Critical Social Theory Research Articles

Bridging the gap: challenges of urban planning and policies for favelas in Salvador, Brazil

Salvador, the capital of Bahia State in Brazil, has long struggled with pronounced economic and social inequality. This stratification has resulted in spatial segregation, leading to the expansion of favelas, typically near the city center, where segregation in various dimensions of social engagement intensifies tensions of inequities. The municipal government has made several attempts to address favela-related issues through urban planning policies. Notwithstanding the progress made in lowering violent crime and extreme poverty, these issues still exist. This paper explores the interaction between government-led practices and corresponding self-organized actions toward planning strategies, invoking a social justice framework and critical urban theories. It identifies mismatches between institutional objectives and residents’ expectations, highlighting that structural contradictions in the region’s social development remain unresolved. The analysis suggests that planning policies should consider key factors, such as resource redistribution, recognition of sociocultural identity, and political representation. On the basis of these findings, this paper offers insights into urban planning for favelas as examples of complex governance challenges. It also aims to contribute to the global discourse on similar urban planning issues.

Role of Theory in a Practitioner-Based EdD Program

In this exchange between an EdD professor and one of their practitioner-scholars, the two recount their respective and overlapping journeys in Critical Social Theories for Just Schools and Communities. While the professor was trained as a philosopher and has embraced the theoretical throughout her career, the practitioner-scholar enrolled in the class with much skepticism about the usefulness of theories, especially coupled with the word “critical” in our politically divisive society. They share the educational unfolding that occurred for both of them as they navigated various challenges of infusing theory into a practitioner-based educational doctoral program. The professor offers insights into their pedagogical strategies when presenting sometimes contentious topics, and the practitioner-scholar provides an honest unveiling of their self-awareness.

Exclusive Spaces - How Gated Communities in Bogotá Threaten Democratic Access and Security for All in the Streets Outside the Gates

ABSTRACT Gated communities house 40% of Bogotá’s population today. Streets formed when two gated communities face each other, dominated by fences and walls are a common sight. Situating our research on informal social control and critical security theories, we analyse how gated communities shape non-exclusionary access and security in the streets and public spaces outside the gates. Applying systematic observations and interviews in streets outside gated communities in Bogotá, we collect data from all public space users. We show that in these spaces, the passer-by is perceived as a threat and hence not welcomed. We find that gated communities are redistributing access and security not just inside but also outside the gates, serving the needs of some, while dismissing the collective interest of inclusive and secure public spaces for all and hence are a threat to the democratic nature of cities.

Then and Now, Newsroom Diversity Matters for Mississippi’s Black Journalists

ABSTRACT Mississippi newsrooms should be among America’s most diverse. More than a third of residents are Black, and U.S. journalism organizations have long stated a goal of achieving racial parity with the communities they serve. Through the frame of social identity and critical race theory, the researchers analyzed 12 in-depth interviews with Black Mississippi journalists. The findings from these interviews indicate a wide range of challenges in Mississippi newsrooms, with the assertion that achieving diversity is contingent on having diverse leadership. The study explores what these journalists believe is necessary to foster a newsroom culture where minority journalists feel better supported and more empowered to express their opinions, The results also highlight apprehensions about the coverage of Black communities in Mississippi markets, particularly in the capital city of Jackson, where most of the population is Black. Interviewees expressed dissatisfaction with the disproportionate allocation of news reporting resources to cover minority criminal activities, a practice attributed by Campbell, C. P. (1995. Race, Myth and the News. Sage) to a legacy of white supremacy.

“I think they only study seawater”: Oceanography classroom career panel as a tool to promote geoscience career awareness

