Editorial: ‘Meanwhile … in the lead up and in the background’

The preparation for this edition of the journal has taken place in the most extraordinary of times. The pandemic beginning in Wuhan has spread across the globe creating a new vocabulary of social distancing, lockdown, zooming, cardboard home offices, unmute. The number of deaths and cases has been recorded on the equivalent of a league ladder by John Hopkins University. The wealth as well as the health of nations has suffered: travel has been severely circumscribed and the political life of nations has been exposed through a lack of preparedness and the assignation of blame and responsibility. Here in Australia the pandemic was preceded by unimagined fires, extreme heat, hazardous air quality, drought and then floods—all over a huge area. The climate emergency has been deepening. And then there was the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and marches calling to account police brutality and the realities which lie behind the slogan, ‘Black Lives Matter’.