In these politically turbulent times, questions about democracy, power and society are frequently raised. How does power work in society? Can we ever achieve equal rights when the power dynamics in society are so skewed?
With the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions in focus, our publishing in this area addresses questions like these from multiple angles, from extensive research into democratic governance and the concept of political power, to the role of power between different nations in foreign policy negotiations
Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Democracy, power and governance, we aim to address the following goal:
Democracy, Power and Governance
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How can we have meaningful public conversations in the algorithmic age?
This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of arguing all sides of a case, the book offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in democratic societies.
This is a timely and urgent book for anyone who cares about the future of democracy in the digital era.
What role do science and technology play in society? What is the nature of expert knowledge? What is science’s relation to democracy?
This introduction to science, technology, and society answers these questions, and more, by exploring contemporary research on topics such as expertise, activism, science policy, and innovation. It offers a comprehensive resource for considering the place that science and technology have in contemporary societies, and the roles that they can and should play.
Accessible to a non-specialist audience, it draws on a rich range of cases and examples, from nuclear activism in India to content moderation in Kenya. Framing science as always social, and society as always shaped by science and technology, it asks: what worlds do we want science and technology to bring into being?
Organising ‘boundary spaces’ has become a practice for tackling wicked issues in societal planning. Such spaces bring together diverse actors to intentionally staged problem formulation and management processes. However, despite clear goals, boundary spaces face challenges. Moreover, the processes often generate dilemmas and paradoxes that participating actors are incapable of managing within the boundary space itself. In some situations, such tensions can amplify challenges or prevent results from impacting participating organisations. Using a transdisciplinary (TD) research approach, the aim of this article is to develop a better understanding of the different dilemmas and paradoxes that surround or arise within boundary spaces and thereby contribute to increasing their effectiveness in tackling the issues they were created to address.
This article originates from a TD research project that investigated four different boundary spaces of societal planning and research in Sweden. The project employed an iterative TD process that combined theoretical contributions from planning- and organisation studies with practical experiences from societal planning, and facilitation. The position of boundary spaces as being ‘between’ actors – ‘between’ in terms of representation and decision making – calls for further attention to the situatedness of dilemmas and paradoxes in space and time. Our approach resulted in an analytic framework where the dilemmas and paradoxes of boundary spaces were categorised as contextual, relational, process- or transformation-related. The results point at the relations between what we see as three interrelated tensions that ground the existence and functioning of boundary spaces: the mismatch dilemma, the commoning dilemma and the collaboration paradox.
Since the late 1980s, academics and activists have been drawing attention to a slow-moving global crisis: the ongoing destruction of global linguistic diversity. Despite this attention, language loss has proceeded unabated, and conservative estimates now suggest that around half the world’s languages will no longer be in use by the end of this century. In this provocation, I argue that only a global mass movement has the capacity to change the course of this crisis. I furthermore argue that a rights-based approach, centred on language rights, is our best bet for organising such a movement. Drawing on social movement studies, and my own experience as a language rights researcher and advocate, I explore three key areas where language rights provide the foundations for a mass movement in defence of linguistic diversity. First, I look at how language rights provide a discursive frame that resonates with other movements and clarifies the problem that needs to be addressed. Second, I look at how the concept of language rights can help recruit individuals and organisations into a mass movement and sustain their involvement in the cause. Third, I discuss how language rights provide a basis for effective collective action. In the conclusion I briefly discuss some of the challenges that will need to be overcome in forming a global mass movement for language rights.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has functioned without interruption for over a century, yet its intermediate position can obscure the importance of its judgments.
This book demonstrates the Court of Appeal’s pivotal role in securing justice, both by correcting lower court decisions and by developing the common law. It examines, in particular, how the Court has applied and developed the rule of law in a post-conflict society.
Authored by experts in the law of Northern Ireland, this compelling text is based on archival research, statistical and qualitative case analyses, court observations, and exclusive interviews with senior judges.
