Textbooks
Explore our diverse range of digital textbooks designed for course adoption and recommended reading at universities and colleges. We publish over 450 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 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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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.
The only up-to-date, accessibly written short guide to community development, this third edition offers an invaluable and authoritative introduction. Fully updated to reflect changes in policy, practice, economics and culture, it will equip readers with an understanding of the history and theory of community development, as well as practical guidance on how to do it.
This is a key text for all students and practitioners working with communities. It includes:
• a broad overview of core themes, concepts, basic practices and key issues in community development;
• an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on community life and well-being, along with the implications for longer-term community support;
• additional brand new content on the pressing issues of democratic decline, social fragmentation and isolation, social care pressures, technological developments and climate change.
Providing practical guidance based on real-life examples, this book shows researchers different forms and ways of keeping a research journal and how to get the most out of journaling.
Appealing to postgraduate students, new and experienced researchers, the book:
• provides a theoretical grounding and information about knowledge and sensory systems and reflexivity;
• presents a practical exploration of what a journal looks like and when and how to record entries;
• includes helpful end-of-chapter exercises and online resources.
Providing valuable food for thought and examples to experiment with, the book highlights the different forms of research journals and entries so that readers can find what works for them. Giving researchers licence to do things differently, the book encourages and enables readers to develop their own sense of researcher identity and voice.
Crossing the traditional divide between social work with children and families and adults, this text applies a lifecourse perspective, within an ecological frame. Based on the principle that practice drives theory, a practical approach for social work is put forward using five interconnected themes:
• duality of support and protection
• life transitions and life events
• intergenerational relations
• civic partnership and engagement
• health and wellbeing
Designed for students and practitioners, this text takes an enquiry-based approach using Critical ART (analysis, reflection and thinking). The book features:
• case studies
• research examples
• tips for Critical ART in practice
• further reading and resources
Nearly 20% of the population has a disability. Despite this, mainstream research often does not explicitly address the methodological and practical issues that can act as barriers to disabled people’s participation in social research. In this book, Aidley and Fearon provide a concise, practical introduction to making it easier for everyone to take part in research.
Requiring no prior knowledge about accessible research methods, the book:
• explains how removing barriers to participation will improve the quality of the research;
• covers the research process from design, to collecting data, to dissemination and publication;
• includes checklists and further reading, as well as useful examples and vignettes to illustrate how issues play out in practice.
This book will be invaluable to researchers from a variety of backgrounds looking to increase participation in their research, whether postgraduate students, experienced academic researchers, practitioners or professionals.
Why do democracies fall apart, and what can be done about it?
This book introduces students to the concept and causes of democratic decay in the modern world. Illustrating the integral link between public commitment to democratic norms and the maintenance of healthy democracies, it examines the key factors in decaying democracies, including:
• Economic inequality;
• Corruption;
• Populist and authoritarian discourse;
• Declining belief in political institutions and processes.
Drawing on real-world developments, and including international case studies, the book outlines the extent to which there is a ‘democratic recession’ in contemporary politics and shows how transnational networks and technology are impacting on this development.
Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of the first to demonstrate the enormous benefit creative methods offer for education research.
You do not have to be an artist to be creative, and the book encourages students, researchers and practitioners to discover and consider new ways to explore the field of education. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, comics, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement. Bridging academia and practice, the book offers:
• practical advice and tips on how to use creative methods in education research;
• numerous case studies from around the world providing real-life examples of creative research methods in education practice;
• reflective discussion questions to support learning.
This groundbreaking book brings creative writing to social research. Its innovative format includes creatively written contributions by researchers from a range of disciplines, modelling the techniques outlined by the authors. The book is user-friendly and shows readers:
• how to write creatively as a social researcher;
• how creative writing can help researchers to work with participants and generate data;
• how researchers can use creative writing to analyse data and communicate findings.
Inviting beginners and more experienced researchers to explore new ways of writing, this book introduces readers to creatively written research in a variety of formats including plays and poems, videos and comics. It not only gives social researchers permission to write creatively but also shows them how to do so.
