Conflict, Security and Peace

Addressing UN Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, the books and journal articles we publish in this area focus on the impact of vast power differentials and the issues that need to be addressed as a threat to human rights and international security, including conflict-based migration and political instability. 

Our aim is to publish innovative research that supports finding ways to protect groups that can be an easy target for violence and discrimination.

Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Conflict, security and peace, we aim to address the following goal:  

Conflict, Security and Peace

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How do local communities effectively build peace and reconciliation before, during and after open violence? This trailblazing book gives practical examples, from the Global North, the former Soviet bloc and Global South, on communities addressing conflict in divided and contested societies.

The book draws on a range of critical perspectives and practitioner analysis. The diverse case studies demonstrate the considerable knowledge, skills, commitment, courage and relationships within local communities that a critical community development approach can support and encourage.

Concluding with activists’ perspectives on working with the challenges of violence, the book offers insights for both an understanding of the root causes of conflict and for bottom-up peacebuilding.

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Fieldwork Interrupted

This international, edited collection brings together personal accounts from researchers working in and on conflict and explores the roles of emotion, violence, uncertainty, identity and positionality within the process of doing research, as well as the complexity of methodological choices.

It highlights the researchers’ own subjectivity and presents a nuanced view of conflict research that goes beyond the ‘messiness’ inherent in the process of research in and on violence. It addresses the uncomfortable spaces of conflict research, the potential for violence of research itself and the need for deeper reflection on these issues.

This powerful book opens up spaces for new conversations about the realities of conflict research. These critical self-reflections and honest accounts provide important insights for any scholar or practitioner working in similar environments.

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Chinese Money, American Power and the End of History

After a meteoric rise, China’s once inexorable growth has come to a screeching halt. With it ends China’s dream of establishing a new tianxia (‘harmonious order’) in Asia with China at its centre. Salvatore Babones provides an up-to-date assessment of China’s economic problems and how they are undermining China’s challenge to the Western-dominated world order. As China’s neighbours and many of its own most talented people look to the United States to ensure their security and prosperity, global power is slowly but surely consolidating in a twenty-first century American Tianxia.

A closely argued antidote to defeatist accounts of Western decline, this book tells the story of how liberal individualism has become the leitmotif of the American Tianxia, an emerging world-system in which people of all nationalities seek a share in the economic, cultural, and political system that is America writ large.

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Methods that matter
Editors: and

Drawing on the insights of some of the world’s leading authorities in public policy analysis, this important book offers a distinct and critical showcase of emerging forms of discovery for policy-making. Chapter by chapter this expert group of social scientists showcase their chosen method or approach, showing the context, the method’s key features and how it can be applied in practice, including the scope and limitations of its application and value to policy makers. Arguing that it is not just econometric analysis, cost benefit or surveys that can do policy work, the contributors demonstrate a range of other methods that can provide evidenced-based policy insights and how they can help facilitate progressive policy outcomes. The book will be ideal for upper level undergraduate students as well as Public Policy post-graduates, and can be used as the basis of an intensive learning experience for policy makers.

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Practical lessons for effective policy
Authors: and

Greater transparency is increasingly seen as the answer to a wide range of social issues by governments, NGOs and businesses around the world. However, evidence of its impact is mixed. Using case studies from around the world including India, Tanzania, the UK and US, Transparency and the open society surveys the adoption of transparency globally, providing an essential framework for assessing its likely performance as a policy and the steps that can be taken to make it more effective. It addresses the role of transparency in the context of growing use by governments and businesses of surveillance and database driven decision making. The book is written for anyone involved in the use of transparency whether campaigning from outside or working inside government or business to develop policies.

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International Recognition and Response

The use of rape as a deliberate tactic of war is a serious human rights issue that needs to be addressed as a threat to human and international security. This ground-breaking book is the first to analyse its use as an act of war against civilians and international progress away from tacit acceptance toward active rejection of this violation of international law.

Exploring international responses to sexual violence in war, it introduces the main historical facts, theoretical terms and legal developments behind UNSC resolutions on women, peace and security and the emerging practice of international law in this area. It identifies best practice in moving beyond accepting rape in war as inevitable to the recognition of tactical rape as a security concern for women, men, states and the international community.

Powerful testimonies of victims are included to bring the issue alive, making this a much-needed volume for academic and professional communities.

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How Social Media and DIY Culture Contribute to Democracy, Communities and the Creative Economy

The creative citizen unbound introduces the concept of ‘creative citizenship’ to explore the potential of civic-minded creative individuals in the era of social media and in the context of an expanding creative economy.

Drawing on the findings of a 30-month study of communities supported by the UK research funding councils, multidisciplinary contributors examine the value and nature of creative citizenship, not only in terms of its contribution to civic life and social capital but also to more contested notions of value, both economic and cultural.

This original book will be beneficial to researchers and students across a range of disciplines including media and communication, political science, economics, planning and economic geography, and the creative and performing arts.

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Policy, Politics and Practices

What impact have the unprecedented and rapid changes to the structure of education in England had on school governors and policy makers? And what effect has the intensifying media and regulatory focus had on the volunteers who take on the job?

Jacqueline Baxter takes the 2014 ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, in which it was alleged that governors at 25 Birmingham schools were involved in the “Islamisation” of secular state schools, as a focus point to examine the pressures and challenges in the current system. Informed by her twenty years’ experience as a school governor, she considers both media analysis and policy as well as the implications for the future of a democratic system of education in England.

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Restructuring the welfare state
Editors: and

How did the UK Coalition Government’s policies differ from previous Conservative (or Labour) Government policies? How did the Liberal Democrats influence them? And what can this tell us about the likely policy direction of the Conservative government elected in May 2015?

Responding to the political and social policy changes made between 2010-15 this book considers the relationship between the two coalition parties to provide a critical assessment of how their policies affected the British welfare state, including the impact of ‘austerity’.

Looking beyond 2015, the contributors consider what the implications of these changes may be for social policy, both the challenges and opportunities, which will present themselves in the future.

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Uneven development and displacement

Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, working in tandem with other urban processes to lay the foundations for the exploitative processes of gentrification world-wide.

Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement critically assesses and tests the meaning and significance of gentrification in places outside the ‘usual suspects’ of the Global North. Informed by a rich array of case studies from cities in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond, the book (re)discovers the important generalities and geographical specificities associated with the uneven process of gentrification globally. It highlights intensifying global struggles over urban space and underlines gentrification as a growing and important battleground in the contemporary world.

The book will be of value to students and academics, policy makers, planners and community organisations.

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