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
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 696 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities x
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Bauman argues that our lives are ruled by ambivalence. In this ambiguous world, liquified social structures can create an anxiety towards the ‘other.’
This innovative book takes Bauman’s notions of ‘liquid modernity’ one step further to develop a theory of ‘liquid racism’. The authors show that while post-race theory argues that society is moving beyond racism, in reality, historical manifestations of racism continue. Except, society is now faced with a racism whose structures have changed.
Examining Brexit, education and black youth culture as case studies to reveal the application of liquid racism, this book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the (un)changing nature of racism.
This book examines the evolving relationship between multiculturalism, religion and diversity in Western Europe, proposing a shift towards a post-multicultural approach to address religious and secular pluralism.
The author responds to criticisms of multiculturalism's approach to public religion, including perceived group reification and limited focus on intra-group domination, gender and sexuality equalities. Through a critical dialogue between multicultural theory and political theology, the book offers an original framework for post-multicultural recognition.
Enriching multiculturalism by integrating religious reason and institutional pluralism, this book contributes crucial new insights to debates on religion, equality and diversity in public life.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Stigma has long been a central concern for social scientists studying health and illness. Yet, in existing work, stigma often escapes definition and clarification, is treated as universal and constant, and becomes a vague catch-all term for a range of conditions and situations.
This book initiates a process of recalibrating the conceptualisation of stigma. The book features original analyses from early- and mid-career scholars focusing on diverse issues, including mental health, racism, sex, HIV, reproduction, obesity, eating disorders, self-harm, exercise, drug use, COVID-19 and disability.
This ambitious book offers new perspectives to stimulate and intensify conversations around stigma, and highlights the valuable contributions of sociological approaches to the study of health and illness.
The devastating effects of climate change are undeniable. Fires rage and waters rise in every corner of the globe. In light of these changes to our planet, the issue of social and environmental wellbeing has gained prominent attention from both academia and policy makers. Scholarly research on the interaction between social and employment policy domains has flourished. Academics now reflect on the different aspects of environmental and social protection, ecological and social risks, and the costs of climate change, sustainable welfare and new social movements prompted by green transitions.
This book provides a vital contribution to the emerging research agenda. It brings together scholars from interconnected disciplines to discuss the eco-social debate, providing a critical overview on extant scholarship and reflecting on future research pathways on the eco-social nexus from a variety of analytical perspectives.
The gap between personal and formal politics has been widening globally and locally. As personal politics have become more inclusive and egalitarian inspired by new social movements, neoliberal ideologies have undermined democracy, increasing isolation, inequality, poverty, disease and environmental threat. Yet this paradox may also offer a path to transformation.
Using international evidence and examples, The Antidote explores what we can learn from the equalisation of personal roles and relationships that’s been taking place, to help us reconnect with ourselves and each other and make possible more participatory and liberatory policy and politics. It sets out the barriers we face and offers a route map to bring an end to the destructive effects of unfettered neoliberal ideology, economics, policy and politics.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Health inequality has reached a crisis point. Your income or hometown can have a devastating impact on how well and how long you live. This injustice, exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, continues as the cost of living rises and other sources of inequity grow. What can be done to make things better?
This book, written by the authors behind the award-winning The Unequal Pandemic, explores successful international case studies of governments reducing health inequalities – from the USA and Brazil to Germany and England – stretching over fifty years from the 1960s to the 2000s.
Essential reading for students and scholars of public health and the social sciences, and for health and social care professionals and policy makers, this book demonstrates that reducing health inequalities is possible and provides a roadmap for today’s governments to follow.
Vulnerability theory offers an alternative to social-contract and rights-based paradigms. Beginning with the corporeal body, the theory argues we are inevitably and constantly dependent on social institutions that are generated (and ideally monitored) through law. Accordingly, vulnerability theory argues for a state attentive to the needs of the universally ‘vulnerable subject’.
Based on lectures at Trinity College Dublin that focused on four foundational concepts, this book highlights how vulnerability theory differs from individualistic liberal frameworks.
Calling for a reorientation of law toward a collective responsibility-based approach, it is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory, social justice, and sociolegal scholarship.
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.
Following the highly respected first volume, this book continues to provide a holistic view of Julio Boltvinik’s vast and important work on poverty conceptualisation and measurement. While the previous book introduced the author’s widely adopted Integrated Poverty Measurement Method (IPMM), this new volume outlines his Marxian approach to poverty and human flourishing, focusing on what he conceptualises as human poverty.
Bringing together 20 years of research, this interdisciplinary book provides an alternative to Sen’s Capability approach and details its internal consistency, solid foundations and promising perspectives for applicability.
In a world facing multiple intersecting crises, the push for healthier, more resilient societies has never been more urgent. This timely book reveals how empowered and organised communities can lead this change. It offers policy makers, academics and activists research-driven insights, decolonial perspectives and real-world examples of organising and collective actions from across the global North and South.
By centring on the power of community development, participation and social movements, the book delivers actionable frameworks to tackle inequality and advance the right to health, making it an essential resource for anyone committed to health justice and for building equitable and sustainable health systems worldwide.
