The Agenda for Social Justice and its sister publication the Global Agenda for Social Justice are edited collections of scholarly articles offering practical, evidence-based solutions to real-world social problems being faced today in America and around the world.
Curated by the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), the Agendas for Social Justice series has been produced every four years, in line with the US presidential elections, for nearly two decades. Since the 2016 edition, Policy Press has taken on the production and publication of the Agenda for Social Justice, providing professional publishing support for the series in digital, paperback and Open Access formats.
Through the partnership on the Agendas, Policy Press and Bristol University Press have been able to work with the SSSP on deepening and expanding the breadth and reach of its work. Developing and launching the new Global Agenda for Social Justice series with Policy Press has provided the SSSP with the platform and visibility of an international university press, and helped it capitalise on the growing global interest in its work.
Humble beginnings
Working on the Agendas for Social Justice series in many senses formalised the relationship between Policy Press and the SSSP which has developed over the past 20 years. Thanks to Policy Press’s regular attendance at the SSSP annual conference and its publication of books by core SSSP members, the alignment of values and common ground between the organisations has long been evident to both.
Even the origin of the Agendas resonates with Policy Press’s own remit of publishing with a purpose, as Professor Glenn Muschert, editorial team member for the Agendas and SSSP Secretary, explains:
“Back in 1999 Robert Perrucci, the then president of the SSSP, criticised the organisation for being too academic; for speaking too much to the academic audience and not enough to people who might be involved in changing social problems.
The Justice 21 Committee was launched on the back of that feedback and a call for papers that provided workable solutions to real social problems was put out.”
Glenn, then a PhD student, contributed to the first volume which was published in 2004. Shortly afterwards he was invited to join the editorial team. Of those early editions of the Agenda for Social Justice, Glenn says:
“Bob Perrucci had this vision of us being like the old school pamphleteers, of being out there handing out pamphlets to the workers or whoever. He was like: ‘We have this technology, all these photocopying machines everywhere, we ought to use it,” so the first two editions were effectively self-funded photocopies!”
From local to global
This was the radical inception of the Agenda for Social Justice, pumped out with optimism and an enthusiasm for bridging the divide between scholarly knowledge and real-world problems. For its third iteration in 2012, Glenn decided to take the Agenda up a gear:
“These volumes are oriented towards the US discourse surrounding presidential elections. In 2012 I got this idea to self-publish it on Amazon, using Create Space. I did all the typesetting etc., and put it for sale at the minimum price. We’d always distributed the Agenda on an Open Access basis, with a free PDF on the society’s website, but around 2012 I wanted to track who was accessing it, to start to get a better picture in terms of reach and impact of our work.”
The results seemed surprising, given the US-centric nature of the content of the Agenda.
“The hits were in the thousands. The most common ones were in the US, Canada and the UK – much as we might have expected. But the next group were interesting – India, the Philippines, Kenya etc. That’s a way different audience, but excitingly, it fits our approach which was and is to get the information out there. I had this vision of students in internet cafés or universities libraries reading it and here it was, out there, having an impact.”
When approached by Policy Press in 2014 with the notion of a partnership between the organisations it felt to Glenn and to the wider organisation as though this was a win-win scenario. The partnership was formed with the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the contract signed by the executive office.
The idea for the Global Agenda quickly followed, enabling a non-US centric discourse to form along the same lines as the original, with calls for papers on worldwide social issues of the day. The first Global Agenda for Social Justice was published in 2018 – in between the Agenda for Social Justice, but on a similar four-year publication schedule.
Faster than a speeding bullet
With the four-year cycles of the Agendas series in place, the SSSP were able to turn to Policy Press to facilitate the speedy dissemination of scholarly responses on more immediate and pressing issues. As Glenn says:
“One of the things that bugs us about academic publishing is that it takes so long. When an event occurs that highlights a significant social problem, e.g. a police killing of an unarmed African American, we as a Society, as social scientists, have something we want to say on this subject, in an informed way.
Working with Policy Press we came up with this idea that we could do a Rapid Response. It was 2020 and the only subject on any agenda was the global pandemic and so together we produced the COVID-19 volumes 1 and 2.
From initial discussion to publication was maybe 12 weeks. We put out a call for papers with a three-day deadline and received way over 100 proposals. We were able to choose the very best, US ones and global ones. It was a fast turnaround.”
The Justice 21 Committee, responsible for the Agendas series, has been an ‘ad hoc’ committee since it was set up in 2000. After more than 20 years of operating in this way, somewhat under the radar of the SSSP, the committee has recently become formalised and official. Whilst Glenn Muschert remains dedicated to the SSSP and to the work of the Justice 21 Committee, he is keen to see the editorial control move into new, younger hands:
“I remember being a junior scholar and remembered thinking my senior professors were a bit stodgy and needed updating, so let’s get the new people in!”
For the SSSP, the aim is that the Justice 21 Committee and its publications will continue developing as vehicles for engaging scholars, practitioners and policy makers in a multiway and meaningful discourse on the social problems of our time, faced across the Global North and the Global South.
Rebecca Megson-Smith is a writer and writing coach, founder of Ridley Writes.
Global Agenda for Social Justice 2 edited by Glenn W. Muschert, Kristen M. Budd, Heather Dillaway, David C. Lane, Manjusha Nair and Jason A. Smith is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £14.99.
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The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
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