As a reaction to the COVID- 19 pandemic and the wave of global social justice protests in 2020, Generation Z (born 1997–2012)0 F feels an intensified obligation to get involved in politics, resulting in unprecedented youth activism. Gen Z is more politically active than previous generations of youth, partly due to this generation’s emergence as “digital natives.” An underlying theme motivating Gen Z activism is their affinity for addressing social justice issues through civic engagement. But do politically active young people concerned with social justice self-identify as being members of political parties? Or is their activism occurring predominantly online and in the streets? This article conducts an exploratory analysis to investigate whether youth bridge their social consciousness and activism with deliberative democracy, notably by joining political parties. By looking at youth activism and party membership across 46 countries, I find that political activism online exhibits some connection to party membership among young people. Understanding the connection between young people’s “chosen” forms of participation and formal institutions can provide insights into how online activism can break down barriers between youth and political institutions.

Increasing attention is placed to redistributive attitudes, especially in the light of growing inequalities throughout the world. From Aristotle to Marx, the discipline classically shares a simple, albeit powerful assumption: individuals are mainly (or even only) motivated by their own self-interest. However, it is also assumed that alternative motivations may emerge as soon as the context allows this to happen. This article tests the impact of economic well-being at the societal level. Two main hypotheses are tested. First, the so-called ‘governmental protection hypothesis’, according to which support for redistribution declines at times of higher levels of national affluence. Second, the ‘declining self-interest hypothesis’, whereby national prosperity is expected to mitigate the income-based polarisation of redistributive preferences. While empirical evidence confirms the former, but not the latter, it also opens up a window of opportunity to develop an alternative theoretical explanation of attitude formation rooted in the social psychological literature.

This article builds on the Linguistic Society of America's Statement on Race to argue that linguistics urgently needs an interdisciplinarily informed theoretical engagement with race and racism. To be adequate, a linguistic theory of race must incorporate the perspectives of linguistic researchers of different methodological approaches and racial backgrounds and must also draw on theories of race in neighboring fields, including anthropology, sociology, and psychology, as well as speech and hearing sciences, composition and literacy studies, education, and critical interdisciplinary race studies. The lack of comprehensive and up-to-date theoretical, analytical, and political understandings of race within linguistics not only weakens research by erasing, marginalizing, and misrepresenting racially minoritized groups, but it also diminishes the impact of the entire field by devaluing and excluding the intellectual contributions of researchers of color, whose work on this topic is rarely welcome within linguistics departments. The article therefore argues for a rethinking of both linguistic scholarship and linguistics as a discipline in more racially inclusive and socially just terms.

In a lecture given in 1991, while working on the never finished third volume of his series on theories of justice, Brian Barry gave a rare glimpse into the ideas with which he was wrestling – twenty years ahead of present-day political theorists. What is the role of the state, how are we to conceptualize it, in a world if globalization, and against the background of a legitimate appeal for international distributive justice?

Migrant community-based organizations (MCBOs) are key mediating structures between immigrants and host societies. However, when implementing this role in host societies, MCBOs often face a number of challenges that reduce their chances to be effective in promoting social justice. This paper aims to analyze the challenges that MCBOs settled in Milan (Northern Italy) experience and the coping strategies that they use in order to provide some guidelines on how to support them. In-depth interviews, observations and document analysis with 15 MCBOs were conducted. Based on a situational analysis, we present the main challenges perceived by MCBOs at three levels: internal (i.e., surviving), inter-organizational (i.e., collaborating) and community (i.e., being recognized as mediating actors). We provide specific guidelines for action on how to address such challenges and thus foster the role of MCBOs as mediating structures in receiving societies.

This article proposes a radical and normative approach to understanding governance as one of the core issues dealt with in nonprofit management. The radical component traces ideas of good governance through a series of historical transformations, from the governance of Italian city-states in the fourteenth century through the Enlightenment and on to the American Revolution. The normative component challenges the instrumental understanding of good governance as effective organizational behavior and puts the emphasis on the moral values underpinning managerial practices in the public sphere. In concluding, the radical and normative approaches are being integrated into a framework for nonprofit management education. Unlike existing curricula, the proposed model does not focus on preparing students for a particular type of organizations, but for the career of civic professionals engaged as intermediaries in the public sphere. In this respect, the article addresses both, researchers interested in overcoming the division that exists between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to understanding governance and faculty concerned about the relevance of nonprofit management in an increasingly complex organizational environment.

