Models of how the European Neolithic transitioned to the Copper or Bronze Age have often emphasised changes in burial practices, and these changes have traditionally been seen as simple, decisive shifts. In peninsular Italy, this transition is often described in terms of a straightforward shift from single burial to multiple burial in collective tombs. This paper questions that view, presenting a systematic statistical analysis of all known Neolithic (6000–3800 BCE) burials from across southern Italy. Tracking changes in aspects of funerary practices across these millennia from over 100 sites and almost 700 individuals, we show that neither abrupt stadial change nor a model of continuous gradual change describes the evidence well. Instead, all periods of the Neolithic featured multiple depositional practices, many of which continued throughout the entire timespan; what changed was their relative frequencies and the ways they were combined. This suggests, in turn, that change originated mostly in a process of local bricolage, not from large or external causal factors.

How do state builders reshape society? While existing work shows they often rely on violence, education, elite co-optation, and institution building, this article underscores the importance of symbolic programs. When intensely enforced, symbolic programs reshape social orders by forging new social bonds and socializing individuals into state builders’ governing principles. I test this argument using subnational variation in the enforcement of the French Republican calendar—a symbolic program that politicized time, labor, and rest, rightfully regulated by the state, rather than sacred duties governed by the Catholic Church—and its association with labor conflicts. In departments where the calendar was more strongly enforced, it fostered political understandings of labor and rest, reduced coordination costs, and increased mobilization potential. Using original data and a difference-in-differences design, I find that more intense enforcement of the calendar is associated with a higher likelihood of labor conflict onset, demonstrating the long-term social effects of symbolic state-building programs.

As attested archaeologically, residential burial is the placement of the deceased within or in close proximity to houses and residential areas, and it occurs worldwide. What explains residential burial remains a puzzle. In this article, the frequency of residential burials in archaeological and ethnographic contexts are compared to assess whether residential permanence impacted the practice in different cultural contexts. We compiled two new datasets focused on residential burial practices. The first dataset includes 60 ethnographically documented cultures that were drawn from the Probability Sample Files in the eHRAF World Cultures database, and the second comprises 49 cases from the Simple Random Sample (SRS) in the eHRAF Archaeology database. Residential burial is significantly more common in the archaeological than in the ethnographic datasets. These findings have important implications for using ethnographic analogy to interpret mortuary practices archaeologically. Whereas the ethnographic descriptions tend to highlight changes in burial practice, often linked with the spread of monotheistic religions and state dispossession, it is suggested that settlements were much more often places where both the living and the dead coexisted—and felt at home—in the deep past.

This article explores strategic litigation – a legal tool used to drive social, legal or political change beyond individual cases – and whether it can create change in society. Recent political pushback against courts underscores the growing controversy around this practice. Strategic litigation has been widely studied globally, with authors deploying different conceptualisations and methods. Using a narrative literature review, the article answers the question under what conditions and through what mechanisms strategic litigation has impact. To this end, the article maps key trends, including the globalisation of research, a shift from focusing on courts to social movements, and methodological shortcomings like limited empirical evidence. It also highlights recurring themes, such as scepticism about strategic litigation’s effectiveness, risks of backlash and the conditions needed for success, e.g., public support, a strong legal framework, and sufficient resources. The article synthesises existing research and suggests directions for future studies on strategic litigation as a catalyst for societal transformation.

Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are groups of citizens operating as a community in order to provide public goods or services. CBIs can contribute to social change to tackle persistent challenges, but this depends on their encounters with the state. We argue that CBI scholarship lacks the conceptual tools to capture the full scope of these encounters. We position CBIs beyond a public service context as part of a democratic and contested public sphere. From this, we propose a relational understanding of state–CBI encounters as dynamically made up of diverse relationalities, drawing on state–society scholarship from multiple disciplines. Through an integrative literature review, we develop a two-step heuristic that distinguishes between functional, transformational, confrontational, and cohabitative encounters and identifies possibilities for shifts in the encounter. The heuristic aids both scholars and practitioners in understanding state–CBI encounters in relation to change and in navigating encounters in the pursuit of public goals. We conclude with a research agenda for further understanding state–CBI encounters.

