Living Activism

The editorial collective of Critical Social Policy (CSP) invites activists, advocates, practitioners, and users of service groups to submit contributions about how they work to end social injustice. Please complete the form below if you want to discuss your ideas for an article prior to submission.

 

CSP  is a political project grounded in international socialist, feminist, anti-racist and radical perspectives relating to the experiences of people struggling within or against the state within national and global contexts. We recognise the struggles of resistance, emancipation, and political transformation for social justice in order to counteract unequal power relations of exclusion, subordination, and domination due to oppressive constructions of identity, representation, and position.

The Living Activism section of the CSP  journal foregrounds the lived experience of activist struggles, forms of resilience and examples of transformation that are happening all over the world by people.

Contributions should move beyond describing problems of social injustice or describing your activist group. Contributions should speak about actions to address problems of oppression in order to realise/work towards social justice. 

For examples of contributions from activists published in the journal of Critical Social Policy see:

 

"Living Activism - Critical Social Policy introduction" by Orla Smith and Suryia Nayak (44:3 [2024])

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Themed Issue: Living Activist Struggles to End Social Injustice edited by Suryia Nayak (40:2 [2020])

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The aims of The Living Activism section the Critical Social Policy are to:

• Provide examples of community-based actions for empowerment.

• Identify what can be learned from bottom-up approaches to social transformation of inequality.

• Identify tensions and struggles that grassroots, community, activist groups face and how these are managed.

• Give examples of collective mobilisations and building bridges, connections, alliances, and solidarity.

• Give examples of resilience to challenges in sustaining grassroots action for liberation.

• Identify challenges of building sustainable infrastructures, strategic positioning, and the embedding of empowerment work.

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Examples of questions that The Living Activism section of Critical Social Policy seeks to engage with are:

• How do activists groups negotiate power relationships?

• How do you/we remain united whilst recognising differences of identity and situation (race, gender, class, caste, sexuality, ability, and the specificity of intersecting oppressions)?

• How do you/we reach all people? Who is excluded and why, and how can grassroots community actions be more inclusive?

• Is it possible to organize, campaign and develop services in a collective / non-hierarchal way?

• How do you/we support and nurture each other through times of exhaustion and despair? How can we sustain our hope, our energy, our love, and our compassion for each other and for our social movements and goals?

• In the context of power, what are the complexities of finding and holding onto emotional, financial, and spiritual resources?

• The issues and challenges that community groups and activists face are not new. What lessons can we learn from social justice activist all over the world, past and present, who have faced issues that we fac

• Or other issues, questions, themes that fit with the mission of Critical Social Policy.

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What Happens Next

1. Submit your idea for your Living Activism contribution, this could be a short summary of what you are thinking of including or it could be your full draft article. Email your summary/draft to: articlescsp@gmail.com or complete the contact form at the bottom of this page.

2. Once you have submitted the summary/draft you will be contacted by a mentor from the Living Activism Group of Critical Social Policy who will provide you with support to help you turn your contribution into a final
   article. At this stage, it is not guaranteed to be published, but will be ready for review.

3. Your final article will be reviewed by the Editorial Collective of Critical Social Policy.  A decision is made by the reviewers as to whether your article meets the requirements of Critical Social Policy.