The utilization of a professional geoscience career panel as a curricular classroom activity can be essential for promoting career awareness. By interacting with professionals, students can be exposed to diverse geoscientific careers, helping them understand various professional paths and the real-world applications of their studies. Using social constructivism and critical reflection theories of learning, we designed and implemented a two-day career panel attended by ten ocean scientists in an undergraduate oceanography course for majors and non-majors. We used a qualitative, quasi-experimental design involving pre-and-post reflection data collected from the treatment group (n = 22) and control group (n = 19), and five post-treatment interviews to evaluate the effectiveness of the career panel on students’ ocean science career awareness. While the pre-reflections revealed that students in both the treatment and control groups had low awareness and knowledge about ocean science careers and practice, students in the treatment group showed improved awareness about ocean science careers and disciplines, processes of ocean science work, and the social and cultural impact of ocean science work after attending the career panel. Students in the treatment group also showed increased interest in ocean science and geosciences in general. Results indicate classroom career panel that include personal narratives, discussions, and students’ critical reflections can be effective tools to promote career awareness and interest in the geosciences. We provide implications for geoscience education such as supplementing classroom career panel with hands-on activities (e.g., job simulations), advanced organizers (e.g., worksite visits), and experiential learning opportunities (e.g., internships) as instructional tools to promote students’ career awareness.

Benefits from Kipsigis Women Engaging in Socio-Economic Activities in Kericho and Bomet Counties, Kenya

Purpose: To investigate the impact of Kipsigis women group economic activities and how the public perceive this new undertaking in Kericho and Bomet Counties in Kenya. Methodology: The study used a qualitative research design, where different components of the study addressed the research problem. Probability sampling technique was used to select the participants in the study. The methods used to interrogate the participants included: focus group discussions, observation and face to face interviews. Each participant responded to the questions individually, as posed in the interview guide. This was later collected by the researcher for perusal and recording of the result that was compiled along with those from other methods. Along with the focus groups discussions, the researcher selected topics related to the topic of the study for discussion in the groups. The questions used in the different methods were posed to the participants who had been purposively selected to represent the rest of the population. This was done with the view of collecting the data that was later analyzed using tools such as NVivo or done manually. This study manually analyzed the data collected from the participants through the afore-mentioned research techniques for collecting the data. Findings: The findings showed that there was recognition of women’s contribution in society. The results from Bomet County indicated that 52% have embraced and supported women’s group activities, 24% see such group activities as making the women responsible and hardworking while another 24% feel that the women are not well supported in their group economic activities. In Kericho County, the results indicated that 54% felt that women’s contribution would improve living standards and another 46% felt that the group ability would significantly improve. The study also sought to find out the effect of women engaging in socio-economic activities on the home and family. The results from women in Kericho County show that 96% indicated that there was a positive effect on family and society as stated in the research outcome, 4% said there was no effect. The results from Bomet County showed that 98% of participants agreed that the women involvement in economic activities had a positive effect on family and society. Two percent were of the feeling that there was no effect on the home and family. Bomet had a percentage of respondents who indicated that women have not contributed much through their involvement in economic activities. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Critical Social Theory helps in understanding social functioning and behavior among gender groups in the society, where men and women roles among the Kipsigis is very distinct. Women assigned roles are undertaken by women and girls as their responsibilities lies in the kitchen and around the home. This is where the small children and the elderly are, and the women and the older girls are expected to undertake those roles without question.

Reviewing and reconceptualising cyberbullying through a social and sustainable lens

ABSTRACT The turn of the century saw a rapid increase in the rate of cyberbullying and with it, the long-term damage it causes young people, their families, and communities. Cyberbullying is now considered a high priority policy around the world. With COVID-19 revealing and reinforcing the increasingly technosocial nature of contemporary society, there are calls of concern around the unintended consequences of the pandemic. For example, school closures or lockdowns have resulted in adolescents spending an increased amount of time online. This increase has exacerbated the problem, compounded negative outcomes, and put the safety, health and wellbeing of youth in the virtual space at further risk. Given the far-reaching mental and physical health impacts, this hidden epidemic needs our full attention. Yet, cyberbullying as a field is characterised by definitional inconsistencies and lack of theoretical foundations. Research to date has largely individualised and decontextualised cyberbullying from its social, cultural and political contexts. Therefore, this paper aims to review and reconceptualise cyberbullying using critical social theories and a sustainable development lens to demonstrate the wider and macrosocial drivers and impacts of this form of cyber-harm. This paper will present how discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, known as othering processes, are mediated through technology, alongside highlighting some broader implications of cyberbullying at a holistic and systemic level beyond individuals.

