August’s theme centers on Social Justice, an enduring and interdisciplinary topic rooted in the pursuit of equity, dignity, and inclusion. Social justice invites us to examine how power, privilege, and access shape our institutions and communities, and to consider how systems can evolve to support fairness across race, class, gender, ability, and beyond.
This month’s curated collection offers a range of perspectives on justice, spanning economics, education, environmental equity, civil rights, and more. Engage with these works to better understand the structural challenges we face and the ideas that continue to shape a more equitable future.
Each month, "Discover & Discuss" presents a fresh theme designed to inform, inspire, and connect our community with a curated selection of books and digital resources that invite deeper thinking and dialogue.
Additional resources provided by Gale Publishing. Special thanks to our Materials Processing Coordinator, Leah Zande, for compiling this list. Feature image by Priscilla Gyamfi on Unsplash.
Education for Social Justice: The Meaning of Justice and Current Research
Michelli, Nicholas; Jacobowitz, Tina; Campo, Stacey; Jahnsen, Diana (2024)
"Education for Social Justice" is a statement of the role of education in promoting social justice. Drawing on research, this book explains what social justice is, presents the argument that democracy requires a commitment to social justice, and shows what action steps need to be taken to ensure social justice is achieved within education and society more broadly.
The text presents research and concrete examples to examine the social justice issues facing society today. Some of the social justice topics explored include access to higher education, informal education (such as museums and art galleries) and adequate civic education, and racial and gender discrimination within education, as well as access to healthcare and the vote, which impact students’ learning. It explores specific research and action for each of these elements and, at the end of the book, provides potential paths forward to improve social justice outcomes.
This timely book encourages readers to consider what we can do to enhance social justice in education and society. It is important reading for pre-service teachers, particularly those studying teaching for social justice, social studies education, and educational policy and politics, as well as for in-service teachers who want to make a difference. - Publisher's Description
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Generative AI Approaches to Sustainable Development in Higher Education
Meletiadou, Eleni (2025)
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has emerged as a transformative force in higher education, offering both challenges and opportunities. The integration of AI with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Higher Education has sparked a paradigm shift in teaching, learning and assessment offering both incredible opportunities and complex challenges. Using AI-generated content in educational activities has raised equity and accessibility concerns. As a result, research is needed to explore the various challenges with the global integration of ESD and AI, particularly in terms of social justice.
"Generative AI Approaches to Sustainable Development in Higher Education" explores critical aspects of integrating AI and ESD in Higher Education classrooms to achieve educational goals. It provides a balanced perspective on the responsible and effective use of these technologies (AI) and ESD in education, highlighting the need for a thoughtful, ethical, and inclusive approach to their integration. Covering topics such as immersive educational pedagogy, learning development, and intercultural communication, this book is an excellent resource for teachers, school administrators, social justice advocates, policymakers, professionals, researchers, scholars, academicians, and more. - Publisher's Description
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Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education: Promoting Equity and Social Justice in Assessment
Ajjawi, Rola; Tai, Joanna; Boud, David; De St. Jorre, Trina Jorre (2022)
Bringing together international authors to examine how diversity and inclusion impact assessment in higher education, this book provides educators with the knowledge and understanding required to transform practices so that they are more equitable and inclusive of diverse learners.
Assessment drives learning and determines who succeeds. "Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education" is written to ensure that no student is unfairly or unnecessarily disadvantaged by the design or delivery of assessment. The chapters are structured according to three themes: 1) macro contexts of assessment for inclusion: societal and cultural perspectives; 2) meso contexts of assessment for inclusion: institutional and community perspectives; and 3) micro contexts of assessment for inclusion: educators, students and interpersonal perspectives. These three levels are used to identify new ways of mobilizing the sector towards assessment for inclusion in a systematic and scholarly way.
