To this end, we acknowledge the extant criticisms of social marketing – for being unethical (Laczniak & Michie, Citation1979), lacking reflexivity (Tadajewski & Brownlie, Citation2008), being power agnostic (Brace-Govan, Citation2015), being neoliberally oriented (Moor, Citation2011), being culturally insensitive and imperialist (Pfeiffer, Citation2004), being pseudo-participatory (Tadajewski et al., Citation2014) and for responsibilising the individual (Crawshaw, Citation2012). Accordingly, we recognise that social marketing needs the resources and repertoires available to appropriately respond to the current challenges and to critique. We argue that key pillars to this response are the adoption of a more critical research agenda (Gordon, Citation2018), a broader theoretical base, and a commitment to careful reflexivity, each of which are commitments of CSM. This special section of the Journal of Marketing Management on ‘Critical Social Marketing: Towards Emancipation’ provides the space to grapple with extant and emergent critique within the contextual challenges of our time, and to collectively contribute to the development of CSM and its future agenda.