It is an honor to write this editorial introduction on May 5, 2018, the 200th birthday of one of the founders of modern sociology, Karl Marx. Inscribed on Marx’s grave marker, his Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach remains particularly apt as a point of departure for this volume. Indeed, the quote expresses the positive value of the engaged intellect coupled with the inspiration to share academic knowledge to empower those challenging oppression, giving voice to social rights, and resisting exploitation.

Like our forerunner Marx, we the editors of this volume are engaged not only in the academic pursuit of sociological knowledge, but also in the pursuit of social justice in the real world. Nearly all social scientists have studied Marx’s ideas as a rite of passage in graduate studies; however, it seems that Marxist sociology is not currently among the dominant paradigms in western social sciences. Nonetheless, many critical and progressive scholars in a variety of social science fields continue to value Marx for his scholarship, and in particular for the sentiment expressed in the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach.

Marx reminds us that ideas and knowledge are rather impotent unless they are practically applied to improve the material conditions of social life. Thus, we practice a type of sociology which seeks to broaden discourse beyond the ivory tower, and to disseminate sociological knowledge as accessibly and widely as possible, with the intention that such efforts will increase the likelihood that reliable knowledge will be applied in the world of policy.

This project traces its inspiration back the Presidential Address delivered in 2000 at the annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), in which Professor Robert Perrucci called upon the Society to redouble its efforts to engage in publicly relevant social science. Dr. Perrucci’s speech took place at the 50th Annual Meeting of the SSSP, marking the end of the first half-century of the SSSP, and setting its agenda as it moved into the 21st century.