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 of over 1500 titles.
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
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 28 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Sociology of Health and Illness x
- Access: All content x
From health tracking to diet apps to biohacking, technology is changing how we relate to our material, embodied selves.
Drawing from a range of disciplines and case studies, this volume looks at what makes these health and genetic technologies unique and explores the representation, communication and internalization of health knowledge.
Showcasing how power and inequality are reflected and reproduced by these technologies, discourses and practices, this book will be a go-to resource for scholars in science and technology studies as well as those who study the intersection of race, gender, socio-economic status, sexuality and health.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
What does it mean to love a healthcare system?
It is often claimed that the UK population is unusually attached to its National Health Service and the last decade has seen increasingly visible displays of gratitude and love. While social surveys of public attitudes measure how much Britain loves the NHS, this book mobilises new empirical research to ask how Britain loves its NHS.
The answer delves into a series of public practices – such as campaigning, donating and volunteering within NHS organisations – and investigates how attitudes to the NHS shape patient experience of healthcare. Stewart argues that these should be understood as practices of care for, and contestation about the future of, the healthcare system.
This book offers a timely critique of both the potential, and the dysfunctions, of Britain’s complex love affair with the NHS.
This is a detailed analysis of how understandings of health management past, present and future has transformed in the digital age.
Since the mid-20th century, we have witnessed ‘healthy’ lifestyles being pushed as part of health promotion strategies, both via the state, and through health tracking tools, and narratives of wellness online. This marks a seismic shift from a public welfare state responsibility for health towards individualised practices of digital self-care. Today health has become representative of ‘lifestyle corrections’ which is performed on social media.
Putting the spotlight on neoliberalism and digital technology as pervasive tools that dictate wellness as a moral obligation, Rachael Kent critically analyses how users navigate relationships between self-tracking technologies, social media, and everyday health management.
This book addresses the prejudices that emerged out of the collision of two pandemics: COVID-19 and racism.
Offering a snapshot of experiences through counter story-telling and micro narratives, this collection assesses the racialised responses to the pandemic and investigates acts of discrimination that have occurred within social, political and historical contexts.
Capturing the divisive discourses which have dominated this contemporary moment, this is a unique and creative resource that shows how structural racism continues to operate insidiously, offering invaluable insights for policy, practicend critical race and ethnic studies.
ePUB and ePDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book examines how ethnicity shaped experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Britain.
Drawing from the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS), the book compares the experiences of ethnic and religious minority groups and White British people in work and finances, housing and communities, health and wellbeing, policing and politics, racism and discrimination in the UK. Using unrivalled data in terms of population and topic coverage and complete with bespoke graphics, contributors present new evidence of ethnic inequalities and racism, opening them up to debate as crucial social concerns.
Written by leading international experts in the field, this is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary ethnic inequalities and racism, from academics and policy makers to voluntary and community sector organisations.
Health and socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been exacerbated by central government-imposed austerity budgeting by local authorities and the health service.
This book, part of the Social Determinants of Health series, extends the ideas developed in the previous volumes by reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on local and national governance from the perspectives of public health, social care and economic development.
Drawing on case studies from across the UK and beyond, it explores the pandemic and other ‘wicked’ issues including climate change, homelessness, unemployment and domestic abuse through the lens of relationalism, and proposes necessary system changes.
Following the development of anti-retroviral therapies (ARVs), many people affected by HIV in the 1980s and 1990s have now been living with the condition for decades.
Drawing on perspectives from leading scholars in Bangladesh, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ukraine, the UK and the US, as well as research from India and Kenya, this book explores the experiences of sex and sexuality in individuals and groups living with HIV in later life (50+). Contributions consider the impacts of stigma, barriers to intimacy, physiological sequelae, long-term care, undetectability, pleasure and biomedical prevention (TasP and PrEP).
With increasing global availability of ARVs and ageing populations, this book offers essential future directions, practical applications and implications for both policy and research.
Drawing from an activist research project spanning Loja, Santo Domingo, New York, New Jersey, and Barcelona, this book offers a feminist intersectional analysis of the impact of migration on health and well-being.
It assesses how social inequalities and migration and health policies, in Ecuador and destination countries, shape the experiences of migrants. The author also explores how individual and collective action challenges health, geopolitical, gender, sexual, ethnoracial, and economic disparities, and empowers communities.
This is a thorough analysis of interpersonal, institutional, and structural mechanisms of marginalization and resistance. It will inform policy and research for better responses to migration’s negative effects on health, and progress towards greater equality and social justice.
This pioneering book demonstrates the disproportionate impact of state responses to COVID-19 on racially marginalized communities.
Written by women and queers of colour academics and activists, the book analyses pandemic lockdowns, border controls, vaccine trials, income support and access to healthcare across eight countries, in North America, Asia, Australasia and Europe, to reveal the inequities within, and between countries.
Putting intersectionality and economic justice at the heart of their frameworks, the authors call for collective action to end the pandemic and transform global inequities.
Contributing to debates around the effects of COVID-19, as well as racial capitalism and neoliberal globalization at large, this research is invaluable in informing future policy
How can sociology explain the emergence of mental disorders in societies or individuals?
This authoritative book makes a case for the renewal of the sociology of mental illness, proposing a reorganisation of this field around four areas: social stratification, stress, labelling, and culture. Drawing on case studies from a range of global contexts, the book argues that current research focuses on identifying ‘social factors’, leaving the question of causality to psychiatry, while significant critical perspectives remain untapped.
The result is an unprecedented resource that maps the current state of sociology of mental health, providing an invigorating manifesto for its future.
