By Nuttall, M., 2012

This issue of The Polar Journal contains 10 articles that explore, in various ways and from the perspectives of several disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, contemporary aspects of politics, science and environment in the Arctic and in Antarctica. Both circumpolar regions have received widespread global attention in recent years. They are no longer peripheral to more generic considerations about globalization, sustainability, climate change, geopolitics, resource development and international security, among many other things, in the sense that the Arctic and the Antarctic have entered mainstream discussion about issues and challenges of pressing contemporary global concern.