Series: Studies in Social Harm
Series Editors: Christina Pantazis, University of Bristol, UK, Simon Pemberton, University of Birmingham, UK and Steve Tombs, The Open University
Social harm is an emerging field of study which contributes to contemporary social and political debate. This exciting series moves the debate towards a holistic approach that seeks to understand the production of harm within contemporary society. The topical inter-disciplinary series offers comparative and international perspectives to understand the distribution of harm and combines new theory and empirical research.
Studies in Social Harm
The Greek island of Lesvos is frequently the subject of news reports on the refugee ‘crisis’, but they only occasionally focus on the dire living conditions of asylum seekers already present on the island. Through direct experience as an activist in Lesvos refugee camps and detention centres, Iliadou gives voice to those with lived experiences of state violence.
The author considers the escalation of EU border regime and deterrence policies seen in the past decade alongside their present impacts. Asking why the social harm and suffering border crossers experience is normalised and rendered invisible, the book highlights the collective, global responsibility for safeguarding refugees’ human rights.
For many children and young people, Britain is a harmful society in which to grow up. This book contextualises the violence that occurs between a small number of young people within a wider perspective on social harm.
Aimed at academics, youth workers and policymakers, the book presents a new way to make sense of this pressing social problem. The authors also propose measures to substantially improve the lives of Britain’s young people – in areas ranging from the early years, to youth services and the criminal justice system.
As the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of ‘affective labour’. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture.
Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur.
Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.
Labour exploitation is a highly topical though complex issue that has international resonance for those concerned with social justice and social welfare, but there is a lack of research available about it. This book, part of the Studies in Social Harm series, is the first to look at labour exploitation from a social harm perspective, arguing that, as a global social problem, it should be located within the broader study of work-based harm.
Written by an expert in policy orientated research, he critiques existing approaches to the study of workplace exploitation, abuse and forced labour. Mapping out a new sub-discipline, this innovative book aims to shift power from employers to workers to reduce levels of labour exploitation and work-based harm. It is relevant to academics from many fields as well as legislators, policy makers, politicians, employers, union officials, activists and consumers.
While the notion of social harm has long interested critical criminologists it is now being explored as an alternative field of study, which provides more accurate analyses of the vicissitudes of life.
However, important aspects of this notion remain undeveloped, in particular the definition of social harm, the question of responsibility and the methodologies for studying harm. This book, the first to theorise and define the social harm concept beyond criminology, seeks to address these omissions and questions why some capitalist societies appear to be more harmful than others. In doing so it provides a platform for future debates, in this series and beyond.
It will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers across criminology, sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies and geography.
This unique study of social harm offers a systematic and critical discussion of the nature of environmental harm from an eco-justice perspective, challenging conventional criminological definitions of environmental harm.
The book evaluates three interconnected justice-related approaches to environmental harm: environmental justice (humans), ecological justice (the environment) and species justice (non-human animals). It provides a critical assessment of environmental harm by interrogating key concepts and exploring how activists and social movements engage in the pursuit of justice. It concludes by describing the tensions between the different approaches and the importance of developing an eco-justice framework that to some extent can reconcile these differences.
Using empirical evidence built on theoretical foundations with examples and illustrations from many national contexts, ‘Environmental harm’ will be of interest to students and academics in criminology, sociology, law, geography, environmental studies, philosophy and social policy all over the world.
