Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the 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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Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Following on from The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand and A Realist Philosophy of Economics, this new book drawn from Karl Mittermaier’s writings examines the intricate relationship between economic theory and real-world economic experiences.
Despite the centrality of subjectivism in both philosophy and economics, these fields have often overlooked each other’s insights. Mittermaier challenges this disconnect, advocating for a shift from deterministic models to a more reflective approach in economics. He examines the historical, methodological and philosophical dimensions of economic theory, highlighting its struggle to connect economic theory to empirical data and individuals’ lived experiences.
Originally penned between 1979 and 1982 and now published posthumously, this work remains a crucial contribution to contemporary economic discussions.
As the cost of living rises, British households face unprecedented levels of debt. But many commentators characterise those who stash away envelopes, leave telephones ringing, or hide from debt collectors as irresponsible.
The first full-length ethnography of debt problems in Britain, this book uses long-term fieldwork on a southern English housing estate to give a sensitive retelling of the everyday lives of indebted people.
It argues that the inequalities of debt go beyond economic questions to include the way state coercion hinders people’s efforts to define what they truly value. Indeed, from finance to housing and even parenthood, the potential for dispossession has become a pervasive method of power that strikes at the heart of personal life.
This book examines ‘land grabbing’ – its colonial roots and the fraught relationship between capital and nature amidst the current ecological crisis.
Through ethnographic and archival research, Maura Benegiamo investigates an Italian company’s acquisition of 20,000 hectares in Senegal’s River Delta for agrofuel production and delves into the struggles of pastoral communities affected by the project. Through this landmark case, the book shows how European energy and global food security policies are reshaping rural spaces, expanding agrarian extractivism in sub-Saharan Africa.
By shedding light on how contemporary capital–nature relationships perpetuate socio-ecological crises and colonial models, the book highlights the enduring forms of opposition to these processes. At the heart of these struggles lies a crucial question: how can we understand today’s crises while reclaiming alternative ways of living, producing, and inhabiting the land?
Pension policy in the UK and US is designed on the assumption that people can make informed financial decisions, can consistently invest in pensions and manage diverse portfolios. Deviating from this is often deemed irresponsible and irrational. However, this assumption overlooks uncontrollable factors like caring duties, employment breaks or income limitations. Even when individuals act as expected, unpredictable market shifts can hinder long-term planning.
This book redefines deviations to “rational behaviour” as logical responses to a dysfunctional system. Challenging existing theoretical discussions and policy approaches, it proposes a fresh perspective on rationality when it comes to financial policy and practices.
In this important book, Gallas asks what strikes in non-industrial sectors mean for class formation, a critical question which has been largely unaddressed by the current literature on global labour unrest.
A mapping of strikes around the world and case studies from Germany, Britain and Spain cast new light on class relations, struggles around waged and unwaged work and labour movements in contemporary capitalism to brings class theory back to labour studies.
This is a valuable resource for academics and students of employment relations, sociology and politics.
In this important book, Gallas asks what strikes in non-industrial sectors mean for class formation, a critical question which has been largely unaddressed by the current literature on global labour unrest.
A mapping of strikes around the world and case studies from Germany, Britain and Spain cast new light on class relations, struggles around waged and unwaged work and labour movements in contemporary capitalism to brings class theory back to labour studies.
This is a valuable resource for academics and students of employment relations, sociology and politics.
This second volume focuses on strike research from a global angle and a Western European angle.
“Corporate purpose” has become a battleground for stakeholders’ competing desires. Some argue that corporations must simply generate profit; others suggest that we must make them create social change.
Leading organization studies scholar Timothy Kuhn argues that this “either-or” thinking dramatically oversimplifies matters: today’s corporations must be many things, all at once.
Kuhn offers a bold new Communicative Theory of the Firm to highlight the authority that creates corporations’ identities and activities. The theory provides a roadmap for navigating that battleground of competing desires to produce more responsive corporations.
Drawing on communicative and new materialist theorizing, along with three insightful case studies, this book thoroughly redefines our understandings of what corporations are “for.”
Recent decades have witnessed the creation of new types of property systems, ranging from data ownership to national control over genetic resources. This trend has significant implications for wealth distribution and our understanding of who can own what.
This book explores the idea of ownership in the realm of plant breeding, revealing how plants have been legally and materially transformed into property. It highlights the controversial aspects of turning seeds, plants and genes into property and how this endangers the viability of the seed industry.
Examining ownership not simply as a legal concept, but as a bundle of laws, practices and technologies, this is a valuable contribution that will interest scholars of intellectual property studies, the anthropology of markets, science and technology studies and related fields.
EPDF and EPUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Money is central to capitalism and to our many sustainability crises. Could we remake money so as to advance sustainable economies and fair societies? A growing number of scholars, politicians, and activists think we can, and they are doing it from the bottom up.
This book examines how grassroots groups, municipalities and radical cryptoentrepreneurs are remaking money by designing and organising complementary currencies. It argues that in their novel ideas and governance practices lie the key for building green and inclusive economies.
Engaging imaginatively with the future of money, this accessible book will appeal to anyone interested in constructing a more sustainable and just world.
Capitalism only celebrates success, and it can be difficult to know what to do when confronted with failure.
This book explores what happens when people go broke and what the experience of bankruptcy and insolvency is like from a qualitative perspective. It shows, contrary to the expectations of policy makers, that debt relief is not transactional. Rather, it is moral, theological, social and cultural.
The book demonstrates that debt encompasses fairness, trust, faith, sin, guilt, revelation and confession and that taking these factors seriously is vital to successfully navigating the world of the over-indebted.
