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
This chapter presents findings from archival research and secondary sources from the Chicago Settlement. It argues that it was the aesthetic analysis of the slum that was drawn upon for positioning the evidentiary value of maps. The author suggests that the reformers’ objective in overlaying a numerically based visual technique of calculation with an evocative description of the smells and sounds of the immigrant ‘slum;’ was to permit the assumed public an opportunity to sense the imperative for legal and institutional change necessary for urban renewal.
This chapter follows the work of Mary Simkhovitch, a key figure in settlement houses in New York, but also a major proponent of the notion of municipalisation, a concept developed in Germany that advocated the transferal to city ownership of previously private, corporate assets. Simkhovitch was part of a group of Americans who were strongly influenced by ideas regarding social welfare that developed in Germany at the end of the 19th Century. She sought to implement these ideas in New York by establishing the Greenwich House settlement and then serving as its headworker for 44 years. During this period, she engaged in efforts to regulate industries through the National Consumers League, spearheaded tenement reform and the creation of public housing in New York, and played a key role in efforts to expand green spaces and recreational opportunities for children, adolescents, and adults in the city.
This chapter provides an overview of the development and characteristics of the German settlement movement and traces both the currents of social reform as well as the actors to which they were linked. Using the example of the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-Ost (social working group Berlin-East) in particular, it will be shown that the social missionary approach of the German Settlement House Movement is due especially to its anchoring in the bourgeois youth movement and its strong Protestant character. Furthermore, the chapter sheds light on the area of social research in the Berlin settlement house which helped to establish further professional networks. This creates a picture of a historical variant of community work that is both independent and unique in an international context, and in which fundamental theological-ethical positions as well as certain currents of social reform, social research and social work converged in a specific way.
This chapter provides a brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement. It develops the argument that the settlements houses contributed to the transnational advancement of the nation in form of the national welfare state by interpreting and tackling the social question as a crisis of a (national) community. Against the background of two major social developments (secularisation and scientisation), it shows how settlement knowledge was translated to different social contexts and proved to be flexibel enough to transcend various social boundaries (class, knowledge etc.) and transform society
This chapter concludes the book by drawing together the themes from each of the chapters. It considers the place of the Settlement House movement within the development of social work, social welfare and research and comments upon the way in which a comparison of Settlement Houses as they have developed in different national contexts signify a more complex perspective. Examining the role of historical research and, particularly, the contribution that this methodological approach can have within social work and social work education it uses examples provided within the chapters. It concludes by discussing the role the Settlement House movement holds in the continued development of social work, social welfare and research.
The settlement movement in England brought about and worked in tandem with other reformist movements: such as the spread of ‘poor man’s lawyer’ services. The provision of these free legal advice clinics was a means of usefully applying the legal skills of residents at male-led settlements, as well as creating a form of social work that was acceptable for upper- and middle-class men to do. Settlement provision of legal advice also closely intersected with the social work they undertook, from direct interventions in helping needy families, to training social workers in aspects of law, as well as to seeing legal advice as a key element in community development.
The Settlement House Movement is perceived as a major influence on the emergence of the social work profession globally. Yet, historical research on this movement in social work, and in particular, the transnational translation of this idea, is very limited. This volume sheds new light on the establishment of settlement houses in diverse societies, the interface between this Movement and other social movements, and the impact that it had on the social work profession, its values, practices and research. The chapters in the book explore the settlement house phenomenon in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Canada, France, Portugal and Mandatory Palestine and the individuals and groups that played a major role in their establishment. They underscore both the ways in which the international Settlement House Movement developed, the commonalities between settlement houses across the globe, and also the differences that emerged between them. In particular, it seeks to highlight the various motivations and sources of belief and knowledge of settlement founders, the goals that they sought, the contexts in which they worked, the activities they undertook and the populations which they served. The critical and transnational historical perspective adopted by the authors of the case studies in the path-breaking book provides the reader with a more subtle understanding of the complexities of the Settlement House Movement and its impact on the social work profession.
This chapter traces the transnational translation of the settlement house model from the UK and the USA to France and from there to Portugal. The French settlement houses, maisons sociales, that emerged at the end of the 19th Century were influenced by social Catholicism and feminism. They also shared commonalities with, and exhibited divergences from the UK and US settlement house models. While residence, research and engagement in professional training were common, research in the maisons sociales was, unlike in the USA, not a means to further social policies but rather to enhance scientific knowledge. In the mid-1930s, the settlement house model was adopted in Portugal under the aegis of the single-party regime of the Estado Novo. Of the two organisations that engaged in the establishment of settlement houses in Portugal in the following decades, the Institute of Social Work in Lisbon (ISS) was strongly influenced by the French maisons sociales and by social Catholicism.
The Settlement House Movement is perceived as a major influence on the emergence of the social work profession globally. Yet, historical research on this movement in social work, and in particular, the transnational translation of this idea, is very limited. This volume sheds new light on the establishment of settlement houses in diverse societies, the interface between this Movement and other social movements, and the impact that it had on the social work profession, its values, practices and research. The chapters in the book explore the settlement house phenomenon in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Canada, France, Portugal and Mandatory Palestine and the individuals and groups that played a major role in their establishment. They underscore both the ways in which the international Settlement House Movement developed, the commonalities between settlement houses across the globe, and also the differences that emerged between them. In particular, it seeks to highlight the various motivations and sources of belief and knowledge of settlement founders, the goals that they sought, the contexts in which they worked, the activities they undertook and the populations which they served. The critical and transnational historical perspective adopted by the authors of the case studies in the path-breaking book provides the reader with a more subtle understanding of the complexities of the Settlement House Movement and its impact on the social work profession.
This chapter discusses a number of themes that underlie this edited volume on the transnational history of the Settlement House Movement. The themes include the motivations for establishing settlement houses and the differences and similarities that these had on the transnational translation of this idea; the unique role of women in the Settlement House Movement; and the Movement’s impact on the social work profession and upon social work and sociological research. The diverse cases discussed in this book offer an insight into the development of settlement houses in various countries and present a corrective to the tendency within social work to associate settlement houses exclusively with a change-oriented, community-based, social reform agenda. They do not only contribute to knowledge on a key element in the emergence of social work but also introduce a unique historical approach to the study of the Settlement House Movement, which adopts a critical and transnational perspective.
