Collection: Bristol University Press and Policy Press comprehensive eBook and Journals collection
If you are an institution that prides itself on having a comprehensive bank of the latest social science research, then access our entire eBook and journals list. It is a wonderful opportunity to provide a truly unique collection of award-winning research from one of the UK's leading social science publishers.
You can have instant access to over 2,000 eBooks and 8,000 journal articles from our incredible range of 21 journals including 50 years of Policy & Politics. This collection gives you full DRM-free access to a vast range of the research we have been publishing since 1996 and is a truly premium collection with access to the full Policy & Politics archive (1972–present).
Journals included in this collection include: Consumption and Society; Critical and Radical Social Work; Emotions and Society; European Journal of Politics and Gender; European Social Work Research; Evidence & Policy; Families, Relationships and Societies; Global Discourse; Global Political Economy; International Journal of Care and Caring; Journal of Gender-Based Violence; Journal of Global Ageing; Journal of Poverty & Social Justice (2002–present); Journal of Psychosocial Studies; Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice (2018–present); Justice, Power and Resistance; Longitudinal and Life Course Studies; Policy & Politics (2000–present); Voluntary Sector Review; Work in the Global Economy.
Within our eBook collection, 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 2,000 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 and accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
This collection also means you will never miss a journal article, eBook or Open Access publication because your content will be refreshed as part of an ongoing renewal process. We will update the collection on an annual basis which includes over 220 new books and 450 new journal articles a year.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press Complete eBooks and Journals Collection
What will the world be like in 2050? This book explores possible future worlds through eight hard science fiction stories. Taking in automation, big data, climate catastrophe and government dysfunction, each tale looks at the world through the eyes of people whose lives have been influenced by the societies they live in and the transport systems they live with.
Asking important questions about our values and role of transport in society, this book will encourage planners, policy makers, researchers and anyone interested in a positive future for public mobility to take the steps to ensure we get there.
The Gated City offers a comprehensive analysis of the proliferation of gated communities, urban fragmentation, and the privatisation of public life in the Latin American context from a policy and practice perspective. The book engages with global debates about the increasingly locked-down, securitised, and elite nature of much city life and the possible ‘death of public life’ that many have suggested is occurring in cities today. It draws on original, in-depth research in one of the largest gated communities in the world, a comminity that exemplifies the tensions and conflicts that make it harder for planning professionals to provide more inclusive urban spaces. The argument comes from the different and sometimes contrasting experiences obtained through the author’s academic and personal planning practice in Mexico. The discussion offers valuable insights into policy and planning practices that are relevant worldwide under the current conditions of uncertainty, fear, and increased social inequality. The book provides elements of analysis for university students, policy makers, researchers, and urban studies instructors interested in better understanding exclusionary spaces. The Mexican case provides methodological tools for scholars and practitioners researching and presenting planning and policy-making alternatives against exclusion in cities and social inequalities.
“Banal warfare” describes the ways in which the vision of the city perpetually ridden with conflicts, terrorist attacks, and disease infuses everyday urban life to the point of becoming invisible or taken for granted. The book is situated within decolonial urbanism as, to understand the urban geopolitical struggles in western Europe, it employs the conceptual framework developed in relation to cities conventionally considered war cities in the global east and south. In “reversing the gaze” on urban warfare, the focus is on the impact of framing different public emergencies and incidents of violence in Paris and Brussels as acts of war and how this contributes to the normalization of militarism within urban contexts traditionally viewed as “non-war zones.” From lockdowns to states of emergency, the book addresses how this process shapes urban governance agendas, constructs the notion of the “enemy within,” and conditions the everyday affective atmospheres of urban dwellers in Paris and Brussels. These citizens are not presented as passive victims of military urbanism, but as active subjects in the doing and undoing of notions of cities at war. The book highlights the politics of affective atmospheres in an effort to “make feminist sense” of urban warfare, drawing attention to the processes that sustain social inequalities and deepen urban geographies of exclusion while, at the same time, rethinking notions of urban peace.
