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
‘Panic buying’ at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic generated enduring media images of empty supermarket shelves and calls for food rationing. The fragility of the Just-in-Time food system was seemingly exposed yet, as the pandemic progressed in the UK, there were remarkably few food shortages. This book reveals the changing patterns of food provision in the UK during that period, looking at how diets changed, and retail, processing, distribution and production businesses adapted. But beneath the apparent logistical success story, there were injustices as the more vulnerable struggled to access good quality food and some businesses received inadequate help.
The authors consider the winners and losers in a time of rapid social change, the lasting impacts on the UK food system, and lessons to be learned for a food system dependent on imports and large retailers and with a high burden of diet-related health issues.
Consumerism, unsustainable growth, waste and inequalities continue to ail societies across the globe, but creative collectives have been tackling these issues at a grassroots level.
Based on an autoethnographic study about a free food store in Aotearoa New Zealand, this book presents a first-hand account of how a community is organized around surplus food to deal with food poverty, while also helping the reader to see through the complexity that brings the free food store to life.
Examining how alternative economies and relations emerge from these community solutions, the author shows it is possible to think, act and organize differently within and beyond capitalist dynamics.
Following the global financial crisis of 2008, there has been a significant interest amongst scholars and activists in alternative forms of organization which operate according to a non-capitalist logic, including the Alternative Consumer Cooperatives (ACCs).
Using the example of Turkey, where neoliberal economics combined with authoritarian politics formed conditions that have profound social and economic consequences, this book investigates ACCs as spaces for prefigurative food politics.
Offering a novel perspective on alternative forms of organizing, this book challenges the easy assumptions of what it means to be a scholar working on activism in the Global North and shows how, through the foundational values of solidarity, reciprocity and responsibility, it is possible to create new and imaginative forms of politics and activism.
To reduce emissions and address climate change, we need to invest in renewables and rapidly decarbonise our energy networks. However, decarbonisation is often seen as a technical project, detached from questions of politics and social justice. What if this is leading to unfair transitions, in which some people bear the costs of change whilst others benefit?
In this timely and expansive book, Ed Atkins asks are we getting decarbonisation right? And how could it be made better for people and communities? In doing so, this book proposes a different type of energy transition. One that prioritises and takes opportunities to do better – to provide better jobs, community ownership and improve people’s homes and lives.
Sixty years ago an upsurge of social movements protested the ecological harms of industrial capitalism. In subsequent decades, environmentalism consolidated into forms of management and business strategy that aimed to tackle ecological degradation while enabling development to continue. However, the increasing focus on spaces and species to be protected saw questions of human work and histories of colonialism pushed out of view.
This book traces a counter-history of modern environmentalism from the 1960s to the present day. It focuses on claims concerning land, labour and social reproduction arising at important moments in the history of environmentalism made by feminist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, workers’ and agrarian movements. Many of these movements did not consider themselves ‘environmental,’ and yet they offer vital ways forward in the face of escalating ecological damage and social injustice.
A wave of innovation driven by the convergence of digital and molecular technologies is transforming food production and ways of eating in the US, Western Europe and Australasia. This book explores a range of contemporary agri-food issues, such as the digitalisation of farm production, aka Precision Agriculture, farmer independence, gene editing, alternative proteins and the rise of app-based home food deliveries.
This is the first book to provide a systemic analysis of technological innovation and its socio-economic consequences in modern food systems, including the ‘hollowing out’ of rural communities and pronounced industrial concentration. The food system is under growing public pressure to respond to global climate change, but this book finds little evidence of transition to sustainable low-carbon trajectories.
Bringing together the voices of local scholars in the Philippines, this book offers critical insights into one of the world’s most disaster-prone regions.
The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world, with the effects of climate change contributing to rising sea levels and increasingly frequent typhoons and floods. Case studies in this book examine such disasters, including the aftermath of 2013 super typhoon Haiyan. Discussions are centred around four themes: women and empowerment, economics and recovery, community and resilience, and religion and spirituality.
Through its analysis, the book demonstrates the scopes, inequities and inefficiencies of policies and responses, as well as forms of empowerment and resilience, in meeting challenges in disaster-afflicted communities in the Philippines. Its conclusions provide a more nuanced and grounded perspective of policies, practices and approaches in the sociology of disasters today.
Feeding Britain while preparing for the ravages of climate change are two key issues – yet there’s no strategy for managing and enhancing that most precious resource: our land. This book explores how the pressures of leaving the EU, recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and addressing global heating present unparalleled opportunities to re-work the countryside for the benefit of all.
Incorporating personal, inspiring stories of people and places, Peter Hetherington sets out the innovative measures needed for nature’s recovery while protecting our most valuable farmland, encouraging local food production and ‘re-peopling’ remote areas. In the first book to tackle these issues holistically, he argues that we need to re-shape the countryside with an adventurous new agenda at the heart of government.
This book is an urgent call to reimagine our social, political and economic systems so that we might transform to a sustainable society.
It considers whether an alternative economic model is possible and examines the factors needed to enable such a transition to occur. The scale and pace of change is unprecedented and the author examines the actions that have to be taken by governments, business and individuals if we are to address the environmental disaster that confronts us. Much needs to change but ultimately, this is a book of hope, believing that evolution to a better, more sustainable society is possible.
How can we create a thriving life for us all that doesn’t come at the price of ecological destruction?
This book calls to explore our collective and personal convictions about success and good life. It challenges the mainstream worldview, rooted in economics, that equates happiness with pleasure, and encourages greed, materialism, egoism and disconnection.
Drawing on science and ancient Greek philosophers the author details how we can cultivate our skills for enjoying life without harming ourselves or others, and can live an autonomous, creative and connected life. Complementary to our intellectual understanding, the experiential method of role play and theatre can powerfully facilitate the exploration of the inner drivers and hindrances of a thriving life.