Flipping the Narrative: A Unifying Framework for Juvenile Court-based Forensic Social Work Practice

Professional social workers are trained in multiple competencies and occupy various positions within the forensic landscape. Unified by a code of ethics that emphasizes social justice and the protection and empowerment of marginalized populations and a philosophical approach that recognizes the interplay of individual and environmental factors, social work leadership in youth justice policy and practice is vital. This article proposes a unifying framework for macro, mezzo, and micro court-based forensic social work practice in the 21st century that draws from post-modern critical social work theory. The lifelong negative impacts of court involvement for young people are well documented and contribute to persistent societal inequities. Pre-disposition court practices can mitigate or further harm court-involved youth. “Flipping the Narrative” is a culturally relevant practice framework for evaluating and designing youth court practices that recognize the intersectionality of the identities and experiences of court-involved youth. The proposed framework incorporates the practical implications of Critical Theory, specifically Critical Race Theory, the Theory of African American Offending, and Queer Theory, and relevant practice approaches, such as Social Justice Youth Development and Narrative Therapy, to analyze current youth court practices, propose areas for further evaluation and innovation, and recommend practice enhancements for defense-based forensic social workers. The urgency for innovation in one New England state is illustrated through a case study.

Talking across worlds: The ontological turn and communication in natural resource co-management with Indigenous communities

The ontological turn in critical social theory provokes emerging calls for new approaches to natural resource management where Indigenous perspectives, worldview, knowledges, and values are prioritized in the stewardship of Indigenous lands. Yet, scant literature focuses on the ontological implications for communication within environmental decision-making, where Habermas’ communicative action theory, with its norms of privileging argumentation, formality, expertise, institutional authority, rationality, and language, continues to shape spaces of public participation since the communicative turn in the 1990s. Growing calls for participatory decision-making, as well as the mounting failures of scientific management approaches espoused by conventional natural resource management, have fuelled the rise of co-management since the 1980s. The emerging emphasis in co-management approaches on community collaboration and meaningful communication was strengthened with the emergence of adaptive co-management and adaptive governance in the early 2000s. Yet, the ontological turn unveils communicative tensions which continue to persist, rooted in ontological difference and onto-epistemic violence. Rethinking communication under the ontological turn in co-management with Indigenous communities, this paper reviews the literature and further proposes the idea of ethical equivocation as a communicative tool and starting point toward learning to talk across worlds.

Serviço Social e Questão Social sob a ótica do método crítico dialético: reflexões a partir da experiência histórica brasileira

This article aims to present a bibliographic-documentary analysis of the concept of Social Question, its incursion into Brazilian Social Work and its relations with historical-dialectical materialism. Methodologically, through historical review, it demonstrated how the concept emerged in the conservative spectrum of competitive capital, later taking on a new approach through the contributions of Critical Social Theory. For Brazilian Social Work, especially after the renewal of its scope in the 1980s, the Social Question understood by historical-dialectical materialism became a fundamental element for the analysis and structure-conjuncture that supports the currently current mature form of the profession.

Alliances between social occupational therapy and critical occupational science: Propositions to mobilize social justice

ABSTRACT Committed to the necessity of international dialogues in occupational therapy and occupational science, we have developed a proposal for alliance between social occupational therapy and critical occupational science based on a series of theoretical dialogues between Brazilian and Canadian researchers. Through these dialogues, we have aimed to understand and propose contributions that articulate the shared intent of social transformation enhancing social justice of these disciplines. While acknowledging points of difference, we propose an alliance based on points of convergence, including emergence from concerns related to justice and equity; development coming from the ‘margins’; mobilization of critical social theory to orient knowledge production and question power relations within and outside the discipline and the profession; and an intent to work towards social justice, especially with marginalized groups. Our key arguments are informed by theoretical concepts from three authors: Judith Butler’s conceptualizations of vulnerability, precarity, and alliance; Nancy Fraser’s propositions regarding social justice; and Paulo Freire’s concept of dialogue. Through dialogue that recognizes and respects different knowledges and practices, an alliance is produced toward social justice, one that aims to realize more complex theoretical and practical resources for critical thinking about social reality. In turn, possibilities for apprehending how different oppressions impact and influence the possibilities of living can be expanded, informing approaches to building inhabitable worlds and proposing practices of freedom with persons and communities facing oppression.

