The journal of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA), PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review is devoted to the anthropology of law and politics, most broadly conceived. This innovative interdisciplinary publication features articles on such issues as nationalism, citizenship, political and legal processes, the state, civil society, colonialism, postcolonial public spheres, multiculturalism, and media politics. It publishes work that is distinguished by its critical definition of problems, ethnographic orientation, or theoretical outlook. We welcome submissions of manuscripts between 4,000 and 8,000 words in length. Contact us at polar.managing.editor@gmail.com.

This website, PoLAR Online, is the open access website of the journal. All material on the site is free to the general public. PoLAR Online commissions essays, interviews, and series complementary to the journal’s mission and scholarship. Content published on PoLAR Online covers diverse perspectives and does not necessarily reflect the views of the PoLAR editorial team or of APLA leadership. We also create free-to-access virtual editions of journal articles and alert readers to ungated free content on the journal’s website, and provide links to the journal issues published on Wiley’s journal website.

Editor-in-Chief

Deepa Das Acevedo, Emory University
dda.polar@gmail.com

Book Reviews Editors

Jeffrey Omari (“Omari”), Seattle University School of Law

Neil Kaplan-Kelly, Flagler University

Associate Editor, PoLAR Online

Jennifer Curtis, Washington University
jgcurtis.polar@gmail.com

Managing Editor

Christy Quinto
polar.managing.editor@gmail.com

Information for Contributors: Research article manuscripts should not exceed 8,500 words at first submission, including everything except the title and abstract. Initial submissions that fail to meet this requirement may be returned by the Managing Editor. Final article manuscripts may be up to 10,000 words, including everything except the title and abstract. Book Reviews should be under 1,000 words; Book Review Essays should be 4,000 – 6,000 words. Notes From the Field submissions should be under 3,000 words. In Other Words submissions should be 500 – 750 words.

Manuscripts submitted to PoLAR must not be under consideration by another journal or have been previously published. Prospective authors may submit manuscripts via https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/polar. PoLAR does not guarantee a decision within a particular amount of time. All formatting should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. Our author guidelines provide specific examples using this style. You may also download our author guidelines: Author Guidelines updated August 2020. Our guidelines for reviewers are available here:  PoLAR Reviewer Guidelines.

Information for Publishers: PoLAR welcomes book review copies. A current list of books available to review is available, as are our guidelines for reviewers. Publishers may contact jgcurtis.polar@gmail.com or dda.polar@gmail.com for address information to mail physical copies.

PoLAR Online features are commissioned by the PoLAR editors and board. Questions and proposals may be sent to the Associate Editor, PoLAR Online. Specific PoLAR genres and submission instructions are below.

Editorial Board

In Other Words (IOW)

Have you recently published a book in the areas of legal or political anthropology? If your book has a copyright date of 2019 or later, it’s eligible to be featured in PoLAR’s new publication genre In Other Words.

In Other Words is a PoLAR genre introduced in 2025 that provides a way for legal and political anthropologists to share their work with a broader audience. In a period of considerable legal and political upheaval, the insights we have to offer as anthropologists are valuable—but only insofar as they reach beyond our immediate intellectual community. Accordingly, the twin goals of this new feature are to promote new scholarship and to make our scholarship accessible to a nonspecialist and, ideally, non-academic audience. Imagine how you would explain your book and its key insights to your mother, neighbor, or college friend—and then write it down, because that is what In Other Words should feel like. Simple prose. Anthropological insights.

Submissions to In Other Words for the issues published in 2025 must meet the following criteria:

●  They are written by the book’s author;

●  They describe and explain a book in legal or political anthropology with a publication date of 2019 or later;

●  They use simple, non-technical language;

●  They are written for an intended audience that does not share the author’s geographic or topical commitments, or even their anthropological training;

●  They are between 500–750 words all-inclusive;

●  They are free of notes or citations except to page numbers within the relevant book.

Submissions to In Other Words are not subject to the usual peer review process. Instead, they will be desk reviewed for clarity and concision only. In Other Words will be published via PoLAR Online (https://polarjournal.org) in order to encourage the widest possible reach. Publication timeline and issue will be communicated soon after acceptance. The number and frequency of publications in this genre is flexible for the time being.