Pluralism – and the connected questions of toleration – is today a crucial theoretical and practical problem in need of critical discussion. Differently from what is usually done, such discussion must take urban space into serious consideration, not only because many of the issues of pluralism that we deal with daily are most forcefully manifest in cities, but also because the articulation of space has a close connection with the conflicts generated by diversity. Against this background, the book analyses the complex relation between pluralism (understood as the coexistence of many diverse conceptions of the good) and different types of public and private space (streets, parks, public squares, restaurants, shopping malls, homeowners associations and so on), with a specific focus on the rules that govern such spaces. Accordingly, it deals with toleration as a matter of public ethics: that is, how and why the state should act in relation to particular problems. Indeed, the purpose of the book is to identify the limits within which acceptable public measures to spatially regulate diversity may lie. It does so by adopting a framework in which pluralism is seen as a pivotal value of contemporary democracies that must be protected and supported.
The platform economy, powered by companies like Airbnb, Uber and Deliveroo, promised to revolutionize the way we work and live. But what are the actual benefits to our society and economy?
This book interrogates the ‘sharing economy’, showing how platform capitalism is not only shaped by business decisions, but is a result of struggles involving social movements, consumer politics and state interventions. It focuses in particular on the controversial tactics used by platform giants to avoid regulation.
Drawing on cutting-edge research and analysis, this book provides a critical overview of this important topic, and imagines the different possible futures of the platform economy.
Bringing together contributors from Europe, North America and Australia, this book questions the purpose and outcomes of speculation in practical settings.
In the context of interrelated and complex global challenges, speculation is not just useful but necessary. The chapters in this book present a cross-disciplinary dialogue of people that are developing work in speculation and interrogates its practices and ethical and political charges. Through these discussions, the book explores the potential of speculation in addressing issues such as climate change, urban futures and new political practices.
The concept of smart cities holds environmental promises: that digital technologies will reduce carbon emissions, air pollution and waste, and help address climate change.
Drawing on academic scholarship and two case studies from Manchester and Helsinki, this timely and accessible book examines what happens when these promises are broken, as they prioritise technological innovation rather than environmental care. The book reveals that smart cities’ vision of sustainable digital future obfuscates the environmental harms and social injustices that digitisation inflicts. The framework of “broken promises”, coined by the authors, centres environmental questions in analysing imaginaries and practices of smart cities.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the connections between digital technologies and environment justice.
Spatial planning is at a crossroads, with government reform undermining the traditional vision of state-employed planners making decisions about urban development in a unified public interest. Nearly half of UK planners are now employed in the private sector, with complex inter-relations between the sectors including supplying outsourced services to local authorities struggling with centrally-imposed budget cuts.
Drawing on new empirical data from a major research project, ‘Working in the Public Interest’, this book reveals what it’s like to be a UK planner in the early 21st century, and how the profession can fulfil its potential for the benefit of society and the environment.
Trajectories of Governance studies the complex dynamics of order-making, violence and governance in peripheral cities in Latin America from a comparative, historical, and multi-scalar approach.
This book aims to discover more about the drivers, contexts, and uneven levels of violence through the case studies of Chalatenango and Sonsonate in El Salvador and Pereira and Tunja in Colombia.
Based on a multidisciplinary analytical framework, Trajectories of Governance explains why and how some peripheral cities have become the locus of violent orders, whereas others have managed to control violence, and to examine the role of violence in the workings of local governance.
Increasingly, public space provision and management are being transferred from the public sector to real estate developers, private sector organisations, voluntary groups and community bodies. Contrasting the more historical, horizontal character of London with the intense street life of high-rise Hong Kong, this book tells the story of the two cities’ relationships with non-traditional forms of public space governance.
The authors consider the implications for the ‘publicness’ of these complex spaces and the challenges and impacts that different forms of provision have on those with a stake in them, and on the cities as a whole.