The Defense of the Adoption of Critical Social Theory as a Framework for African Universities

With coloniality, thought itself became discriminatory and was categorized into racial forms. That discrimination and categorization of thought gave rise to the idea that philosophy itself must be differentially categorized as either Western, Eastern, or African as if thought has a race and geographic location. The issue at this age is that those categorizations get serious to the extent that it is unthinkable that African scholars can benefit from any thought system except from African philosophy. This paper argued that those vices dent human enlightenment and developmental progress. Within that purpose, this paper used an analytic theoretical framework to argue that it is an unguided racist view that there is no benefit for African scholars in Western philosophy. The adoption of Critical Social Theory was selected as one case whereby an African rural university received a plethora of criticisms as being hypocritical in the decolonization mission. Among the findings of this study one important aspect came out more clearly, that humans love unity rather than division according to race, class and so on. This study recommends that decolonization should be embraced willingly with a clear realization that humanity is one race rather than a divided existence. This study posits that having a proper perspective of decolonization will eliminate hypocrisy among scholars and create that realization of human knowledge as one racial epistemology. Keywords: Coloniality, Philosophy, Academic Discrimination, Decolonization, Theoretic Operandi.

How Does Neoliberalism Form Our Lifes? A Praxeological Approach with Jaeggi and Foucault

ABSTRACT Michel Foucault’s work has immensely enriched the way critical social theorists understand power. Beyond his work on disciplinary normalisation, Foucault’s genealogy of the modern state has discussed governmental power as the conduct of conduct of subjects and populations. Foucault reserves his understanding of norms and normalisation for explaining the prescriptive force of disciplinary power. Accordingly, he hardly uses the language of norms to explain how neoliberal policies interfere in social conduct. In this paper, I aim to elucidate what kind of normative intervention neoliberal governmentality encompasses. By mobilising Rahel Jaeggi’s understanding of forms of life as ensembles of normatively imbued social practices, I suggest that neoliberal governmentality introduces the rationality of market competition into the problem-solving horizon of social conduct, thereby creating and instituting a “neoliberal form of life”. Hence, I argue that neoliberal governmentality is a form of domination that intervenes in ethical norms and social practices that build everyday forms of life.

Corrigendum to Social reproduction theory and critical state theory after the COVID-19 syndemic

Corrigendum to Social reproduction theory and critical state theory after the COVID-19 syndemic

Engaging Antiracist And Decolonial Praxis To Advance Equity In Oregon Public Health Surveillance Practices.

Public health surveillance and data systems in the US remain an unnamed facet of structural racism. What gets measured, which data get collected and analyzed, and how and by whom are not matters of happenstance. Rather, surveillance and data systems are productions and reproductions of political priority, epistemic privilege, and racialized state power. This has consequences for how communities of color are represented or misrepresented, viewed, and valued and for what is prioritized and viewed as legitimate cause for action. Surveillance and data systems accordingly must be understood as both an instrument of structural racism and an opportunity to dismantle it. Here, we outline a critique of standard surveillance systems and practice, drawing from the social epidemiology, critical theory, and decolonial theory literatures to illuminate matters of power germane to epistemic and procedural justice in the surveillance of communities of color. We then summarize how community partners, academics, and state health department data scientists collaborated to reimagine survey practices in Oregon, engaging public health critical race praxis and decolonial theory to reorient toward antiracist surveillance systems. We close with a brief discussion of implications for practice and areas for continued consideration and reflection.

Справедливость для детей и подростков: критическая теория и антиэйджистские веб-сообщества в соцсети «ВКонтакте»

