While continuing to publish outstanding data-driven anthropology and articles that advance anthropological theory, AQ also asks intellectuals to contribute to on-going public debates relevant to contemporary experiences. We believe that it is important for anthropologists to focus on public debates, not only because we live and work in societies that face the challenges of such varied problems as war, racism, poverty, nationalism, globalization, human rights, and the social, legal, and ethical implications of new genetic technologies, but because we need to add our voices to discourses dominated by journalists and a very small number of public intellectuals.

New conditions in the world require new tools. Global changes in the flow of money, ideas, and people have necessitated new vocabularies, with terms like transnationalism and globalization appearing in anthropological analyses of even the smallest and most well-bounded communities in the world. New conditions also require new opportunities for publication. So while we will continue to publish first-rate peer-reviewed articles, AQ will also publish one additional peer-reviewed section of essays on theoretically informed development anthropology, "Development in Theory," and two additional non-peer-reviewed sections of public intellectual thought and commentary, "Social Thought and Commentary" and "Media." These are the arenas for public intellectual writing. Finally, our book review section will include some reviews of books just released, as opposed to the tradition in which reviews appear sometimes years after they are published.