Critical social marketing: towards emancipation?

In this editorial, critical review, and research agenda for this special section of the Journal of Marketing Management on ‘Critical Social Marketing: Towards Emancipation’, we argue that the need for critically informed approaches to pro-social behaviour and social change is ever more important. Now more than ever the world faces many ‘wicked problems’ – social problems that are complicated, multi-faceted, intractable, and can be difficult or even impossible to solve due to their complexity, incomplete knowledge about their causes and solutions, contradictory and changing perspectives, flux over time, and difficulties in changing the social systems and relations that underpin them (Rittel & Webber, 1973). The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues to affect millions of lives, and climate disaster is becoming increasingly evident across the globe.