This book is essential reading for those in higher education who design and deliver assessment, as well as researchers and postgraduate students exploring assessment, equity and inclusive pedagogy. - Publisher's Description
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For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice
Bonnette-Bailey, Lakeyta; Belk, Adolphus G., Jr. (2022)
"For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice" documents and analyzes the ways in which Hip-Hop music, artists, scholars, and activists have discussed, promoted, and supported social justice challenges worldwide. Drawing from diverse approaches and methods, the contributors in this volume demonstrate that rap music can positively influence political behavior and fight to change social injustices, and then zoom in on artists whose work has accomplished these ends.
The volume explores topics including education and pedagogy; the Black Lives Matter movement; the politics of crime, punishment, and mass incarceration; electoral politics; gender and sexuality; and the global struggle for social justice. Ultimately, the book argues that hip hop is much more than a musical genre or cultural form: hip hop is a resistance mechanism. - Publisher's Description
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A Transition to Sustainable Housing: Progress and Prospects for a Low Carbon Housing Future
Moore, Trivess; Doyon, Andréanne (2023)
This open access book explores the environmental, social, and financial challenges of housing provision, and the urgent need for a sustainable housing transition. The authors explore how market failures have impacted the scaling up of sustainable housing and the various policy attempts to address this. Going beyond an environmental focus, the book explores a range of housing-related challenges including social justice and equity issues.
Sustainability transitions theory is presented as a framework to help facilitate a sustainable housing transition and a range of contemporary case studies are explored on issues including high performing housing, small housing, shared housing, neighbourhood-scale housing, circular housing, and innovative financing for housing. It is an important new resource that challenges policy makers, planners, housing construction industry stakeholders, and researchers to rethink what housing is, how we design and construct it, and how we can better integrate impacts on households to wider policy development. - Publisher's Description
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Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America
Matthew, Dayna Bowen (2022)
With the rise of the Movement for Black Lives and the feverish calls for Medicare for All, the public spotlight on racial inequality and access to healthcare has never been brighter. The rise of COVID-19 and its disproportionate effects on people of color has especially made clear how the color of one’s skin is directly related to the quality of care (or lack thereof) a person receives, and the disastrous health outcomes Americans suffer as a result of racism and an unjust healthcare system.
Timely and accessible, "Just Health" examines how deep structural racism embedded in the fabric of American society leads to worse health outcomes and lower life expectancy for people of color. By presenting evidence of discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system, Dayna Bowen Matthew shows how racial inequality pervades American society and the multitude of ways that this undermines the health of minority populations. The author provides a clear path forward for overcoming these massive barriers to health and ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to be healthy. She encourages health providers to take a leading role in the fight to dismantle the structural inequities their patients face. - Publisher's Description
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Spatial Justice & Planning: Reshaping Social Housing Communities in a Changing Society
Wang, Shaoxu; Gu, Kai (2023)
Despite the significance of urban justice in planning research and practice, how just societies and cities can be organised and achieved remains contested. Spatial justice provides an integrative and unifying theory concerning place, policies, people and their interplay, but ambiguities about its practical bases have undermined its application in planning. Through creating and substantiating a new conceptual framework comprising a morphological study, policy analysis and embodiment research, this book crystallizes the spatiality of (in)justice and (in)justice of spatiality in the context of social housing redevelopment.
Like many countries around the world, social housing in Aotearoa New Zealand is an area of contention, especially at the building and redevelopment stages. Protecting community character and human rights has been used by social housing tenants to resist changes, but the primary focus on material outcomes neglects broadening access toplanning processes. Compact, mixed tenure and sustainable (re)developments are regarded as the just built environment, as they enable equal accessibility to all. But there are contradictions between the planned spatiality of justice and individuals’ socialised sensory space. Reconciliation of morphological differentiations in built forms and social cohesion remains a challenging task.
This book focuses on the re-examination, integration and transferability of spatial justice. It makes a new contribution to urban justice theory by strengthening spatial justice and planning. Social housing areas are expected to adapt to changing social and economic demands while retaining much-valued established community character. This book also provides practical strategies for tackling complex planning problems in social housing redevelopment. - Publisher's Description
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The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World
Atkinson, Jennifer Wren; Ray, Sarah Jaquette (2024)
As feelings of eco-grief and climate anxiety grow, educators are grappling with how to help students learn about the violent systems causing climate change while simultaneously navigating the emotions this knowledge elicits. This book provides resources for developing emotional and existential tenacity in college classrooms so that students can stay engaged.
