Research

 

You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.

Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
 

Books: Research

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Navigating Datafication and Family Life in Digital Societies
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In today's digital societies, parenting is shaped by algorithms daily - in search engines, social media, kids' entertainment, the news and more. But how much are parents aware of the algorithms shaping their parenting and daily lives? How can they prepare for children’s futures in a world dominated by data, algorithms, automation and AI?

This groundbreaking study of 30 English families sheds light on parents’ hopes and fears, their experiences with algorithms in searching, sharing and consuming news and information, and their awareness and knowledge of algorithms at large.

Looking beyond tech skills and media panics, this book is an essential read for social scientists, policy-makers and general readers seeking to understand parenting in datafied societies.

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Cultures of Doing Society

How do young people participate in democratic societies? This book introduces the concept of ‘doing society’ as a new theory of political action. Focused on Finnish youth, it innovatively blends cutting-edge empirical research with agenda-setting theoretical development. Redefining political action, the authors expand beyond traditional public-sphere, scaling from formal to informal and unconventional modes of engaging.

The book captures diverse engagement from memes to social movements, from participatory budgeting to street parties and from sleek politicians to detached people in the margins. In doing so, it provides a holistic view of the ways in which young people participate (or do not participate) in society, and their role in cultural change.

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Realizing Children’s Rights in Ghana’s Pluralistic Society

Focusing on Ghana, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from European colonial rule and the first in the world to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this book explores how dominant children’s rights principles interact with the lived realities of a range of children’s lives.

The author considers the changeability and inconsistencies of childhoods within this context and the factors that underpin these varied intersections, including cultural norms, British colonial legacy, the influence of Christianity, urbanization, and social, economic and political transformations.

Challenging one-dimensional portrayals of childhoods in the Global South, the author highlights the need for more holistic approaches to the study of children’s lives and children’s rights realization in Southern contexts.

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The Right to Be Heard
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ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Recent legislative changes in England and Wales have eroded children’s ability to exercise their article 12 UNCRC rights to information, consultation and representation when parents separate. However, children’s voices may be heard through child-inclusive mediation (CIM).

Considered from a children’s rights perspective, this book provides a critical socio-legal account of CIM practice. It draws on in-depth interviews with relationship professionals, mediators, parents and children, to consider the experiences, risks and benefits of CIM. It investigates obstacles to greater uptake of CIM and its role in improving children’s wellbeing and agency.

Exploring the culture and practice changes necessary for a more routine application of CIM, the book demonstrates how reconceptualising CIM through a children’s rights framework could help to address barriers and improve outcomes for children.

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Youth and Social Change in Spain
Author:

We usually speak of crisis in numbers: decline in purchasing power, rise in unemployment rates or decreasing levels of life satisfaction. But what do people feel when their supposed securities for their futures crumble?

The stories of the young adults after the 2008 economic crisis in Spain provide us with answers. This book shows how their loss of future prospects led to feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, frustration and resentment, and how they dealt with these emotions.

Combining the sociology of emotions with Bourdieu's practice theory, Emotions in Crisis analyses the impact of structural changes in society on individual and collective emotions. It shows that adapting to such changes involves 'emotion work' and highlights the different forms this work can take.

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Changing Relationships, Personal Life and Inequality
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This book offers an innovative perspective on Muslim family life in British society. Drawing on recent debates, the book considers how theories of family have overlooked Muslim families and offers a comprehensive framework to address this oversight.

Informed by decolonising approaches, the book sheds light on the impact of narrow and stigmatising perspectives that shape our understanding of Muslim families. The author pays close attention to the increasing diversity of family forms and to the role of gender and generation, whilst also considering race, ethnicity and class. In doing so, she demonstrates how a better understanding of Muslim family life can inform policies to address inequalities, and advocates for placing Muslim families at the heart of policy solutions.

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We Do!
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This book traces the history of nurseries in the UK, the types and levels of provision, the long-standing splits between welfare care and public education, and community-based attempts to improve the situation. It charts the shifts in public attitudes towards these various forms of childcare and argues that the privatization of childcare, as for many other privatized services, has been a profound mistake that has entrenched inequality and resulted in poor-quality, yet very costly, services for children.

The book recognizes the considerable difficulties in overhauling the way in which nursery education and care are delivered and paid for, but makes practical suggestions about the ways forward. These include more support for flexible state nursery education, a ban on the offshore privatized nursery companies that increasingly dominate nursery ownership, a substantial overhaul of Ofsted’s remit, and involvement of the many unqualified care workers at the fringes of nursery provision.

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Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

The concept of ‘generations’ has become a widely discussed area, with recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic revealing our dependence on intergenerational relationships both within and beyond the family. However, the concept can often be misunderstood, which can fuel divisions between age groups rather than generating solutions.

This collection introduces and explores the growing field of generational studies, providing a comprehensive overview of its strengths and limitations. With contributions from academics across a range of disciplines, the book showcases the concept’s interdisciplinary potential by applying a generational lens to fields including sociology, literature, history, psychology, media studies and politics.

Offering fresh perspectives, this original collection is a valuable addition to the field, opening new avenues for generational thinking.

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New Perspectives on Migration and Diversity
Author:

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

It is increasingly recognised that ethnonational frameworks are inadequate when examining the complexity of social life in contexts of migration and diversity.

This book draws on ethnographic research in two UK secondary schools, considering the shifting roles of migration status, language, ethnicity, religion and precarity in young people’s peer relationships. The book challenges culturalist understandings of social cohesion, highlighting the divisive impacts of neoliberalism, from pervasive temporariness and domestic abuse to technologization and neighbourhood violence.

Using Martin Buber’s relational model, the book explores the interplay of ‘I-It’ boundary-making with reciprocal ‘I-Thou’ encounters, pointing to the creative power of these encounters to subvert, reimagine, and even transform social difference. The author provides a pragmatic and ultimately hopeful view of the dynamics of diversity in everyday life, offering valuable insights for social policy and practice.

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Narratives of Care Experienced Lives

Understanding what ‘family’ means – and how best to support families – depends on challenging politicised assumptions that frame ‘ordinary’ families in comparison to an imagined problematic ‘other’.

Learning from the perspectives of people who were in care in childhood, this innovative book helps redefine the concept of family. Linking two longitudinal studies involving young adults in England, it reveals important new insights into the diverse and dynamic complexity of family lives, identities and practices in time – through childhood and beyond.

Paving the way for future policy and practice, this book makes an important contribution to the theorisation of family in the 21st century.

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