocks loose the filaments of our collective thinking. In this way, we maintain our dynamism, which also reflects the dynamism of the world we share. For helping to dramatize this idea of an intellectual flux, I feel personally grateful as the new editor of JAAS to be able to share the work of these three scholars in the first issue I have helped to put together. One thing I am most appreciative of is the fact that the articles in this journal, and the equally exciting articles I am in the process of preparing for the next issue, allow me to make good on the vision of the journal that I recently laid out to the AAAS executive report in my annual report.

This is the gist of what I wrote: First and foremost, I think JAAS should be the premier location to find the most original, innovative, and quality research being conducted in our field, which sustains and builds on the work already accomplished by past editors. This research should reflect the diversity of our interests as well as our interdisciplinary strengths. This means that the writing we publish should be as accessible as possible, and should also be addressed to the widest readership imaginable without giving up one's disciplinary rigor. This also means that the journal should reflect a healthy mix of work by senior, junior and graduate-student researchers. Second, I feel strongly that the journal should be a place where the future of the field is actively debated, and as such a guide for planning the field's development. I am evaluating articles with this purpose in mind, looking for research that is most likely to push the field in new directions and challenges us to rethink assumptions we might harbor. Given the times we live in and the redoubling of hostility toward the study of race and ethnicity in general, we as a field can ill afford not to have a journal dedicated to performing this duty.