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.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Guangdong, China, this book asks: what does it mean for Chinese non-heterosexual people to go against existing state regulations and societal norms to form a desirable and legible queer family?
Chapters explore the various tactics queer people employ to have children and to form queer or ‘rainbow’ families. The book unpacks people’s experiences of cultivating, or losing, kinship relations through their negotiation with biological relatives, cultural conventions and state legislations. Through its analysis, the book offers a new ethnographic perspective for queer studies and anthropology of kinship.
This chapter delineates how queer parents in Guangdong use their understanding and language of blood kin, biology, and parental love to distinguish between ‘my children’, ‘my partner’s children’, and ‘our children’. Through an examination of how these distinctions are integrated into their social spheres, it uncovers the intricate process of demarcating boundaries between blood relatives and queer kin. The cases of single queer parents and queer couples having children together amplify their understanding of blood ties and children’s position in sustaining conjugal love and a protected future. The chapter also delves into how expressions of parental love are closely intertwined with their socio-economic resources. It has found that the idea of blood and biology still holds its centrality in Chinese family life, while it has also been proved to have elastic potentialities for queer couples who desire joint parenthood.
This chapter explores queer reproductive choices within the evolving landscape of kinship conventions and moral personhood in urban China. The analysis commences by examining the motivations and timing behind the decisions of individuals from diverse age groups and backgrounds to either have children or remain childless. The chapter advocates for a re-evaluation of the symbolic significance of children in the context of reproductive studies. It proceeds to document the existing practices surrounding parenthood among Chinese non-heterosexual individuals and couples, shedding light on the moral dilemmas that often arise. These practices encompass various methods, including having children from prior zhihun (heterosexual) marriages, xinghun (contract) marriages, guoji adoptions (primarily from relatives), and the utilization of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The chapter further delves into the evolving moral discourses within queer communities, assessing how these communities evaluate pathways to parenthood.
This chapter elucidates the research methods and charts the progression throughout the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shenzhen and other urban areas of Guangdong, China from 2018 to 2021. It thoroughly addresses the methodological and ethical challenges encountered, along with strategies employed, encompassing participant recruitment and the delicate dynamics between researcher and subjects. This research seamlessly integrates participant observation and semi-structured interviews to provide a comprehensive understanding of everyday practices. Furthermore, the chapter delves into the intersection of the researcher’s personal background, multiple roles, and queer perspectives within the home field. It emphasizes a commitment to both the ethical principles of ethnographic research and the ethics of friendship. This chapter offers a timely ‘recipe’ for doing fieldwork in sensitive settings and contributes to the evolving discourse on innovative methodologies in social research, particularly within the realm of ‘queering’ research practices.
This chapter delves into the intersection of queer reproductive justice and the emerging assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) market in urban China, which has come to be regarded as an ideal means for queer individuals, particularly queer couples, to have children. The chapter explores the differential perspectives on the legal and moral debates arising from the involvement of queer parents in assisted reproduction, as revealed through an analysis of legal documents, online discourse, and field observations. It elucidates how ART companies and the queer organizations affiliated with them collaboratively influence the perception and practice of ART within queer communities. By presenting intricate personal accounts of how queer individuals navigate reproductive decisions and consumer choices when availing themselves of high-tech medical services, the chapter underscores the profound ‘queering’ of reproduction and the stratified reproduction that predominantly benefits middle- to upper-class queer residents in major urban centres like Shenzhen.
The concept of generation has had a dynamic career in science and medicine. Initially used to describe procreation, by the late 18th century, it was replaced by reproduction. But although generation now primarily came to signify a collective of organisms born around the same time, its older meaning, linking procreation, genealogy and the environment of early development, remained. In this chapter I study its career between 1945 and the early 21st century, across medicine as well as social work, public health, psychiatry and molecular biology, to describe the reoccurrence of diseases, behaviours and social conditions within a family and a social or ethnic group. From the term problem family in the 1940s to the later rise of intergenerational cycle, and inter- and transgenerational inheritance or transmission, the need for a concept to capture the reoccurrence of the poorly delineated set of recurring phenomena of non-genetic origin remained. The most famous instance of the intergenerational transmission of trauma, the offspring of Holocaust survivors, provided a blueprint for other groups – especially Indigenous peoples in former European colonies – to explain, from the 1990s onwards, the ongoing consequences of the trauma of colonization.
The conclusion reflects on key alignments and differences across the book’s chapters. Overall, this volume shares a frustration at the simplistic, reductive and conflict-inducing ways in which the generations concept has been used, including obscuring other significant social inequalities. Nonetheless, we feel that the concept has sufficient critical purchase and real explanatory power for understanding both the life-course and historical change, that it is worth rehabilitating, in order to nuance it and make it fit for purpose in further study. The chapter closes with a vision of future research in the field, which we hope will be led by the new BUP book series focusing on ‘Generations, Transitions and Social Change’.
This chapter explores how the terms ‘generation’ and ‘Millennial’ have circulated in mediatized political and popular discourse from think tanks to amplified voices such as Mark Zuckerberg’s. The argument is twofold. One, the crisis created by the 2008 financial crash produced multiple locations for the identification of generational phenomena. Second, the concept of generation can be used to explain a sociological category as well as being an ideological tool or discursive formation. These points are argued using a conjunctural analysis from the Cultural Studies tradition as well as Karl Mannheim’s concept of ‘generation units’. The chapter focuses on the multiple generational discourses that circulated after 2008, including the Resolution Foundation’s reworking of the generational social contract, entrepreneurial ideologies located in digital cultures, as well as books that forge a contested generational identity which interrogates the Millennial as a social type.
What does contemporary literary writing about intergenerational relationships tell us about the importance of generational thinking for the regeneration of places and communities? What does this writing entail for third sector organizations and charities addressing the challenges and opportunities presented by an ageing society which are seeking an efficacious intergenerational practice? This chapter examines a recent popular novel, Libby Page’s The Lido (2018), which focuses on an intergenerational friendship and its benefits for both parties. Building on the author’s recent collaboration with organization ‘The Age of Creativity’, the chapter proposes that intergenerational opportunities to ‘feel’ social capital in dynamic relations should be embraced, and that fiction provides a rich vein of opportunity and guidance, especially where it is integrated into a ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams, 1963) that imagines and explores the complex workings of the concept of social capital.