Featuring insights from scholars, educators, activists, artists, game designers, and others who are integrating emotional wisdom into climate justice education, this user-friendly guide offers a robust menu of interdisciplinary, plug-and-play teaching strategies, lesson plans, and activities to support student transformation and build resilience. The book also includes reflections from students who have taken classes that incorporate their emotions in the curricula. Galvanizing and practical, "The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators" will equip both educators and their students with tools for advancing climate justice. - Publisher's Description
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Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region
Hamouchene, Hamza; Sandwell, Katie (2023)
The Arab region is a focus of world politics, with authoritarian regimes, significant fossil fuel reserves and histories of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the site of potentially immense green energy resources.
The writers in this collection explore a region ripe for energy transition, but held back by resource-grabbing and (neo)colonial agendas. They show the importance of fighting for a just energy transition and climate justice – exposing policies and practices that protect global and local political elites, multinational corporations and military regimes.
Covering a wide range of countries from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to Egypt, Sudan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Palestine, this book challenges Eurocentrism and highlights instead a class-conscious approach to climate justice that is necessary for our survival. - Publisher's Description
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Queering Reproductive Justice: An Invitation
Bond-Theriault, Candace (2024)
The futures of reproductive justice and LGBTQIA+ liberation are intimately connected. Both movements were born out of the desire to love and build families of our choosing—when and how we decide. Both movements are rooted in broader social justice liberationist traditions that center the needs of Black and brown communities, the LGBTQIA+ community, gender-nonconforming folks, femmes, poor folks, parents, and all those who have been forced to the margins of society.
Taking as its starting point the idea that we all have the human right to bodily autonomy, to sexual health and pleasure, and to exercise these rights with dignity, "Queering Reproductive Justice" sets out to re-envision the seemingly disparate strands of the reproductive justice and LGBTQIA+ movements and offer an invitation to reimagine these movements as one integrated vision of freedom for the future. Candace Bond-Theriault asserts that for reproductive justice to be truly successful, we must acknowledge that members of the LGBTQIA+ community often face distinct, specific, and interlocking oppressions when it comes to these rights. Family formation, contraception needs, and appropriate support from healthcare services are still poorly understood aspects of the LGBTQIA+ experience, which often challenge mainstream notions of the nuclear family, and the primacy of blood-relatives.
Blending advocacy with a legal, rights-based framework, "Queering Reproductive Justice" offers a unified path for attaining reproductive justice for LGBTQIA+ people. Drawing on U.S. law and legislative history, healthcare policy, human rights, and interviews with academics and activists, Bond-Theriault presents incisive new recommendations for queer reproductive justice theory, organizing, and advocacy. This book offers readers an invitation to join the conversation, and ultimately to join the movement to that is unapologetically queering reproductive justice. - Publisher's Description
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Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health
Morrow, Marina; Malcoe, Lorraine (2022)
An exceptional showcase of interdisciplinary research, "Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health" presents various critical theories, methodologies, and methods for transforming mental health research and fostering socially-just mental health practices.
Marina Morrow and Lorraine Halinka Malcoe have assembled an array of international scholars, activists, and practitioners whose work exposes and disrupts the dominant neoliberal and individualist practices found in contemporary mental research, policy, and practice. The contributors employ a variety of methodologies including intersectional, decolonizing, indigenous, feminist, post-structural, transgender, queer, and critical realist approaches in order to interrogate the manifestation of power relations in mental health systems and its impact on people with mental distress. Additionally, the contributors enable the reader to reimagine systems and supports designed from the bottom up, in which the people most affected have decision-making authority over their formations. "Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health" demonstrates why and how theory matters for knowledge production, policy, and practice in mental health, and it creates new imaginings of decolonized and democratized mental health systems, of abundant community-centered supports, and of a world where human differences are affirmed. - Publisher's Description
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Young Black Changemakers & the Road to Racial Justice
Wray-Lake, Laura; Hope, Elan; Abrams, Laura (2024)
"Young Black Changemakers and the Road to Racial Justice" tells the stories of how Black youth become changemakers and speaks to researchers, educators, community organizations, and the public.
