the china context(s)

[warning: this post started as a personal reflection, but pretty much ended up as an ad.]

the new contexts came today, bringing excitement (cool!), fear (oh no - that picture's too dark!), and the wonder of it all (can you believe we made it to press?) to the editorial team. mostly there's a sense of gratitude for all the hard work people did in putting the pieces together. every issue has its birth pains, of course, but i'm liking this one a lot.

we've got michael burawoy and ruth milkman engaging documentarian michael apted, sports provocateur dave zirin, a wicked-good review of full frontal feminism by sharon hays and jess butler, todd gitlin on the back page, intriguing discoveries, a revealing photo essay, and strong features on social networks, the n-word, heatwaves, sex, and china. we're running several china-themed pieces this summer -- everything from rights activism, to population policy, to chinese sociologists and sexologists, to kitschy trinkets representing the great helmsman. we can't put it all online but we put up enough free stuff, we hope, to merit a trip to contexts.org (a/k/a jonny's house). our indefatigable grad board also posts some nice extended content to complement some of the print features, such as some (nsfw?) videos for the n-word story on latino rappers.

doug (especially) and i work pretty hard on the magazine, but the two haggard dudes pictured on page 3 are only responsible for a tiny fraction of the total work. contexts runs on the good will and good work of dozens of smart people -- authors, of course, but also board members and reviewers, asa and press folks, photographers, designers, section editors, a fine managing editor, undergrad assistants, and, of course, our (indefatigable) grad student board. and, the whole thing runs on an annual budget that's roughly equivalent to the cost of a good german sedan.

hmmm. this is starting to read like a future from the editors column. but not for the summer issue -- this time we wrote about good writing.