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 1400 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 81 - 90 of 19,539 items
In spite of some improvements, the built environment and public transportation are far from being fully accessible. Moreover, in 2014 the government has reneged on a legally enshrined right by postponing the accessibility mandate. This chapter analyses the reception of this partially implemented policy and the difficulties it creates for disabled people in their everyday lives. Through a policy feedback effect, the 2014 reform has produced discontent, fuelling a relative deprivation that, at this stage, is leading more to individual than collective actions. But public space is not only materially hostile to disabled people; it is also symbolically so, as one of the main places in which they experience stigmatization. Taking these various dimensions into account makes it possible to specify the social, and not only material, conditions of a real right to mobility.
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 introductory chapter develops a theoretical framework combining policy analysis (with an approach in terms of policy reception) and the sociology of law (through the study of rights realization at the individual level) to address the main question raised by the book: to what extent and how does policy reception enable disability rights to become effective in people’s experience? It presents the French context of disability policy and rights, and the methods of the study, drawing on biographical interviews.
This chapter introduces the book by exploring what is at stake in seeing the digital frontiers of gender and security. It introduces readers to potentially relevant international policies and to emerging international efforts to pursue security in the digital space, including via international law, state-level initiatives, and multi-stakeholder frameworks that engage technology companies and civil society. It argues that the current system fails to fully integrate gender and more broadly intersectional perspectives into an emerging discourse about security, technology, development, and rights. It further argues that a critical feminist security studies approach to these issues finds natural points for dialogue with – and should include – other critical perspectives including surveillance studies, queer theory, Black feminism, and postcolonial theory – necessitating an intersectional feminist inquiry.
This chapter explores the possibility for a more inclusive digital space, drawing on case studies and interviews with peacebuilders and practitioners who have used technology in novel ways. Common themes expressed by interviewees include an enduring concern about gender-based violence and harassment, the need to address inequalities as they manifest in the digital space, ambivalence in the relationships between activists and technology developers, and a concern about the future for in-person advocacy in the post-COVID-19 world.
This chapter revisits the distinction between special and inclusive education by distinguishing type of schooling, accommodations available, and changes in teaching formats. This framework is then used to analyse the reception of the gradual shift towards a promotion of mainstream schooling in France. In terms of policy reception, the comparison between different generations reveals an objective effect of the promotion of mainstream schooling on educational trajectories (where one is schooled) and expectations (what one subjectively values). Yet the narratives also show the major obstacles to a full realization of the right to inclusion, and the very active role of students and families to overcome them.
In France as elsewhere, disabled people suffer from structural marginalization in the labour market. Employment-related disability rights crystallize the ambivalence of disability policies: between an assumed inability to work that entitles people to benefits and the promotion of workforce participation; and between sheltered employment, quotas, and anti-discrimination. Employment might therefore appear to be the area where disability rights are the most fragile. The chapter shows, on the contrary, how this coexistence of divergent orientations can be analysed as their strong point, potentially opening more opportunities for individuals. After a review of the history of disability policies in the field of employment, the chapter analyses how disabled people negotiate a marginal place in the labour market, in dynamics that combine structural inequalities and the reception of public policies. It then focuses on the effects and appropriations of the flagship measure in this domain, the quota scheme.
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.
Drawing on insights from feminist and critical theories of international relations, this chapter examines how states engage in abusive uses of technology, creating gendered and racialized forms of insecurity. Cases discussed include the surveillance of feminist activists in China and the deployment of Pegasus spyware against activists for women’s rights and minority rights. It argues the need for an intersectional dialogue between feminist security studies and intersectional work that discusses the racialized nature of surveillance.
The chapter looks at the ways in which decision makers (in this case Approved Mental Health Professionals [AMHPs]) construct and deconstruct their frameworks of understanding relating to the assessment of people who are diagnosed with personality disorders. It focuses on the assessment of service users who are subject to a high number of assessments and appear to occupy a disproportionate amount of mental health professionals’ time, both literally and emotionally.
The chapter is based on extracts from the author’s own research and explores the risk paradigm that AMHPs believe shapes the work that they do – in particular, a culture of blame. The factors that AMHPs believe prevent them from making decisions that they feel are in the best interest of the people they are assessing will be explored and contextualised.
The chapter also explores how theories of alienation – in particular, malignant alienation – can help AMHPs and other mental health professionals understand the negative relationship cycles that reinforce unhelpful coping strategies. A critical approach is taken towards the medicalisation and pathologising of what are essentially psychosocial behavioural reactions, and alternative interventions for managing what are perceived as service users’ unhelpful or self-defeating coping strategies are discussed.