Through many kinds of action, Black youth are driven by a larger purpose to improve the world for Black people.
Black families and Black-centered organizations support and sustain Black youth's civic engagement. Investing in community-based organizations benefits young Black changemakers, and Black identity and community can offer belonging and joy. Black youth's stories call us to root out anti-Blackness in schools, on social media, and in public discourse. Black youth bring society hope for the future and point the way forward on the road to racial justice. - Publisher's Description
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Critical Wage Theory: Why Wage Justice Is Racial Justice
Garcia, Ruben (2024)
In this highly original and personal book, Ruben J. Garcia argues forcefully that we must center the minimum wage as a tool for fighting structural racism.
Employing the lessons of critical race theory to show how low minimum wages and under-enforcement of workplace laws have always been features of our racially stratified society, Garcia explains why we must follow the leadership of social movements by treating increases in minimum wage levels and enforcement as matters of racial justice. Offering solutions that would benefit all workers, especially the immigrants and people of color most often made victims of wage theft, "Critical Wage Theory" is essential reading for anyone who seeks a more just future for the working class. - Publisher's Description
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Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It
Okuwobi, Oneya Fennell (2025)
Diversity programs are under attack. Should those interested in racial justice fight to keep them, or might there be another way forward? "Who Pays for Diversity?" reveals the costs that employees of color pay under current programs by having their racial identities commodified to benefit white people and institutions. Oneya Fennell Okuwobi proposes fresh and thoughtful ways to reorient these initiatives, move beyond tokenism, and authentically center marginalized employees.
Drawing on accounts of employees from across the workplace spectrum, from corporations to churches to universities, "Who Pays for Diversity?" details how the optics of diversity programs undermine employees' competence while diminishing their well-being and workplace productivity. Okuwobi argues that diversity programs have been a costly detour on the path to racial justice, and getting back on track requires solutions that provide equity, dignity, and agency to all employees, instead of defending the status quo. - Publisher's Description
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Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price
Jack, Anthony Abraham (2024)
Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out what to do with the diversity they so fervently recruited. And disadvantaged students suffered. "Class Dismissed" exposes how woefully unprepared colleges were to support these students and shares their stories of how they were left to weather the storm alone and unprotected.
Drawing on the firsthand experiences of students from all walks of life at elite colleges, Anthony Abraham Jack reveals the hidden and unequal worlds students navigated before and during the pandemic closures and upon their return to campus. He shows how COVID-19 exacerbated the very inequalities that universities ignored or failed to address long before campus closures. Jack examines how students dealt with the disruptions caused by the pandemic, how they navigated social unrest, and how they grappled with problems of race both on campus and off.
A provocative and much-needed book, "Class Dismissed" paints an intimate and unflinchingly candid portrait of the challenges of undergraduate life for disadvantaged students even in elite schools that invest millions to diversify their student body. Moreover, Jack offers guidance on how to make students’ path to graduation less treacherous—guidance colleges would be wise to follow. - Publisher's Description
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Designing for Social Justice: Community-Engaged Approaches in Technical and Professional Communication
Jiang, Jialei; Tham, Jason Chew Kit (2025)
Exploring the intersection of design research and community engagement, this book highlights the ways in which design and design theories can be used to address social justice issues and promote positive change in communities.
Contributors illuminate the theoretical, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions of design-driven methods in community-engaged projects, exploring their potential to address critical social justice issues such as ethnic and racial justice, gender equality, disability justice, cultural diversity, equity, and environmental justice. Chapters examine various aspects of community-engaged practices, including the use of design theories to fuel social justice work in community partnerships, ethical issues surrounding the use of multimodal resources and new media technologies, and pedagogies for promoting social change. Addressing the opportunities and challenges of design and design methods in community engagement, this collection offers suggestions for promoting social justice through technical and professional communication activities and pedagogies.
