Editor's statement

When I wrote last year's editorial as the incoming editor, I reflected on my long connection to the JRAI – the sense of continuity held in the familiar yellow covers, and the enduring place of ethnography at the heart of our discipline. Over the past year, this connection has deepened further. Working closely with our authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board has revealed not only the strength of our existing practices, but also the possibilities that emerge, almost organically, when a journal attends closely to its submissions and listens carefully to its scholarly community. This issue inaugurates Volume 32, and with it, several developments that arose naturally during the editorial process. These are not wholesale reforms but incremental shifts that reflect both the changing landscape of anthropology and the intellectual vitality of our contributors. They share a common orientation: to make the JRAI ever more visible as a forum that helps shape anthropological subfields – conceptual, regional, and thematic – while remaining resolutely committed to the rigorous reviewing standards that define the journal. One of the most exciting developments has been the introduction of articles with commentary. This new format did not emerge from planning documents or editorial directives. Rather, it grew out of particular submissions – papers that invited debate, provoked questions across subfields, or bridged methodological or disciplinary divides. In several cases, reviewers themselves remarked on the scope for broader engagement. Taking these cues, I invited additional commentary, at times from the reviewers themselves. The results have been energizing. This issue presents the first of these experiments, and more will follow throughout the volume. Some commentaries focus closely on the central arguments of the main article, while others situate a piece within its wider subfields. When more contested debate or substantive disagreement emerges, we will include brief author replies. These exchanges enrich the dialogue around individual articles and highlight the broader anthropological questions they raise. A second organic development has been the increased appearance of special theme sections. These have taken shape in two ways. Occasionally, several individually submitted articles on a shared theme reach similar stages in the review process. Grouping them together and inviting an Editorial Board member to write an editorial allows the journal to foreground emerging conversations that are already present in the submission pool. At other times, Editorial Board members themselves have proposed small thematic clusters – modest in scale but rich in conceptual focus. What unites both approaches is their responsiveness: the journal is following the intellectual energy generated by its contributors and reviewers, rather than imposing predefined themes from above. Alongside these developments, I remain committed to widening the space for conceptual articles that complement our strong ethnographic tradition. Anthropology has always advanced through theoretical conversation as well as empirical insight. There is much room, I believe, for high-quality conceptual essays that speak across fields, unsettle disciplinary expectations, or clarify the stakes of contemporary debates. These contributions – smaller in number than ethnographic main articles – will continue to be reviewed with the same rigour as ethnographic submissions, ensuring the high standards for which the JRAI is known. A related development that has emerged through reviewing manuscripts this past year is a more explicit engagement with subfields. I would like to encourage future authors to reflect on how their work contributes to, expands, or challenges the subfields to which they speak. Such reflection – offered with imagination and confidence – helps clarify strengths and weaknesses in our collective practices, highlights opportunities we may have overlooked, and supports a more dialogical shaping of our discipline. Many authors are already doing this implicitly; my hope is to make this dimension more visible, both to our readers and to the wider anthropological community. This past year has also allowed me to witness the growing value of building and sustaining a dynamic Editorial Board community. An initiative started by the previous editors invited Board members to contribute brief reflections on incoming submissions. I have seen this initiative grow into a very productive forum. I am grateful for the generosity and collegiality with which Board members have participated. Whenever opportunities arise, I take care to encourage their further involvement, as these exchanges have directly informed several of the innovations described above. The JRAI has long balanced continuity with change, and this year is no exception. As we move into 2026, I hope readers will recognize in these pages both the journal they know well and the subtle evolutions that reflect our discipline's ongoing transformations. And perhaps I may add – gently – that a fuller picture of these developments will become clearer as the volume unfolds, so I encourage readers to revisit this reflection after the final issue of the year. These changes, though modest, are sustained by the collective efforts of our community, and I remain deeply appreciative of the work of our authors, reviewers, Editorial Board, editorial staff, and previous editors. Their investment is what enables the JRAI to grow – in small steps, thoughtfully, and always in dialogue with its community.

Discipline · Editorial board · Ethnography · Scope (computer science) · Statement (logic) · Vitality · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice