Lawyers play a central role in every political system in the United States. However, although lawyers are overrepresented in political office, women lawyers are underrepresented. We argue that, for men, attending law school and seeking political office aligns with broader career goals and gendered socialization patterns. We use an original survey of undergraduate social science majors to show that agentic career goals, or interest in influence, prestige, and wealth, are associated with attending law school. Data from a panel study of lawyers demonstrates that agentic goals predict political ambition. Women lawyers are less politically ambitious; agentic goals mediate this relationship.

Many traditional subsistence groups have been described as ‘egalitarian societies’. Definitions of ‘egalitarianism’, especially beyond anthropology, have often emphasised equality in resource access, prestige or rank, alongside generalised preferences for fairness and equality. However, there are no human societies where equality is genuinely realised in all areas of life. Here we demonstrate, empirically, that nominally egalitarian societies are often unequal across seven important interconnected domains: embodied capital, social capital, leadership, gender, age/knowledge, material capital/land tenure, and reproduction. We also highlight evidence that individuals in nominally egalitarian societies do not unfailingly adhere to strong equality preferences. We propose a new operational framework for understanding egalitarianism in traditional subsistence groups, focussing on individual motivations, rather than equality. We redefine “egalitarianism” societies as those where socio-ecological circumstances enable most individuals to successfully secure their own resource access, status, and autonomy. We show how this emphasis on self-interest — particularly status concerns, resource access and autonomy — dispels naive enlightenment notions of the ‘noble savage’, and clarifies the plural processes (demand-sharing, risk-pooling, status-levelling, prosocial reputation-building, consensus-based collective decision-making, and residential mobility) by which relative equality is maintained. We finish with suggestions for better operationalizing egalitarianism in future research.

This article is a case study of the Kasarani Stadium in Kenya as a heuristic through which to understand President Daniel Arap Moi’s political style and priorities during the first decade of his regime. Drawing primarily from national and international newspapers, the archives of national and international sporting organizations and associations, records of the Kenyan government and biographies of Moi, I explore how Moi gave political meaning to sport to advance his populist politics at home and project Kenya on(to) the international stage. At home, he used sports to define himself as a leader of the ordinary mwananchi (citizen), in touch with the experiences, challenges, and visions of the common Kenyan. Internationally, he used sports to chart Kenya’s foreign policy and fashion himself as an international political personality. The article concludes that the study of sports and sporting infrastructure offers a productive way to write social, political, and cultural histories of postcolonial Africa.

The authors in this special issue explore the ways in which chronotopes are often gendered and gender performance is chronotopic. Articles examine a diverse range of discourses—tradwives, Chinese beauty influencers, paleofantasy health trends, Kiowa War Mothers, and Swahili-language Islamic marital advice—and unpack the ways that notions of gender rely on particular constructions of the “here-and-now” in contrast to various “theres-and-thens.” As this special issue demonstrates, one is not just a gendered subject; one is a particular type of gendered subject, and those types are embedded in imagined times and places.

This essay argues that understanding Black philanthropic histories recasts Black people from being mere recipients to donors. This recasting demonstrates how and where Black people resisted racism, sought transformation of themselves and society, and took approaches that were not always liberatory and transformational in their giving. This essay fills a gap in the literature on the politics of philanthropy which, to date, has omitted a direct focus on Black philanthropists. By focusing on the philanthropic traditions of Black people, the myth of Black people being only recipients is dismantled. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I provide a definition of Black philanthropy. This definition reveals that Black philanthropy historically has been viewed as expansive and shaped by the conditions Black people faced. Second, I examine select examples of Black philanthropy through the framework offered by the expansive definition. Third, I review current Black philanthropists and offer pathways for a future research agenda.

This study examines the enablers of progress towards net-zero emissions in emerging economies, focusing on the roles of renewable energy integration and energy policy support. Using structural equation modelling on survey data from 935 diverse respondents across India, the study finds that both renewable energy integration and energy policy support have significant positive impacts on net-zero progress. The analysis reveals two key mediating pathways: first, technology adoption and innovation mediate between renewable energy integration and net-zero progress; second, community awareness and participation mediate between energy policy support and net-zero progress. Economic and infrastructure constraints moderate the relationship between energy policy support and net-zero progress. Importance-performance map analysis indicates that while renewable energy, policy support and economic factors are highly important, their effectiveness may be limited by infrastructural and governance challenges. The findings suggest that policymakers should adopt a holistic approach that simultaneously addresses technological, social, economic and institutional dimensions. This study contributes to the net-zero transition literature by developing and validating an integrated model that incorporates technical, social, policy and institutional aspects. Limitations include the cross-sectional nature and single-country focus, suggesting opportunities for future longitudinal and cross-country studies.

States were again unable to reach consensus on the text of a plastics treaty during negotiations in Geneva in 2025. The majority of states stood firm against petrochemical interests and demanded a “high-ambition” treaty with binding global obligations across the full life cycle of plastics. What these states specifically support, however, varies considerably, as does the strength of their commitment. The case of South Korea offers insights into how changes in political leadership, industry lobbying, shifting narratives and competing foreign policy goals can shape the nature of ambition. Early in the negotiations, South Korea called for ambitious measures and was chosen to host the final round of talks set for late 2024. Yet, this did not translate into meaningful action or strong advocacy in later stages. Some South Korean policymakers may have been sincerely committed to global controls. South Korea’s early signaling of high ambition, however, was primarily motivated by strategic calculations to influence the treaty and become a “global pivotal state.” Its support for ambition, moreover, grew increasingly ambiguous as leadership changed and as states describing themselves as “ambitious” pushed for binding controls on plastics production and supply. South Korea’s foreign policy strategy, we further argue, failed to enhance the country’s diplomatic standing, as its ambiguous ambition came to light, and as industry recalcitrance, bureaucratic infighting and political turmoil undermined its capacity for effective leadership.