Investigating the design of community-engaged projects from a critical standpoint, this book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of Technical and Professional Communication, Writing and Composition Studies, and Rhetoric. It will also be of interest to administrators, community partners, and professionals working in service-learning contexts. - Publisher's Description
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Stratification Economics & Disability Justice
Hollowell, Adam; Bentley-Edwards, Keisha (2025)
In "Stratification Economics and Disability Justice," Adam Hollowell and Keisha Bentley-Edwards explore how the work of Black disabled activists can and should inform economic analysis of inequality in the United States. Presenting evidence of disability-based inequality from economics, sociology, disability studies, and beyond, they make a case for the inclusion of ableism alongside racism and misogyny in stratification economics' analysis of intergroup disparity.
The book highlights the limitations of traditional economic analyses and elevates quantitative and qualitative intersectional research methods across four key areas in stratification economics: employment, health, wealth, and education. Chapters also recommend public policies to advance fair employment, healthcare access, and equal education for Black disabled people in the US Incisive and compelling, Stratification Economics and Disability Justice follows the lead of Black disabled activists pursuing intersectional advancement of economic justice. - Publisher's Description
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Because This Land is Who We Are: Indigenous Practices of Environmental Repossession
Richmond, Chantelle; Coombes, Brad; Louis, Renee Pualani (2024)
"Because This Land Is Who We Are" is an exploration of environmental repossession, told through a collaborative case study approach, and engaging with Indigenous communities in Canada (Anishinaabe), Hawai'i (Kanaka Maoli) and Aotearoa (Maori). The co-authors are all Indigenous scholars, community leaders and activists who are actively engaged in the movements underway in these locations, and able to describe the unique and common strategies of repossession practices taking place in each community.
This open access book celebrates Indigenous ways of knowing, relating to and honouring the land, and the authors' contributions emphasize the efforts taking place in their own Indigenous land. Through engagement with these varying cultural imperatives, the wider goal of "Because This Land Is Who We Are" is to broaden both theoretical and applied concepts of environmental repossession, and to empower any Indigenous community around the world which is struggling to assert its rights to land. - Publisher's Description
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When Misfortune Becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality
Yamin, Alicia Ely; Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko (2023)
"When Misfortune Becomes Injustice" surveys the progress and challenges in deploying human rights to advance health and social equality over recent decades, with a focus on women's health and rights. Yamin weaves together theory and firsthand experience in a compelling narrative of how evolving legal norms, empirical knowledge, and development paradigms have interacted in the realization of health rights.
"When Misfortune Becomes Injustice" reveals extraordinary progress in recognizing health-related claims as legal rights and understanding the policy implications of doing so over the last few decades. Yet Yamin challenges us to consider why these advances have failed to produce greater equality within and between nations, and how the human rights praxis must now urgently address threats to social and gender justice, in health and beyond. - Publisher's Description
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Participatory Artificial Intelligence in Public Social Services: From Bias to Fairness in Assessing Beneficiaries
Ahrweiler, Petra (2025)
This open access edited volume focuses on fairness issues concerning the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for social service provision in national welfare systems. With this, it touches upon important questions in the innovation agenda of countries across continents about the ethics, justice, quality, responsibility, accountability, and transparency to use AI for state functions. The volume shows that in many countries, AI, or at least data analytics methods, are already in place to support the assessment of beneficiaries for deciding on the value criteria to distinguish between legal /fraudulent, deserving/non-deserving, or needy/non-needy recipients.
The book provides a cross-cultural comparison of AI-based social assessment among national welfare systems of 9 countries across 4 continents: Spain, Estonia, Germany, Iran, India, Nigeria, Ukraine, China and USA. Based on participatory research results from multi-stakeholder inputs, especially those from vulnerable groups, the chapters in this volume show that value criteria for fairness and social justice are context-bound and vary across the globe. Furthermore, they are in constant flux, aligned to social change. Thus, the volume looks at pathways to developing culture-sensitive, responsive and participatory AI for social assessment in public service provision. The contributions are interdisciplinary and introduce perspectives from the fields of sociology, computational social science, computer science and public policy. This topical volume is of interest to a wide readership. - Publisher's Description
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