This article discusses the production of a critical anti-ageism project. In this case ‘anti-ageism’ is an emic name for a small-scale web community of several readerships and groups that emerged in 2012 in VK social media. Its participants aim to stand against ageism, meaning discrimination against children and adolescents based on their age. Anti-ageists identify themselves as innovators who produce new ways of imagining children’s roles and challenging the social order. In 2015 their rhetorical strategies changed from producing evidence about personal trauma to formulating texts in the technique of critical social theory. The last ones include condemning ageism as a total system, and various situations and social relations as oppression, exploitation, or domination of children and adolescents, whatever the forms in which they occur. With oppression as a key strategically deployed rhetorical trope the discourse of anti-ageist VK web communities invites comparison with the tendencies of the academic and activist critique of dominant and repressive categorical apparatus. At the same time, the anti-ageists redefine the collective understanding of justice by proposing new visions of children’s agency and scenarios of children’s behaviour. The mechanisms of transfer of interpretive techniques of critical theory, especially the choice of cultural allies of anti-ageism, are presented from the perspective of digital ethnography and placed in the context of sociopolitical changes with attention to the material or technological landscapes and the modes of sociality of specific web fragments. The second part of the article demonstrates how anti-ageism is not only articulated on the internet but also embodied in the social imagination of participants in anti-ageist web communities. Transferring the oppression of children and adolescents from a textual motif into a technique that anti-ageists use in imagining and representing themselves and others opens up the prospect for a discussion about the place of critical theory in the scenes of everyday life.

Everyday sociality, political protest and the commodity boundary in southern Africa

ABSTRACT This paper takes a sceptical look at the treatment of connected practices of commodification and consumption in some exemplary works of mainstream critical social theory that seek to identify cross-contextual historical logics linking economic action to socio-political life. Drawing on situated research from South and southern Africa that helps to complicate our understanding of these links, it argues that many influential claims in the mainstream critical literature remain poorly substantiated and pass silently over vast provinces of complex, situated thought and action. When analysing how markets function, recurrent critical tropes of highly manipulable consumer desire suffer from a tendency to argue by simple fiat, while also abstracting out the historically shifting forms of moral and legal regulation mediating commodification and consumption on most real-world markets. This paper also makes a case for greater scepticism towards categorical associations between market action and the reproduction of socio-political dispositions of power. Consumer behaviour undeniably can shore up distinction and domination, but it has often also been observed to tamper with them by indirect means, while concentrated consumer initiatives in the form of boycotts remain an under-theorised and largely forgotten form of resistance within mainstream critical social theory.

‘Towards a Critical Social Theory of the Idea of the Future’: A response to Richard Swedberg’s ‘On the Future as Possibilities’: A review of Gerard Delanty’s Senses of the Future: Conflicting Ideas of the Future in the World Today (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024)

This essay is a short reply to Richard Swedberg’s review of my book, Senses of the Future: Conflicting Ideas of the Future in the World Today (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024). The main points are addressed. In addition I sum up the rationale and aims of the book.

Normative power in the planetary organic crisis

The lead intervention article argues that the new reality of the planetary organic crisis awaits a normative critical social theory of planetary politics, a means of understanding the sharing of relationships within International Relations and an agenda for action in concert found in the normative power approach. The article and subsequent 20th anniversary special issue provide an opportunity to reflect and develop the ideas of the original Journal of Common Market Studies ‘normative power’ article through a prospective on the use of normative power in addressing the planetary organic crisis. The special issue sets out a prospective on theorising normative power in the rapidly shifting context of 21st-century planetary organic crisis involving interacting and deepening structural crises of economic inequality, social injustice, ecological unsustainability, ontological insecurity and political irresilience – as demonstrated by the global financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine. It begins by setting out the normative power approach to planetary organic crisis, where 21st-century politics are characterised by truly planetary relations of causality that can only be understood and addressed holistically. In the wider context of climate emergency, food and water insecurity and their socio-economic and political consequences, a planetary political approach to understanding the European Union is an essential starting point.

Ecumenical critical theory, pluralism and developmental trends

Critical social theory is a late product of the Enlightenment, though pushed beyond its original intentions. It then developed mainly with Marxism, but since the beginning other strands have been important, such as anarchism, feminism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism and environmentalism. The immanent critique of modernity must be seen indeed as ecumenical. In its plurality, it must have however at its core the realisation of equal freedom and full solidarity that remains an unfulfilled promise and offers a criterion of demarcation for critical theory. The diagnosis of the times for critical approaches also depended on identifying long-term developments, especially within Marxism, but this seems to have been almost entirely forgotten. I will argue that it is both possible and necessary to resume this strategy. Finally, I ask how we connect these conceptual issues to praxis. The article concludes with a more substantive discussion of political modernity.