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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Over the past decade, the UK has experienced major policy and policy making change. This text examines this shifting political and policy landscape while also highlighting the features of UK politics that have endured.
Written by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin, leading voices in UK public policy and politics, the book combines a focus on policy making theories and concepts with the exploration of key themes and events in UK politics including:
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developing social policy in a post-pandemic world;
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governing post-Brexit;
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the centrality of environmental policy.
The book equips students with a robust and up-to-date understanding of UK public policy and enables them to locate this within a broader theoretical framework.
The fully updated Short Guide to Town and Country Planning provides an concise introductory overview of the practice of planning for those with little or no prior knowledge. This second edition considers who planners are and what they do, showing how planning - as an art, science and system - has evolved as an organised action of the state.
The book discusses the planning system, processes, legal constructs and approaches, taking into account the recent regulatory changes within the UK nations. Restructured to improve readability, it explores the interactions of government and society with the planning system, and the relationship between urban planning, the environment, and placemaking. It encourages the reader to adopt a reflective and inquisitive outlook, and features:
• case study boxes;
• further reading and resources;
• guidance on the recent policy and system updates, including those through devolution.
Research doesn’t exist in a bubble but co-exists with a multitude of other tasks and commitments, yet there is more need for people to save time than ever before.
Brilliantly attuned to the demands placed on researchers, this book considers how students, academics and professionals alike can save time and stress without compromising the quality of their research or its outcomes. This third edition:
- is fully revised with new chapters on research and evaluation ethics, creative methods of collecting data and how research can make a positive difference;
-includes illustrative case studies throughout the book and each chapter concludes with exercises, discussion questions and a debate topic;
- is accompanied by a fully updated companion website.
This supportive book is designed for any student or practitioner who wants to know how to do research on top of their main job and still have a life.
The Best Interests Assessor (BIA) Practice Handbook is firmly grounded in real-life practice and remains the only textbook focusing directly on the BIA role. Offering clear and practical advice on the legal elements of the role, and the values and practice elements of working within the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) framework, this is essential reading for BIA students and practitioners.
This fully-updated edition takes account of recent legislative changes, including the planned changes from the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS), recent case law and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on BIA practice.
Packed with advice on delivering effective, person-centred, rights-driven practice, it includes:
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case studies;
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legal summaries;
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decision-making activities;
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CPD support;
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examples of new case law in practice.
Looking forward, the book considers the new context for practice in the Approved Mental Capacity Professional (AMCP) role within the LPS and the potential roles that BIAs might fulfil in this new framework in the future.
Gender is widely recognized as an important and useful lens for the study of International Relations. However, there are few books that specifically investigate masculinity/ies in relation to world politics.
Taking a feminist-inspired understanding of gender as its starting point, the book:
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explains that gender is both an asymmetrical binary and a hierarchy;
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shows how masculinization works via ‘nested hierarchies’ of domination and subordination;
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explores the imbrication of masculinities with the nation-state and great-power politics;
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develops an understanding of the arms trade with commercial processes of militarization.
Written in an accessible style, with suggestions for further reading, this book is an invaluable resource for students and teachers applying ‘the gender lens’ to global politics.
International development is a vibrant, interdisciplinary area of the social sciences. This Short Guide offers a uniquely succinct and balanced account of this politically charged subject. It distils both the classic and newer debates together in a clear framework and illustrates them with contemporary examples.
Designed to introduce a wide readership to international development, the book:
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considers how far the field has been reconfigured over time and to what extent it is likely to change in the future;
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reviews contemporary topics including tourism, migration and digital technologies;
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includes distinctive international case studies and examples.
By providing a succinct evaluation of competing approaches to, and perspectives on, the idea and practice of international development, this book offers students across the social sciences a distinct and invaluable introduction to the field.
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.
Students and researchers have an abundance of materials and sources available to them via the internet for use in their projects. However, there is little practical guidance available on the fundamentals of performing qualitative research with documents.
This valuable book enables readers to undertake high-quality, robust research using documents as data. Encouraging critical consideration of research design, the book guides readers step-by-step through the process of planning and undertaking a research project based on documentary analysis. It covers selecting a research topic and sample through to analysing and writing up the data.
The book includes:
• a wealth of case studies demonstrating how lessons can be applied in practice;
• summary boxes and suggestions for further reading in each chapter to guide learning;
• helpful online resources to facilitate designing your own research.
Accessible and comprehensive, this book will be invaluable for both students and researchers alike who are new to documentary analysis.
All the resources included in this book are available to download on the book’s webpage at https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/doing-your-research-project-with-documents/online-resources. Look for the Online Resources logo throughout the book.
Rural Places and Planning provides a compact analysis for students and early-career practitioners of the critical connections between place capitals and the broader ideas and practices of planning, seeded within rural communities. It looks across twelve international cases, examining the values that guide the pursuit of the ‘good countryside’.
The book presents rural planning – rooted in imagination and reflecting key values – as being embedded in the life of particular places, dealing with critical challenges across housing, services, economy, natural systems, climate action and community wellbeing in ways that are integrated and recognise broader place-making needs. It introduces the breadth of the discipline, presenting examples of what planning means and what it can achieve in different rural places.
With a contemporary overview of global social policy formation, the third edition of this leading textbook identifies key issues, debates and priorities for action in social policy across the Global South and North.
Accessible and lively, it incorporates seven new chapters covering theory, social justice, climate, migration, gender, young people and water, energy and food. The original chapters have also been fully updated to reflect major developments in the fast-changing world of global social policy. Key features include:
• overview and summary boxes to bookend each chapter;
• questions for discussion and follow-up activities;
• further reading and resources.
Exploring what it means to locate human welfare within a global framework of social policy analysis and action, this textbook offers a perfect guide for curious students.