Dutch citizens on welfare have to volunteer at Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in return for their benefits. Through applying the ‘worlds of justification’ of Boltanski and Thévenot, this article aims to provide a better theoretical and empirical understanding of social justice of policies that obligate welfare clients to participate in CSOs. The analysis of 51 in-depth interviews with Dutch welfare recipients shows that respondents perceive these policies partly but not unilaterally as unfair. If respondents perceive welfare as ‘free money’ and if they are convinced that civic behavior demands interventions against free riding on welfare resources, ‘mandatory volunteering’ is considered as fair. Our main contribution is to the theoretical debate on recognition and redistribution by showing empirically how ‘othering’ plays an important role in determining when mandatory volunteering becomes a matter of redistribution or recognition.

Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to Native Americans, who are unique among racial groups in the United States since ‘Native American’ is also a political status and tribes are nations. Focusing on the fundamental tenet of tribal critical race theory that colonization is endemic to society (Brayboy 2005), I argue that the ways in which Native American languages are represented in linguistic scholarship reflects colonial norms, which also guide the severe underrepresentation of Native Americans in the discipline. Integrating these ideas into antiracist frameworks facilitates social justice in linguistic science.

In their target article, Anne Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz (2020) have challenged linguists to constructively engage with race and racism. They suggest three core principles for inclusion and equity in linguistics: (i) ‘social impact’ as a core criterion for excellence; (ii) the acknowledgment of our field's ‘origins as a tool of colonialism and conquest’; and (iii) the elimination of the ‘race gap’ that ‘diminishes the entire field … by excluding scholars and students of color’. Here I amplify Charity Hudley et al.'s challenges through some of my own critiques of Creole studies. These critiques serve to further analyze institutional whiteness as, in their terms, ‘a structuring force in academia, informing the development of theories, methods, and models in ways that reproduce racism and white supremacy'. The latter is exceptionally overt in the prejudicial misrepresentations (a.k.a. ‘Creole exceptionalism') that we linguists have created and transmitted, since the colonial era, about Creole languages and their speakers. One such misrepresentation, whose popularity trumps its dubious historical and empirical foundations, starts with the postulation that Creole languages as a class contrast with so-called ‘regular’ languages due to allegedly ‘abnormal’ processes of emergence and transmission. In effect, then, Creole studies may well be the most spectacular case of exclusion and marginalization in linguistics. With this in mind, I ask of Charity Hudley et al. a key question that is inspired by legal scholar Derrick Bell's ‘racial interest-convergence theory’, whereby those in power will actively work in favor of racial justice only when such work also contributes to their self-interest. Given this theory, how can we sustainably implement any agenda, including Charity Hudley et al.'s, that stands to undermine the ‘structuring power of white supremacy', including the power to choose whose research gets funded or whose subfield is included in ‘core’ linguistics? Bell's theory might also bear on my proposed funder principle for the intellectual history of Creole studies. I suggest that it is out of self-interest that the European funders of the colonial enterprise in Africa and the Americas helped create the power-knowledge structuring force that accounts for the genesis and transmission of Creole exceptionalism through centuries—in spite of mounting evidence against it. I end with an optimistic note about what might constitute ‘success’ in linguistics.

Public communication about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is widely acknowledged as a cornerstone of global, national, and regional strategies to tackle this urgent health threat. However, much like AMR itself, efforts to communicate about it are hindered by complex and intersecting challenges. This scoping review synthesises insights from 88 scholarly manuscripts published between 2015 and 2024 to explore critical issues in AMR communication and identify potential options to address them. We distil nine overarching themes that underpin effective public communication and engagement, with particular significance for engaging with disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. These themes encompass (1) social science theoretical frameworks, (2) varied sociocultural contexts, (3) public engagement and dialogue, (4) linguistic considerations, (5) messaging strategies, (6) media use and its impacts, (7) large-scale public campaigns, (8) creative communication approaches, and (9) evaluation. We discuss each theme and outline related recommendations, collectively advocating a re-imagining of AMR communication as a civic, cultural, and reflexive practice that is attuned to the complexities of diverse contexts and cultures, and designed to enhance societal relevance and impact.

The pursuit of social justice in penal matters has regained momentum in Anglo-American criminal law debates. Among the various areas of discussion, a contentious issue is whether the social hardships that contribute to much criminal offending should be considered in the adjudication of criminal responsibility. Against this backdrop, this paper defends the position that chronic – ie long-lasting and ongoing – situations of social adversity can, in principle, warrant consideration in determinations of guilt. It therefore advances a proposal for a situational partial excuse (SPE) applicable to cases where criminal conduct is precipitated by conditions of chronic social adversity that unfairly diminish a person’s opportunity to do otherwise. Importantly, the proposed excuse also accounts for the compounding role of both state and societal neglect in diminishing an individual’s opportunities and resources to avoid wrongdoing. To this end, the paper integrates normative analysis with modern empirical insights into the relationship between adverse social contexts and crime, including through mechanisms of traumatic stress. It then elaborates the theoretical and doctrinal foundations of the SPE, articulates its statutory and evidentiary requirements, and discusses its coherence with core sentencing considerations.