'With the news cycle rushing on, with revelations about rape in high places, and racism still abounding in Australian football, against a COVID background more or less dire globally and the US election still casting its divisive effects on the ground, as a quarterly, we turn to an exploration of context and the underlying forces shaping life and politics today. When everything seems to be ‘melting into air’ before our eyes, and everything is more politicised than ever—the immediacy of social-media commentary on the one hand, the sharpened divisions between increasingly warring protagonists on the other—Arena hopes to slow things down; to ask for a more considered reading of events and trends; to provide some more complex interpretations of just what is happening in our world and why.' (Editorial introduction)
