‘After the Third World’signals both the end of an era and way of thinking and the birth of new challenges, dreams and real possibilities; both observations, however, can be hotly contested. On the one hand, what has really ended? Assuming that the historical horizon that has finally come to a close is that of anti-colonial nationalist struggles in the Third World, how about the other, perhaps less intractable, aspects of the spirit of Bandung and Third Worldism? For instance, how about the tremendous international solidarity that this spirit elicited among exploited peoples? How about its passionate call for justice, or its eloquent demand for a new international economic order? And is the centrality of the political on which that spirit was based also a thing of the past? Are all of these features ineluctably left behind by the steamroller of modern capitalist history? I believe the articles in this special issue of Third World Quarterly demonstrate that they are not, even if they are in dire need of rearticulation. To begin with, many of the conditions that gave rise to Third Worldism have by no means disappeared. Today the world is confronted with a