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
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 97 items for :
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The platform economy, powered by companies like Airbnb, Uber and Deliveroo, promised to revolutionize the way we work and live. But what are the actual benefits to our society and economy?
This book interrogates the ‘sharing economy’, showing how platform capitalism is not only shaped by business decisions, but is a result of struggles involving social movements, consumer politics and state interventions. It focuses in particular on the controversial tactics used by platform giants to avoid regulation.
Drawing on cutting-edge research and analysis, this book provides a critical overview of this important topic, and imagines the different possible futures of the platform economy.
How can we have meaningful public conversations in the algorithmic age?
This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of arguing all sides of a case, the book offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in democratic societies.
This is a timely and urgent book for anyone who cares about the future of democracy in the digital era.
Looking at how austerity has become embedded in institutional practices, this book offers new critical insights into the uneven geographies created by austerity.
Reflecting on the spatially and socially uneven impacts of austerity on individuals and families, Julie MacLeavy shows how the ‘new normal’ of post-welfare state governance will negatively condition life chances, even in better economic times. She considers the political, economic and social developments that have led us to the present moment and shows how the rhetoric of austerity has pushed social inequality and uneven development off the political agenda.
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.
Generation Z has grown up with a global financial crisis, a pandemic, the climate emergency, growing autocracy and wars. Survival, not just equity, is at stake.
As debate rages about how to ensure a fairer and sustainable society, this book challenges short-sighted economic policies, asking where we want to be in 20 years’ time and how we might get there.
Offering fresh, and sometimes counter intuitive, thinking on a range of economic issues including monetary policy, housing and university funding, it argues in favour of policy guardrails to protect the future, higher interest rates, and a burst of inflation. Robots and AI should be seen as positive replacements for population growth.
This is an original, readable and entertaining take on how we can change course before it is too late.
Love is fundamental to the flourishing of society and nature. However, the competition of the market economy has resulted in a fractured and traumatised modern world.
Revisiting philosophical developments and countercultures since the Enlightenment, this book offers a ‘loving critique’. It shows how learning to love better is the key to releasing ourselves from the alienating grip of the market.
The utopian template presented draws on archaeology, the witch trials, hippies, Hinduism, Buddhism, quantum mechanics, and psychedelics to describe how we can build a more loving society that can survive and flourish through the ecological, ethical, economic, and existential crises that we all now face.
It is impossible to view the news at present without hearing talk of crisis.
This timely book looks at how three major crises – the economy, pandemic and climate – are related to the crisis of work, making it more precarious, intense and unequal.
Providing an original and critical synthesis of recent trends in the field, expert scholars offer a programme for transcending the crisis of work.
Offering a timely contribution to understanding the important issues facing the world, this book presents an important new way of thinking about work in contemporary societies.
Moomins, beloved troll creatures of Moominvalley, have captivated hearts worldwide since the 1940s.
This book unveils the Moomin business management journey, from Tove Jansson’s creations to a global art-based brand and a growing ecosystem of companies. Emphasising generosity as a key management principle, it champions caring for people as vital for a thriving organisation.
Generosity, rooted in love, courage and belief in equality, shapes the Moomin ethos, underpinning not just the brand, but also strategic partnerships, engagement with technologies and the virtual world.
Offering rare insights from the Moomin inner circle, this management guide advocates sustainable practices. It unveils the keys to a business devoted to comforting people and fostering good, inspiring a blueprint for lasting success.
Amid the shift towards neoliberalism and the privatization of resources, this book provides a radical new lens to view property and property theory.
Boldly challenging the conventional theories of property law that have shaped our understanding for centuries, leading expert Paddy Ireland explores the rise and growth of new intangible property forms; the nature of ‘investment’ and of property-as-capital; and the empirical realities of modern property.
Raising broader questions about ownership in society, the author ignites a powerful conversation about the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, forcing us to confront that our current property system bears considerable responsibility for the current ‘polycrisis.
This groundbreaking work will set the agenda for a new era in property theory.
Drawing on affect theory and the key themes of attachment, disruption and belonging, this book examines the ways in which our placed surroundings – whether urban design, border management or organisations – shape and form experiences of gender.
Bringing together key debates across the fields of sociology, geography and organisation studies, the book sets out new theoretical ground to examine and consolidate shared experiences of what it means to be in or out of place.
Contributors explore how our gendered selves encounter place, and critically examine the way in which experiences of gender shape meanings and attachments, as well as how place produces gendered modes of identity, inclusion and belonging. Emphasizing the intertwined dynamics of affect and being affected, the book examines the gendering of place and the placing of gender.
