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
The UK austerity programme has been defined as a fiscal policy and a deficit reduction programme consisting of sustained reductions in public spending and tax rises. Among the questions tackled in this chapter are: ‘were austerity policies an inevitable response to the financial crisis?’ Ideas on austerity are featured by writers including Blyth, Dorling, Skidelsky, Seymour, Kynaston, O’Hara, Rushton and Cooper and Whyte. The chapter asks: whether the dismantling of the welfare state became essential to tackle the budget deficit; and whether the UK government was wise to opt for austerity after the financial collapse of 2008, or should it have gone for economic stimulus. Austerity policies rather than stimulating growth have led to a dismantling of social systems that operated as a buffer against economic hardship.
This chapter derives a number of conclusions in consideration of specific evocative themes used to discuss de-professionalism and austerity. These include the following areas of debate: the rise in social inequalities and the impact of neo-liberalism ideology, the role of professionalism and the imperative for a workforce strategy to sustain public services, and the role of regulation, professional autonomy and methodology for achieving best outcomes for users of public services. Additionally they include a demand to harness a set of facts and arguments in support of a proposal that would collectively agree on a need to enhance the skills and expertise of practitioners, to extend their entrepreneurial role; and to design research studies aimed at sustaining ‘the professional project’.
There are a number of ideological reference points from where the notion of de-professionalisation takes shape, including critiques of Neo-liberalism, Taylorism/Post-Fordism and the ideology of Life-long Learning. The argument is that any theoretical definition centres around a specific narrative and more than likely includes the notion of ‘de-skilling’ drawn from Marx’s theory of work in industrial capitalism. The chapter develops an analytical framework for examining the professionalisation/de-professionalisation nexus and highlights the corollary of different perspectives drawn from a range of academic disciplines e.g. sociology, political science, economics and management.
Austerity’s impacts on the healthcare, social care and education professions are under the spotlight in this important book.
From scarcer resources to greater stresses, and falling training budgets to rising risks, it charts how policies and cuts have compromised workers’ ability to undertake their professional roles. It combines research and practice experience to assess the extent of de-professionalisation in recent years and how workers have responded.
This book is a vital review of how austerity has resculpted our notions of professionalism.
This chapter discusses reports that some hospitals and primary care services are ‘under-performing’ due to a lack of health and social care professionals, particularly in areas like critical care, long-term and chronic illness. Similarly, in schools there are continuing claims that core funding remains a serious issue, that they are struggling to get and keep enough teachers, and standards are threatened as a result. Austerity is an extension of the neo-liberal logic to characterise any form of public spending as ‘unproductive’.
The main arguments in this book reflect the politics and social climate created by austerity in the early 21st century and provide an analytical framework for examining the notion of ‘de-professionalisation’ and how it has emerged. The centrepiece offers a part- historical narrative for understanding an evolving process (of ‘de-professionalisation) and poses a question as to whether the direction and substantive nature of this process may have been altered by austerity, or whether this should be regarded as continuity rather than any radical change. Other policy questions include whether social investment as a means of increasing productivity has played a positive role in economic regulation and investment in human capital - training and education - and social programmes. The book sets out the main theoretical frameworks used to study the work of professions, contrasting disciplinary perspectives in the context of their application to different policy fields. Perspectives on professions and professionalism, taken from disciplines such as sociology, social policy, and public administration, are set against a contemporary and contrasting paradigm, for example managerialism or collaborative professionalism, with a purpose of ingraining new ways of deepening accountability towards more collectivist values.
The main arguments in this book reflect the politics and social climate created by austerity in the early 21st century and provide an analytical framework for examining the notion of ‘de-professionalisation’ and how it has emerged. The centrepiece offers a part- historical narrative for understanding an evolving process (of ‘de-professionalisation) and poses a question as to whether the direction and substantive nature of this process may have been altered by austerity, or whether this should be regarded as continuity rather than any radical change. Other policy questions include whether social investment as a means of increasing productivity has played a positive role in economic regulation and investment in human capital - training and education - and social programmes. The book sets out the main theoretical frameworks used to study the work of professions, contrasting disciplinary perspectives in the context of their application to different policy fields. Perspectives on professions and professionalism, taken from disciplines such as sociology, social policy, and public administration, are set against a contemporary and contrasting paradigm, for example managerialism or collaborative professionalism, with a purpose of ingraining new ways of deepening accountability towards more collectivist values.
This chapter discusses de-professionalisation as defined by a lowering of morale, or a demoralisation and denigration of the workforce. It provides examples of where de-professionalisation has become represented through an attack on the social status and position of a particular professional/occupational group, be it junior doctors, foster carers or university teachers.
The austerity agenda links deficit reduction to cuts in public service budgets. The main argument is that de-professionalisation lies at the heart of assessing the impact of the ‘commercial model’ in the form of efficiencies, pay cuts, rationing, reduced training/staff development and potentially affecting overall economic productivity. This chapter begins to shape an analytical framework for understanding the UK context in which a process of de-professionalisation exists within an employment culture dominated by inequality, precarity, globalisation and declining solidarity.
This chapter discusses the relevance of neo-liberalism as both an ideology and as a pragmatic approach, defined as a re-making of the state, where the state is not rolled back as such but is re-shaped, re-configured to better serve the demands of capital. Neo-liberalism represents an attempt to replace political judgement with economic evaluation, including, but not exclusively, the evaluations offered by markets. Writers on this subject such as Davies, Gough, Garrett, Peck, Mirowski and Shaxson are referred to where they address globalisation and audit culture, the logic of markets and economic evaluation. It was believed that the economic pressures generated by neo-liberal globalisation would inexorably lead to welfare state entrenchment or its dissolution and replacement by a lean ‘competition’ state. Yet the global rediscovery of poverty and the challenges to territorially-based conceptions of social rights posed by the increasing flow of migrants have put social policy issues on the social agenda.
