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A Different Mirror

I joined the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Progressive Human Services in 2003 and was impressed by the history of the journal’s commitment to offering a polyphonic worldview that recognizes and appreciates the diversity of seeing and explaining the world. Most important, I have been captivated by the Editorial Collective’s conscious goal of offering critiques of capitalism when doing so is politically unpopular. I remain enthralled by the Editorial Collective’s efforts to question the status quo in human services and offer a postmodernist understanding of social realities that remind us that the models and theories on which many of us base our understandings of the world are partial representations of reality, not to be confused with reality itself, and, second, that the currency of ideas is connected to the relative power of the proponent of the idea. Given the nature of the focus of the Journal of Progressive Human Services, the Collective has managed to publish manuscripts from across the globe, but I noted the relative lack of attention to contributions from the African continent and the diaspora. It is in this vein that this special issue on Africa is presented. We were interested in articles that look at the multidimensionality of social issues and analyses that link the micro experiences to the broader sociopolitical, institutional, cultural, and economic processes. We were interested in manuscripts that engage the transformation of communities against the backdrop of globalization (as the new language about development) and take into account specific contexts, processes, histories, and traditions. I am particularly pleased to be writing as an editor of this special issue, considering my position as a transnational scholar straddling the North