Traditionally, symposia followed a banquet so I must apologise for not providing a sumptuous meal with this special issue. However, this issue’s exploration of Roots and Routes holds true to the initial idea of the symposium as a discussion amongst friends/colleagues of some weighty matter. In this case we come together at the invitation of Professor Ananta Kumar Giri from the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India to explore issues pertaining to ethnicity, sociocultural regeneration and planetary realisations. It was Professor Giri who coordinated these special symposium contributions. The format presented here is one occasionally practised by various disciplines where a leading scholar in the field sets out a range of issues in a ‘poser’ and invites trusted colleagues to engage with their ideas. So this is not so much a dialogue in the sense of an interactive or combative engagement but a series of scholarly reflections provoked by Giri’s poser.