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.
This chapter will outline how research should be done as part of explicit goal-oriented social action when that action is the directed transformation of the whole macro-level socio-ecological global order. It will show how research is embedded in the practices of governance at the national and city regional levels, particularly in the crucial processes of planning. In social transformation, research is an essential part of the whole governance process. Research must be participatory/co-production, done with both agencies of governance and the general population in civil society. We will emphasise the role of scenario construction for the creation of socially just futures. We will also show how collaborative action-focused research can develop such scenarios and identify how what is desired might be brought into existence. The chapter will show how engaged action research must be an essential part of the programme for transformation to achieve an equitable and sustainable future.
This chapter moves on from discussing dualism to consider the implications of rethinking the role of time and place in the construction of social life. In doing so, we return to the significance of agency and studying time and place as the achievement of actors. Rather than background factors, time and place must be understood as constitutive. This becomes clear when, in recognising the role of systems, we encounter the fundamental dynamic of coevolution as crucial to understanding. The chapter seeks to recognise the ethical implications of the shift from objectivity and to highlight the significance of time and place in governance, particularly in the governance of the future. Three examples of future governance are drawn on to illustrate the issues raised.
This chapter focuses on how we need to reframe our approach to researching and understanding in terms of socio-ecological systems. The divide between social and natural that has been a foundational dualism is now widely challenged, and the effects of these structures of thought are being laid bare. This reframing requires a shift from disciplinary investigation to a combination of disciplinary with inter, multi and transdisciplinary research. We consider the implications of this thinking in recognising the excluded middle in policy research and governance. Developments in, as yet, different areas of governance are converging in a recognition of the need for co-production in research and a more ‘agile’ response in governance.
We now live in an urban world, with more than 60 per cent of the global population living in urban places. This transformation of the global socio-ecological system has happened as the movement of peasants to cities has spread worldwide through globalisation. The ecological footprint of cities is a crucial driver of polycrisis. The chapter reviews the scale and implications of this transformation. It examines the way fiscal crisis is manifest in austerity in local services, given the weak taxation base of cities. Urban planning is crucial for urban sustainability, but the chapter shows how planning has become wholly subordinated to the interests of real estate capital in a world where most capital is in real estate form. This is a major obstacle to effective action on urban issues. In deindustrialised cities, there is a crisis of culture. The chapter concludes with an examination of urbanisation and urban issues in sub-Saharan Africa.
This chapter examines the role of civil society in advancing sustainable welfare in the Swedish metropolitan cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. It views civil society as a space for collective action and potential transformation, where organisations, movements and activist networks strive for change. The chapter explores the collaboration and integration between civil society groups focused on environmental and welfare issues. Based on interviews with leaders and a survey of participants in environmental protests, the findings reveal an absence of a unifying master frame that bridges the environmental and welfare divides. This is primarily attributed to the particularistic nature of civil society organisations and their alignment with the siloed structure of local government, which separates policy areas. While inertia appears to dominate, the chapter highlights the emergence of a justice frame able to mobilise supporters from both environmental and welfare sectors, offering a potential path towards sustainable welfare.
This concluding chapter evaluates whether Swedish cities have successfully bridged the gap between environmental and welfare concerns in urban governance. Despite the disruptive pressures of climate change, the findings indicate that substantive transformative change has not yet occurred in the investigated cities. Environmental and welfare policy domains remain largely separate, with civil society organisations and public attitudes continuing to operate within a framework of differentiation rather than integration. While many results adhere to established pathways, the chapter highlights that patterns of inertia and emergence coexist. Actors actively push for new discourses and practices to integrate environmental and welfare concerns. However, the emergence of a sustainable welfare path remains contested, with expressions of denial, rejection and opposition to transformative efforts. Drawing on Polanyi’s concepts of movements and counter-movements, these tensions do not represent a failure of transformation but rather the clarification of two competing pathways for addressing the challenges and risks posed by climate change.
The introductory chapter outlines the core challenge of providing welfare within planetary boundaries, a pressing issue for cities and societies globally. It emphasises the growing recognition of climate change’s impact on welfare and social risks, forming the foundation for the book’s objectives. It explores patterns of inertia, emergence and transformation in Swedish urban governance and analyses if and to what extent Swedish cities have overcome the separation between welfare and environmental concerns and practices. Sweden, with its strong social democratic welfare legacy and widespread support for environmental policies, serves as a compelling case to examine factors that either promote or impede the integration of these domains. The chapter introduces the three cities central to the study – Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö – and outlines the three sites of urban governance explored in the book: local government, civil society and public attitudes. This sets the stage for the empirical investigation of sustainable welfare integration in Swedish urban governance.
