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 32 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Political Participation and Behaviour x
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Auroville in Tamil Nadu, South India, is an internationally recognised endeavour in prefiguring an alternative society: the largest, most diverse, dynamic and enduring of intentional communities worldwide.
This book is a critical and insightful analysis of the utopian practice of this unique spiritual township, by a native scholar. The author explores how Auroville’s founding spiritual and societal ideals are engaged in its communal political and economic organisation, as well as various cultural practices and what enables and sustains this prefiguratively utopian practice.
This in-depth, autoethnographic case-study is an important resource for understanding prefigurative and utopian experiments – their challenges, potentialities, and significance for the advancement of human society.
Democracy should enable citizens to play an informed role in determining how power is exercised for their common wellbeing, but this only works if people have the understanding, skills and confidence to engage effectively in public affairs. Otherwise, any voting system can be subverted to serve the interests of propagandists and demagogues.
This book brings together leading experts on learning for democracy to explore why and how the gap in civic competence should be bridged.
Drawing on research findings and case examples from the UK, the US and elsewhere, it will set out why change is necessary, what could be taught differently to ensure effective political engagement, and how a lasting impact in improving citizens’ learning for democratic participation can be made.
Exploring the digital frontiers of feminist international relations, this book investigates how gender can be mainstreamed into discourse about technology and security.
With a focus on big data, communications technology, social media, cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, the book explores the ways in which technology presents sites for gender-based violence. Crucially, it examines potential avenues for resistance at these sites, especially regarding the actions of major tech companies, surveillance by repressive governments and attempts to use the Global South as a laboratory for new interventions.
The book draws valuable insights which will be essential to researchers in International Relations, Security Studies and Feminist Security Studies.
This ground-breaking collection interrogates protest camps as sites of gendered politics and feminist activism.
Drawing on case studies that range from Cold War women-only peace camps to more recent mixed-gender examples from around the world, diverse contributors reflect on the recurrence of gendered, racialised and heteronormative structures in protest camps, and their potency and politics as feminist spaces.
While developing an intersectional analysis of the possibilities and limitations of protest camps, this book also tells new and inspiring stories of feminist organising and agency. It will appeal to feminist theorists and activists, as well as to social movement scholars.
Young people are often at the forefront of democratic activism, whether self-organised or supported by youth workers and community development professionals. Focusing on youth activism for greater equality, liberty and mutual care – radical democracy – this timely collection explores the movement’s impacts on community organisations and workers. Essays from the Global North and Global South cover the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental activism and the struggles of refugees.
At a time of huge global challenges, youth participation is a dynamic lens through which all community development scholars and participants can rethink their approaches.
The gloomy prospect of climate change and ecosystems’ collapse calls for an urgent rethinking of all aspects of our life: how we work, produce, eat, spend, take care of each other, relate to nature, and organize our societies.
Prefigurative initiatives are attracting a growing amount of attention from scholars and activists precisely because they are envisioning alternative futures by embodying radically different ways of living in the present.
Thanks to the contribution of leading researchers, ‘The Future is Now’ represents the go-to book for anyone seeking a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and thought-provoking introduction to the thriving field of prefigurative politics.
Felix Anderl’s book is a stimulating analysis of the decline of the social movement against the World Bank and the rise of a new form of transnational rule.
Reflecting on the transnational mobilizations of the 1990s, the book examines activists’ struggles to sustain their momentum since then. It shows how the opening up of world economic institutions contributed to complex rule in global governance, creating access for some while weakening their critique and fragmenting the overall social movement.
The book bridges International Relations and Social Movement Studies to observe international organizations and social movements in their interaction, demonstrating how social movements are divided and ruled in the absence of a ruler.
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply shaken societies and lives around the world.
This powerful book reveals how the pandemic intensifies socio-economic problems and inequalities across the world, whilst offering visions for a better future informed by social movements and public sociology. Bringing together experts from 27 countries, the authors explore the global echoes of the pandemic and the different responses adopted by governments, policy makers and activists.
The new expressions of social action, and forms of solidarity and protest are discussed in detail, from the Black Lives Matters protests to the French Strike Movement and the Lebanese Uprising.
This is a unique global commentary on the current crisis and the contemporary world.
This is a nuanced and compelling analysis of grassroots feminist activism in Russia in the politically turbulent 2010s.
Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the author illustrates how a new generation of activists chose feminism as their main political beacon, and how they negotiated the challenges of authoritarian and conservative trends.
As we witness a backlash against feminism on a global scale with the rise of neo-conservative governments, this highly relevant book decentres Western theory and concepts on feminism and social movements, offering significant insights into how resistance can mobilise and invent creative tactics to cope with an increasingly repressed space for independent political action.
In the wake of populism, Timothy Stacey’s book critically reflects on what is missing from the liberal project with the aim of saving liberalism.
It explains that populists have harnessed myth, ritual, magic and tradition to advance their ambitions, and why opponents need to embrace rather than eschew them. Via examples of liberally-minded activists in Vancouver, it presents an accessible theorisation of these quasi-religious concepts in secular life.
The result is to provide both a new theoretical understanding of why liberalism fails to engage people, and a toolkit for campaigners, policymakers and academics seeking to bridge the gap between liberal aspirations and lived experiences, to promote political engagement and to create unity out of division.
