Social and Public Policy

As the leading publisher in Social and Public Policy, we publish in the core social sciences to highlight social issues, advance debate and positively influence policy and practice. 

Our list leads the way on conversations around inequality and social injustice featuring authors such as Peter Townsend, Kayleigh Garthwaite, Danny Dorling, Pete Alcock, John Hills and Bob Jessop. Series including the International Library of Policy Analysis and Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy bring international, high-quality scholarship together in order to address global social challenges.

Our key journals in this field are the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, an internationally unique forum for leading research on the themes of poverty and social justice, Policy & Politics, a world-leading journal that is committed to advancing our understanding of the dynamics of policy making and implementation, and Evidence & Policy, dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between researchers and the evidence they produce and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners.

Social and Public Policy

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Drawing on the contributions to this edited collection, this final chapter explores the challenges and opportunities of developing a truly interdisciplinary approach within multi-species dementia studies. By exploring different understandings of what interdisciplinarity is and how to practice it effectively, the chapter provides some tentative suggestions for how we might explore connections in the work of researchers approaching dementia from very different ontological, theoretical and methodological perspectives. In so doing, the chapter highlights the potential for interdisciplinary, multi-species thinking to inform policy and practice approaches to dementia and seeks to encourage others working in dementia to consider how they may cultivate a multi-species, more-than-human approach within their practice.

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In this chapter I share my own interspecies family experiences of dementia, end-of-life care and bereavement. I describe how my experiences during the COVID-19 lockdowns helped me to explore and distinguish the concepts of caring for and caring about both humans and non-human animals at the end of their lives. I highlight the extent to which these concepts shape and separate contemporary landscapes in veterinary and medical understandings of end-of-life care. First, I explore the historic loss of an aged pet and the subsequent realisation that my dog would have lived longer in lockdown. Next, I describe the experience of being unable to visit a family member who was living with dementia in a care home during the weeks leading up to their death. I then consider the clinical implications of our capacities to care for and care about both humans and non-human animals at the end of their lives. Finally, this chapter illustrates the value of thinking across the care of human and non-human species to broadening our understanding of the meanings of care at the end of a life, and engages with speculative interests in caring relationships between humans and non-human animals.

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In this chapter we use recent stories of scientific breakthrough around the amyloid cascade hypothesis (ACH) to frame our exploration of the organisation of translational research on dementia using mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. Telling a story of success about the ACH today has involved narrowing down the ways that people, animals and drug pathways are brought together by focusing on the specific biological processes that can be modelled, evidenced and altered in multi-species experimental systems. We then explore how people affected by dementia, acting as patient representatives in reviewing applications for new biomedical research, locate themselves and their families within these stories of recurrent hope and delayed promise. We conclude by reflecting on the different dimensions of accountability in dementia research and the challenge of working across multi-species relations and the multiple versions of dementia. We suggest the processes of fabrication described here may be usefully applied to understand the complex histories of animal models of dementia and open up opportunities for multidisciplinary research able to articulate the multiplicity of dementia with multi-species dementia.

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Affordable animatronic (‘robotic’) dogs and cats are increasingly being introduced as therapeutic devices for people living with dementia. Studies have focused on the impact of robotic pet programmes on treatment outcomes and implementation considerations, and some scholars have explored the ethics of misconstruing robots as living pets. Less attention has been paid to social and relational dimensions of this phenomenon, particularly when viewed through a critical posthumanism lens. To redress this gap, this chapter explores care providers’ perspectives of the experiences of older adults living with dementia who were provided with Joy for All™ robotic pets. Qualitative interviews were conducted with formal (professional) and family caregivers. Interview data were supplemented by observational fieldwork within a long-term care facility. A thematic analysis led us to identify three overarching themes describing these experiences: reluctant acquiescence; meaningful utility; and navigating illusion and risk. Our findings confirm that robotic pets may be experienced as a relational and often complex social phenomenon rather than simply as a therapeutic tool. Drawing upon critical posthumanism in concert with relationship-centred care may help reconcile the substantial benefits they may offer to some people living with dementia with ethical concerns surrounding their use.

