Textbooks

 

Explore our diverse range of digital textbooks designed for course adoption and recommended reading at universities and colleges. We publish over 140 textbooks across the social sciences, and an annual subscription to digital textbooks is possible via BUP Digital.

Our content is fully searchable and can be accessed on and off-campus through Shibboleth, OpenAthens or an institutional authenticated IP. For any questions on digital textbook pricing and subscription information, please contact simon.bell@bristol.ac.uk.

We are happy to provide digital samples of any of our coursebooks by completing this form. To see the full collection of all our core textbooks, browse our main website.
 

Books: Textbooks

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  • Poverty, Inequality and Social Justice x
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Community-based Action for Transformative Change

In this second edition of a bestselling book, the authors’ unique, holistic and radical perspective on participatory practice has been updated to reflect advances in thought made in the past decade, the impact of neoliberalism and austerity and the challenge of climate change. Their innovative approach bridges the divide between community development ideas and practice to offer a critical praxis.

The authors argue that transformative practice begins with everyday stories about people’s lives and that practical theory generated from these narratives is the best way to inform both policy and practice.

The book will be of interest to academics and community-based practitioners working in a range of settings, including health and education.

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Radical perspectives

How is social work shaped by global issues and international problems and how should it address them? This book employs a radical perspective to examine international social work.

Globalisation had opened up many issues for social work, including how to address global inequalities, the impact of global economic problems and trends towards neoliberalism. By examining the origins of modern social work, problematising its definition and addressing the care/control dichotomy the book reveals what we can learn from different approaches and projects across the globe.

Case studies from the UK, the US, Canada, Spain, Latin America, Australia, Hungary and Greece bring the text to life and allow both students and practitioners to apply theory to practice.

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A skills approach

The second edition of this popular book has been inspired by the increasing interest around social entrepreneurship scholarship and the practice of delivering innovative solutions to social issues.

Although social enterprises generally remain small, the impact of social entrepreneurs is increasing globally, as all countries are endeavouring to respond to increasingly complex social problems and demands for welfare at a time of government cut backs.

Additional chapters and international case studies explore new developments, such as the rise of the social investment market, the use of design thinking and the increasing importance of social impact measurement.

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Politics, policy and practice

Understanding community is a highly topical text offering a clear understanding of policy and theory in relation to community. By examining areas of government policy, such as economic development, education, health, housing, and community safety, this book explores the difficulties that communities face and discusses new concepts such as community cohesion, social capital and community capacity building. Somerville challenges our understanding of community, both social and conceptual, and assesses the strengths and limitations of this understanding.

This book is essential for students studying social policy, social work and sociology, and an invaluable resource for policymakers in community development, urban regeneration and allied fields.

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Making a difference
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Practice research partnerships in social work can make a significant difference to social work service delivery. This comprehensive, accessibly written resource, is designed to help students and practitioners to actively engage with research through their frontline work.

Through clear practice scenarios, critical questions and examples from research the text guides researchers, students, educators, practice managers, funders and practitioners to creatively explore partnerships in creating, contributing, consuming, commissioning or critiquing evidence in and for social work practice. The text encourages collaborative practice by demonstrating the transformative nature of knowledge networks to ‘make a difference’ in social work practice.

An essential text for students undertaking professional training at all levels as well as meeting the needs of qualified staff for continued professional development.

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Principles, Policies and Programmes

Community involvement is now at the centre of the UK government's social inclusion, neighbourhood renewal and health development programmes, resulting in many challenges for managers involved in such work. The bestselling first edition of this book discussed the meaning, principles and application of managing community practice, focusing on the role and skills needed by managers. This will be required if ambitious regeneration and social inclusion programmes are to work in partnership with the active involvement of communities and exploring a wide range of examples from practice.

Since the first edition, there has been a perceptible increase in the structured involvement of communities in developing, delivering and evaluating public policies and projects. In this new edition all chapters have been fully updated in the light of recent developments and new case examples have been included to illustrate such changes. A new chapter on The Managers Role in Community Research has been added and a new concluding chapter explores key challenges which need to be addressed.

This book is an essential resource for operational and strategic managers in local government, housing, health and other service delivery agencies, social inclusion and community regeneration projects. It will be essential reading for tutors and students on a wide range of undergraduate and Masters courses.

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Making a difference

Social work in the community offers practice guidance to students, practice assessors and practitioners within a political, theoretical, methodological and ethical framework. The book is written from an experiential learning perspective, encouraging the reader not only to understand the ideas and methods but to test them out in their own practice, which additionally provides an element of problem-based learning. The book is written within the framework of the practice curriculum for the social work degree, including the National Occupational Standards and an extended statement of values for practice. This will enable students to use the book to make sense of their practice in relation to the knowledge, skills and values of social work practice in its community context.

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With the increasing focus on ‘community’ as the site for renewing democracy, improving policymaking and enhancing service delivery, this book provides a challenging approach to understanding community practice. It offers a much-needed theoretical perspective, sets out an analysis of power and empowerment and explores new ways of understanding active citizenship.

The book covers a wide range of theoretical and practice topics. First presenting a model of critical community practice, the authors draw upon a variety of case studies from Britain and elsewhere to discuss this in the context of work in and with community groups; management; policy and politics; and development of the critical practitioner.

Demands being placed on individuals and organisations have become increasingly complex and greater clarity about community practice is needed. This book, designed to complement the authors’ edited volume “Managing Community Practice" (The Policy Press, 2003) provides just that.

The book’s content will be of particular interest to those following the debates on community involvement in regeneration, social inclusion and health improvement programmes. It will provide a resource for those already engaged in community practice and thus inform the work of local authorities, government agencies, voluntary organisations and partnerships. It will be relevant reading for all those people working to promote change and development in communities. It will also be an essential text for students on a range of professional and management programmes in community development, health, housing, planning and other disciplines with a community focus.

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