Editor's welcome, PORTAL, Vol. 3, No. 1, January 2006

Abstract

Welcome to the first appearance of PORTAL for 2006 (vol. 3, no. 1), a special issue entitled ‘Other Worlds’ guest edited by James Goodman and Christina Ho from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). The papers collected in this special issue focus on what the guest editors call “the transformative power of social movements” that respond to the processes and discourses of globalization and globalism by generating alternative sites and spaces of agency, or ‘other worlds.’ The contributors to the issue originally presented papers at a conference held in April 2005 in Sydney, with the title ‘Other Worlds: Social Movements and the Making of Alternatives.’ That conference was organized by the Research Initiative on International Activism at UTS, and supported by the Research Committee on Social Movements and Collective Action of the International Sociological Association. The Editorial Committee of PORTAL would like to thank both institutions for their support of the event that led to this special issue. I would also like to thank Wayne Peake, Kate Barclay, and Murray Pratt for their editorial efforts in seeing this issue through to publication.

The Editorial Committee is pleased to showcase in the Cultural Works Section a short meditative piece by local writer Joel Scott, who is currently undertaking studies in Pamplona, Spain. When considered in the context of the special issue’s discussions of ‘other worlds’ that precede it, Scott’s ‘God, We’re Not Immigrants! A Reflection on Moving and Staying,’ provides an evocative insight into the sociocultural and imaginative limits that may preclude the construction of alternative ‘worlds.’