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The human microbiome (commensal microbes) and pathobiome (disease causing microbes) establish a delicate balance with the immune system. The immune system is a complex network of rapidly dividing cells and molecules that exercise surveillance in our body to eliminate damaged cells and infectious agents and its actions produce inflammation in a highly regulated manner. While the brain has been previously referred to as an immune privileged site, there is increasing debate around the role of infection and inflammation, including ‘sterile inflammation’ which is observed in ageing and chronic disease, in the development of neurological disorders. Herein, we discuss the research supporting the hypothesis that infectious disease and inflammation (dependent or independent of infection) impact the development of several neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and the implications for people already living with these conditions. We also present the growing body of evidence that there is a very active interaction between the central nervous system and the immune system.

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This chapter introduces readers to the emerging subfield of multi-species dementia studies. The chapter begins by outlining the role anthropocentricism and liberal humanist thinking has historically played in shaping our understandings of what dementia is and of that which dementia affects. Drawing on the work of the Multi-Species Dementia International Research Network, the chapter outlines four key areas where multi-species approaches have the potential to advance our understandings of dementia and to stimulate new areas for research and innovation. These are: dementia pathology and illness experience; care and caring; dementia, self and environment; and rights, power and personhood. It concludes with an overview of each chapter and of what they each contribute to an understanding of dementia as a multi-species, more-than-human phenomenon.

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In this chapter, we bring together critical kinship studies and the heuristic of a queer menagerie to interrogate love and loss across species lines. Drawing on the authors’ own experiences, the chapter explores how some humans negotiate life with an animal experiencing cognitive decline, and what this ultimately means for the boundaries of multi-species kinship. In reconstructing our reflective accounts, we engage with research on human–animal kinship, animals and dementia, and humans and the loss of an animal companion. Through exploring the multilevel disenfranchised grief associated with the loss of our dogs we foreground a critical kinship studies spotlight on multi-species households. This kinship centres love and emotions, and recognises the queer menageries created by humans and animals together.

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Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach

Dementia is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Responding to the global dementia challenge, however, affects more than humans alone. We live in a multi-species world but often think about dementia in mono-species ways. From the lab to the living room, other beings are “on the scene” and our relations with them affect how we understand, experience, and respond to dementia. Drawing on cutting-edge work across the social and biological sciences, this book offers readers the tools to respond to dementia in multi-species ways. By exploring a range of topics, from pathology to personhood, contributors highlight how thinking about dementia as a more-than-human phenomenon may enable new ways of responding to our global dementia challenge.

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Personhood has become a keystone concept within qualitative dementia studies and person-centred dementia care. However, understandings of what constitutes personhood, and of the ways in which personhood is affected by dementia disease progression, have been founded largely upon anthropocentric and liberal humanist assumptions. Following a critique of the standard paradigm of personhood, this chapter outlines a more multi-species approach to person-centredness in dementia. Our reframing begins with a re-understanding of the body, as an intra-corporeal landscape of multi-species relations. Our focus then extends to what Clifton Bryant refers to as the ‘zoological dimension’ and to how everyday encounters involving people with dementia and animals can be incorporated within the lens of person-centredness. Building on these foundations, we advocate for the cultivation of response-ability that recognises the ways in which personhood is enabled through the mutual becoming of humans and animals within everyday worlds of dementia.

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This chapter discusses what we currently know about dementia in animals, including some of the behavioural, cognitive and neuropathological age-related changes seen in these animals. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) produces characteristic changes in the brain, such as the abnormal accumulation of two proteins: β-amyloid (Aβ) and tau, that may lead to cognitive decline. While mice are widely used as models for the study of AD and its neuropathology (that is, Aβ and tau brain deposition), they do not produce these changes naturally. There are many other animals that naturally and spontaneously develop AD-like neuropathology and could be used as models of AD. These include cats, leopards, cheetahs, donkeys, dolphins and wolverines, among others. Some, particularly dogs and cats, have shown not only to abnormally accumulate Aβ and tau within their brains, but to develop an age-related cognitive decline as well. The chapter discusses how closely these changes resemble those seen in humans with AD. The evidence covered in this chapter reminds us that animals are not so different to us, as they experience similar age-related brain changes and develop cognitive decline and highlights the importance of recognising that dementia is not a uniquely human condition.

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