IOW Style Sheet

IOW Style Samples

Questions / Submissions: dda.polar@gmail.com

Notes from the Field

Do you have a fieldwork insight that doesn’t fit into other publication plans but is too interesting to keep to yourself? Would you like to think along with your colleagues in legal and political anthropology about methodological experiments? Are you just itching to tell a good (but small) research story? If so, you have a submission for PoLAR’s Notes From the Field, a publication genre introduced in 2025.

Notes From the Field builds on the longstanding anthropological tradition of sharing information during the thick of the research process instead of only at its culmination. The goal of this feature is to provide a venue for thoughtful and comparatively direct exchange that is simultaneously scholarly in content and tone, anthropological in flavor, and legal or political in topic (although, particularly with respect to technology entries, the connection to law or politics may be somewhat attenuated).

Submissions to Notes From the Field for the issues published in 2025 must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• They share methodological experiments (along with evaluations of their relative success or plans for future adjustments), OR
• They highlight points of interest from field research that are either too “small,” however defined, to form the basis of a research article or that simply have not found a place within the author’s other publication eKorts, OR
• They discuss new tools or implements (for recording, note-taking, file-saving, etc).

Additionally, submissions must meet all the following criteria:

• They are 1,000–1,500 words all-inclusive;
• They are free of explanatory notes;
• They are sparing with references to existing scholarship, including to the author’s own previously published work (≤5 cited sources total)

Submissions to Notes From the Field are peer-reviewed by a member of the Advisory Board for clarity, concision, interest value—and, for topics other than fieldwork tools or implements, they are reviewed for some connection to law or politics. Additionally, Notes From the Field will be published in the print journal, and will therefore be subject to the same production processes and timelines associated with Research Articles, Book Reviews, and other traditional publication genres.

Questions / Submissions: dda.polar@gmail.com

Directions

Directions was a collaborative, non-traditional PoLAR genre that lay dormant for several years until Sindiso MnisiWeeks and Georgina Ramsay revived it during their editorship. Editors Caroline Parker and Deniz Yonucu reintroduced the feature in 2022 with collections biannually across the print journal and PoLAR Online. With PoLAR’s 2025 shift to a continuous publication model, Directions moved to a guest editor model with stand-alone collections proposed and edited by one or two scholars, published on a continuous basis on PoLAR Online.

Directions continues to serve as a venue for anthropologists of law and politics to engage in collaborative and experimental exchanges with one another, free from the constraints of conventional publication processes. You might initiate a conversation to think through ideas that are still forming, or to assess historical approaches, or to reorient future inquiries. Directions is both a platform for structuring, documenting, and sharing those conversations, as well as an incubator and an accelerator for future projects. As a PoLAR Online genre that operates under a Creative Commons licensing framework, Directions allows authors to repurpose their own material with simple attribution of the original piece.

PoLAR and PoLAR Online accept proposals for Directions collections. A non-exhaustive list of possible formats includes:

●   a single synchronous roundtable conversation that is transcribed, edited, and accompanied by a framing introductory essay and suggestions for further reading (see: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41020-022-00171-y)

●   a long form or “slow anthropology” conversation that occurs via email over weeks or months that is edited and may or may not be bookended by framing material (see: https://polarjournal.org/2021/02/21/political-action-and-generations/)

●   a collection of invited and internally workshopped short essays around a central theme, accompanied by a framing essay, and perhaps incorporating (as one of the “essays”) a transcribed and edited interview. (see: https://polarjournal.org/2023/11/08/racism-and-policing-in-global-perspective/)

These are starting points. We are open to receiving alternative proposals and to developing them in collaboration with you.

Proposals will be jointly reviewed by the Editor of the print journal and the Associate Editor for PoLAR Online, and must meet the following criteria:

●   Describe, in 2 pages or less, the topic, format, intellectual value, anticipated timeline, and committed participants of the collection;

●   They are “guest-edited” by one or two scholars only.

Questions / Submissions: dda.polar@gmail.com and jgcurtis.polar@gmail.com.

Advisory Board

 Subscriptions

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review is available by subscription. Rates are available here. Institutions may contact PoLAR‘s editorial offices to request a review copy. To subscribe, institutions may contact Wiley-Blackwell. Members of the APLA Section of the American Anthropological Association receive the PoLAR as part of their membership. For further information on membership in the American Anthropological Association (AAA), please visit the Member Services page on the AAA website. Ordering Information:

●   Visit: http://www.wiley.com/bw/subs.asp?ref=1081-6976
●   Call: 1-800-835-677
●   Email a request to: cs-journals@wiley.com