In today’s Latin America, governments implementing public policies for development and against poverty and inequality meet with social movements that engage in practices for social change, poverty reduction, and empowering. In this context, we analyze the interplay between both processes, describing its conflicts in three specific dimensions: the material, the democratic, and the environmental. Social movements are permanently contesting and challenging public policy when they autonomously appropriate public policy resources; yet, governments respond with criminalization and cooptation strategies. In a setting where social conflict takes place in response to existing poverty and inequality levels, movements challenge development and poverty reduction projects of an ‘assistentialist’ and extractivist nature, and propose an integral understanding of development and the emergence of new relationships among individuals, society, and the environment.

We argue that local languages, coupled with modern pedagogy and technology, are necessary, though not sufficient, ingredients for universal access to quality education. Our case study is Haiti, where French is the primary language of school instruction, though it is spoken by only a small percentage of the population, while Haitian Creole (aka ‘Kreyòl’), the language fluently spoken by all Haitians in Haiti, is mostly excluded from the formal discourse and written documents that create and transmit knowledge (and power) in schools, courts, state offices, and so forth. We first describe the historical, political, linguistic, and sociocultural backgrounds to such impediments to quality education in Haiti. Then we present and analyze data that begin to answer these two questions: (i) What does change look like in complex postcolonial contexts, especially change in educators’ attitudes toward the use of stigmatized languages (such as Kreyòl) in formal education? (ii) How can local languages such as Kreyòl serve to enhance the promotion and dissemination of modern pedagogy and technology for STEM education, and vice versa—namely, how can STEM education, in turn, serve to enhance the promotion of stigmatized languages such as Kreyòl?

Older adults have long been considered critical actors in developing and implementing age-friendly community (AFC) initiatives. However, there has been limited empirical research on the ways they advance AFC implementation, especially in terms of their participation through AFC leadership roles (e.g. committee chairs, work group members). This study addresses this critical gap by exploring the functions that older adults exhibit in AFC implementation in the United States – namely, the underlying purposes and processes operating through their implementation actions. As one of the few studies exploring AFC implementation processes from the direct perspectives of older adults, this study conducted qualitative interviews with 23 older adult leaders of AFC initiatives across four states. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we identified two overarching thematic categories regarding the functions of their efforts towards AFC change. First, older adults advance AFC programme processes by guiding (e.g. determining priority areas) and carrying out (e.g. handling day-to-day programme logistics) the work. Second, older adults strengthen network capacity through connecting people and organizations to advance AFC implementation and spreading ageing-inclusive mindsets and practices among community actors. The findings support the view of older adults’ participation in AFC implementation as a multidimensional phenomenon wherein they employ multiple co-occurring functions that fluctuate dynamically across organizational roles, activities and tenure with the initiative. This study highlights the importance of continued research on the people enacting age-friendly efforts in their communities to better understand the ways that AFC efforts can catalyze local leaders – including older adults themselves – towards impact on ageing.

With an increasing need for social innovations that rely on cross-sector partnerships, traditional ways of managing and leading human service nonprofits are undergoing rapid changes. Utilizing a qualitative, grounded theory approach, with data collected from a sample of nonprofit leaders of human service organizations in Pennsylvania, USA (n = 31), the research findings identify clear characteristics of leadership that support undertaking social innovations. Respondents characterized leadership orientation and responsibilities in relation to the demands of blending across sectors and roles within organizations. Findings from this study provide key insights into areas of leadership development that may lead to effective partnerships and stakeholder engagement to better support social innovations.

This article introduces “CALL4,” a bilingual (Japanese and English) website created in 2019 to bring attention to public interest cases litigated in Japan’s courts. The open-access CALL4 website (https://www.call4.jp/) is designed to both stimulate public interest and raise money for litigation costs through crowdfunding. It presently covers more than 80 cases. CALL4 has become a standard reference for news reporters, lawyers, and others concerned with public interest cases. The site has also raised significant funding. This article profiles the founders and their strategies for reaching a broad audience to support public interest cases, including a significant reliance on student volunteers.