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In response to the divides identified by some UK writers between critical legal scholarship, left political agendas, and empirical, policy-driven, socio-legal research, and indications of similar divides in the US, this essay seeks to demonstrate the possibilities for work that negotiates between progressive political commitments, social and political theory, policy concerns, and social scientific approaches to the interface between law and society. It does so by reference to three case studies of critical, feminist socio-legal scholarship, which address policy issues in the areas of family law, the legal profession, and access to justice.

Women and marketing have had a complicated relationship for a considerable time. They have often been involved with marketing‐type practices for longer than we have appreciated to date. Against considerable odds, some have carved out careers in academia and practice that have to be admired. The purpose of this paper is to explore the work of two pioneer contributors to marketing.

This paper engages in a close reading of the work of two female contributors. Their writing is placed in historical context which helps reveal the obstacles they had to overcome to succeed.

Female teachers, lecturers and practitioners had an important role to play in theorising consumer practice and helping people to successfully negotiate a complex marketplace replete with new challenges, difficulties and sometimes mendacious marketers seeking to profit from the limited knowledge consumers possessed.

This paper explores the writings of a practitioner and scholar respectively whose work has merited only limited attention previously. More than this, it links the arguments that are made to the papers that appear in the rest of the special issue.

This essay is a response to Zak Cope’s defense of the “labor aristocracy” theory of working class reformism and conservatism. Specifically, the essay engages Cope’s claims that British colonialism, imperialist investment, and transnational “monopoly” corporations have accrued “surplus-profits” that have underwritten the existence of a “labor aristocracy” historically, and that “unequal exchange” today has transformed almost the entirety of the working classes of the global North into a labor aristocracy. We conclude with a presentation of an alternative explanation of working class reformism and conservatism.

The term reformism has been in frequent use by leftist critics who have seen reform as the biggest enemy of the revolution. If the capitalist system were proved to be in danger of collapsing under its own weight, then intervention by the “bourgeois” state to reform the system and to make concessions to, say, labour, then the system would continue essentially unchanged. Examples of reformism are, therefore, free elementary and secondary education for all, the welfare state generally, trade union legislation permitting collective bargaining and so on. The main philosophical ideologist of such reformist strategy was originally John Stuart Mill, simultaneously a classical economist and utilitarian and proponent of reformist tendencies and government intervention. The term reformism is also applied to the political process whereby socialism might be implemented through parliamentary means. The working-class interest could be introduced into a parliamentary system via the electoral process and lead to reform progressively that would result in steps or increments to a socialist society. This was very much the view of Sidney and Beatrice Webb and their Fabian followers in the Britain. One of the main opponents of reform or social reform, as she put it, was Rosa Luxemburg who saw such a process as leading to the death knell of the German socialism and, by extension, of socialism everywhere (Howard, 1971, p. 52).

This chapter challenges the denial of “underconsumption” – the role of consumption demand in capitalist reproduction and its paucity in crises – in contemporary Marxism. At stake are better understandings not only of crisis theory but also, inter alia, of imperialism, “reformism,” and Marx's intellectual legacy. The chapter shows how the centrality of consumption demand is underlined in the three volumes of Capital and the Grundrisse, and goes on to discuss the origins, weaknesses, and persistence of this denial. The chapter also shows that Marx did not regard underconsumption as a moralistic argument about unfulfilled need. The denial originates not in Marx but in productionism, the idea that capitalism is a system of “production for production's sake.”

Originating in the overkill of Tugan Baranowski's refutation of the Russian populists’ view that capitalist development was impossible in Russia due to lack of a home market, productionism is based on his attempt to force Marxism into the marginalist and the general equilibrium framework. Despite its antipathy with Marxism, most contemporary Marxist economics are based on it. Inevitably its adherence to Say's Law – the denial of the possibility of gluts in the market – infects the tendency to assume that capitalism's contradictions do not lie in circulation. Productionism's denial of the importance of consumption demand also rests on nonsequiturs, nondialectical thinking, and an underestimation of the contradictions in capitalism Marx identified, other than the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The chapter ends by showing the centrality of demand in the recent historical evolution of capitalism as reconstructed by Robert Brenner, followed by a discussion of whether underconsumption is “reformist.”

A fully functioning carbon accounting system must be based on measurement that is materially accurate, consistent over space and time, and incorporates data uncertainty. However, achieving these goals is difficult because current carbon accounting efforts are spread across three distinct organisational fields, each prioritising different goals. This paper aims to address these issues.

The authors identified three fields drawn together by the science of how carbon emissions can be measured, the social practices of carbon accounting, and accountability within the global carbon governance system. The authors hosted a workshop, and invited representatives participating in each of the organisational fields to highlight the contentious conversations within their field. The authors facilitated an across‐field exploration of whether and how to achieve accuracy, consistency and certainty in carbon accounting.

It was found that there are tensions between accuracy, consistency and certainty in carbon accounting both within and across organisational fields. Framing the evolution of carbon accounting as negotiation between these goals across fields yields powerful implications for addressing current challenges in carbon accounting.

The authors provide guidance to policymakers on how to recognise legitimate uncertainty in carbon management science, manage the cost‐benefits of policy and reporting mechanisms, and ensure actual greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

This paper exploits the unusual approach of integrating carbon accounting across levels of analysis, from the molecular level through processes, organisations, industries and nations. This approach should help scientific, corporate and policy decision‐makers move towards a more fully functioning carbon accounting system.

The purpose of this article is to show that racism is not only a US problem. Rather, racism is endemic and pervasive in the UK context, manifesting at every level of policing. From stop and search, to deaths after police contact, the authors highlight long-standing and widespread racist disparities in UK policing. The authors therefore pierce through any delusions of UK “post-racialism” in order to show that, as protesters have reminded us, “the UK is not innocent”.

In this piece, the authors reflect on the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Whilst the catalyst was the death of George Floyd in the United States, the authors explore what the protests mean in the UK context. To do so, the authors draw upon recent high-profile examples of police racism, before situating those events within a wider landscape of racist policing.

Demonstrating that UK policing has to be understood as institutionally racist, the authors suggest that responses to police racism need to be radical and uncompromising – tweaks to the system are not enough. The authors therefore look towards defunding and abolition as ways in which one can begin to seek change.

The piece takes up the challenges set by this Black Lives Matter moment and offers a critical take on policing that seeks to push beyond reformism whilst also highlighting the realities of UK racism.