‘New economics’ discourses – comprising diverse approaches advocated as more just and sustainable replacements of dominant neoclassical and neoliberal economic perspectives – have been criticised as insufficiently coherent to form the ‘discourse coalitions’ necessary to enter the mainstream. To date there has been little systematic exploration of the agreement or divergence in new economics discourses. Here, we conduct a qualitative systematised review of new economics literature in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to analyse stances towards the economic status quo and the depth of change advocated in it, such as fundamental and systemic transformation or more superficial reformist or accepting types of change that mostly maintain current economic systems. We interpreted authors’ stances towards six key status quo themes: capitalism; neoliberalism; GDP-based economic growth; debt-based money; globalisation; and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the 525 documents analysed, there was relative consensus that neoliberalism needed transforming, stances towards GDP-based growth substantially diverged (from transformative to reformist/accepting), and stances towards the SDGs were mostly accepting, although the status quo themes tended to be infrequently mentioned overall. Different new economics approaches were associated with diverging stances. We suggest that alignment against neoliberalism and towards the SDGs may provide strategic coalescing points for new economics. Because stances towards core problematised aspects of mainstream economics were often not articulated, we encourage new economics scholars and practitioners to remain explicit, aware and reflexive with regard to the economic status quo, as well as strategic in their approach to seeking economic transformation.
International Organizations (IOs) have been at the forefront of responding to crises in the 21st century, and yet there is little comparative research on how, and how effectively, they have done this.
This book fills this gap by exploring what roles IOs take in response to global crises and to what effect. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book examines a vast array of international and regional organizations, including the International Organization for Migration, World Health Organization, African Union and European Union. Aiming to answer key questions about IO behaviour, the book investigates these IOs’ responses to pressing issues including the global COVID-19 pandemic, the liberal order and security, and the climate crisis.
This book is a manifesto for change that showcases new policy ideas for the next government.
Organised by the Society of Labour Lawyers, the Labour Party’s legal think tank, the contributors inspire debate about Britain’s future, exploring a wide range of issues from access to justice to family law reform, housing, employment, EU and trade law, asylum and refugee law, immigration and citizenship, international law and constitutional reform.
As Britain may see a change in government, this book is a must-have collection of new insights into how a Labour government can renew Britain.
Transdisciplinarity is creative human agency including cognitive, intellectual and behavioural activities of individuals and groups. These activities define and are mutually defined by beliefs and ideas, knowledge and know-how, language and meanings, norms and rules, and opinions and values. The cultivation of transdisciplinary projects should embrace these cultural, social and psychological predispositions because they are core constituents of a trans-anthropo-logic. This requires transcending common research methods used in scientific studies and using scaffolding that facilitates agency, and positioning individuals and groups. However, scientists are rarely trained to pilot projects involving multiple stakeholders with different positions. This article explains why trained facilitators are needed to pilot transdisciplinary projects. They can cultivate transcendence and transgression – both analysed by the late Julie Thompson Klein – beyond the scope and purpose of common research methods. In essence, transdisciplinary practices respect different ontologies and epistemologies while incorporating ethical principles and moral values. The cultivation of transdisciplinary projects should accommodate and reduce asymmetries of power between politicians, public administrators, property owners, researchers and laypeople that are shaped by extant historical and societal variables in specific situations. Transdisciplinary projects should also apply multiple sources of quantitative data and qualitative information that represent the complexity, diversity and perhaps incommensurability of intentions, meanings, perceptions and values about specific subjects or situations. This is being achieved by innovative projects that should become beacons for change.
Education is often posed as the harbinger of progress in discourses related to the development of marginalised Indigenous communities. However, since they entered the mainstream schools in the 1960s, the four Indigenous communities of Gudalur, India have experienced various forms of injustice in seeking formal education. This article draws from the work of the Vishwa Bharati Vidyodaya Trust, a community-driven organisation that has been working on matters related to the education of these four communities since 1996, and two research initiatives that captures the community’s voices on their experiences and aspirations related to education, to put forth recommendations for practice that is geared towards greater equality and justice for the children of Indigenous communities. Rooted in the belief that the active participation of the community is crucial to devising solutions that truly address in a sustainable manner the historical injustices faced by them, the article outlines various interventions at different sites of learning that builds community ownership and nurtures a meaningful continuum between the home and school environment of the children.
