Jane,
Of course, Antipode with all the new features you have mentioned
would be a better journal than without these. And, I would
want Antipode to continue forever (at least as long as class
societies persist!). Yet, inspite of the improvements, Antipode
is far from being a Geography counterpart of journals like Science
and Society. A few more observations.
1. If Antipode is not a journal specifically for geographic
analyses of class, is there a specific incentive for a radical
scholar doing class analysis to choose Antipode, not other journals
for submitting papers? It would be difficult to say that an average
paper in Antipode is far more radical than one in (e.g) IJUR,
Political Geography (with people such as Taylor, Cox, etc associated
with it) and Env and Planning A (with people such as Thrift etc
running it).
Based on my personal experience, I can say that when it came to
choosing an outlet for my works on (e.g.) the class character of the
state and of development issues, there was not much incentive for me
to choose Antipode, so I chose the above-mentioned journals and
radical journals outside Geography such as Science and Society.
I am still wondering what the problems are to Antipode being a
Geography counterpart of journals like Science and Society. One might
say the supply of geographic research papers on class is not huge
and therefore Antipode could not survive in the market. But if
Antipode specialized in class analyses (in the most inclusive sense I
had indicated in a previous e-mail), it would perhaps create this
necessary supply by promoting class research. An editorial statement
from Antipode prioritizing class-based research would be a big boost
for work on class. And, without class, radicalism is not very
different from New Labour-ism.
To be a radical journal with a difference Antipode has to be
journal that approaches difference in a different way than the
post-ists, New Labourites, and Giddensians, etc.
Raju
Raju J Das
Department of Geography
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN
United Kingdom
Phone 01382 348073 work
01382 738872 home
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