Editors’ Introduction by John Conley and Justin Richland

Perhaps the greatest reward of being Editors of PoLAR that we get to see, before most, the newest work in political and legal anthropology as it is coming together, and to see, from a middle-distance perhaps, some of the emergent themes around which this work is coalescing, often before anyone else does. Sometimes these emergences appear to refine and evolve lines of inquiry that have been on the minds of anthropologists for awhile, others seem to come from nowhere, and some suggest an interesting mix of the two. We think that this issue of PoLAR offers a surfeit of themes around which to find both expansion and innovation by both young and more established scholars in our field, and we hope you find as much reward in them as we do. [Read more]