Bristol University Press

Do numbers have a life of their own or do we give them meaning? How do data play a role in constructing people’s perceptions of the world around them? How far can we trust numbers to speak truth to power?

The COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique moment to answer these questions. This book examines how politicians, experts and journalists gave meaning to data through the story of seven iconic numbers from the pandemic.

Shedding light on a new dawn of data, this book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between numbers, meaning and society.

Bringing together eminent International Relations (IR) scholars from China and the West, this book examines moral realism from a range of different perspectives. Through its analyses, it verifies the robustness of moral realism in IR theory.

The first section of the book is written by Chinese scholars and dedicated to debates about how moral realism relates to traditional schools of IR theory. The latter portion, provided by Western contributors, critically investigates both the universal and practical values of moral realism. Finally, Yan Xuetong concludes by responding constructively to all criticisms and further exploring the nature and characteristics of interstate leadership in moral realism.

Information matters to us. Whether recorded, recoded, or unregistered, information co-shapes our present and our becoming.

This book advances new views on information and surveillance practices. Starting with a methodology for studying the liveliness of information, Kaufmann provides four empirical examples of making information matter: association, conversion, secrecy, and speculation. In so doing, she presents an original and comprehensive argument about the materiality of information and invites us to investigate, and to reflect about what matters.

This is a go-to text for scholars and professionals working in the fields of surveillance, data studies, and the digitization of specific societal sectors.

What part do the values of growth and prosperity, freedom and justice, security and democracy play in social policy and human welfare? How can we judge the validity of these – the founding principles of Western liberalism – and the policies they shape, as the recipe for progress?

At a time of global ‘permacrisis’, Sebastian Taylor applies his extensive frontline experience working with health systems and healthcare in the Global North and South to assess the concrete impact of contemporary liberal values on our welfare, development and environmental survival.

Drawing on research from around the world, he uses health as an objective metric to assess how effective these policies are for individuals and society as a whole.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic affected all parts of the country, it did not do so equally. Northern England was hit the hardest, exposing more than ever the extent of regional inequalities in health and wealth.

Using original data analysis from a wide range of sources, this book demonstrates how COVID-19 has impacted the country unequally in terms of mortality, health care, mental health, and the economy.

The book provides a striking empirical overview of the impact of the pandemic on regional inequalities and explores why the North fared worse.

It sets out what needs to be learnt from the pandemic to prevent regional inequality growing and to reduce inequalities in health and wealth in the future.

Despite frequent claims that waste is being reduced, consumer-reliant economies, everyday consumption and the waste industry continue to produce and demand more waste.

Combining a lucid style with robust empirical and theoretical research, this book examines the root causes of the global waste problem, rather than simply the symptoms. It challenges existing waste policies, highlighting what needs to change if we are to get serious in tackling this global problem. It concludes with policy implications for shifting waste from an ‘end-of-pipe’ concern to being at the heart of the debate over decarbonization.

The French version of this book was the winner of the 2022 Grand Prix de la Protection Sociale.

Over the years many disability-related rights have been legally recognized, but how has this changed the everyday lives of people with disabilities?

Drawing on biographical interviews collected from individuals with mobility or visual impairments in France, this book analyses the reception of disability policies in the fields of education, employment, social rights and accessibility. It examines to what extent these policies contribute to the realization of associated rights among disabled people. The book demonstrates that the rights associated with disability suffer from major implementation flaws, while shedding light on the very active role of disabled citizens in the realization of their rights.

Human population growth is a serious biospheric problem yet is largely overlooked. Because of the neglect of demography, environmental policies—while well-intentioned—are unlikely to succeed.

This book gives a concise review of world fertility rates and population growth, and offers a valuable summary of studies of the impact of overpopulation on the biosphere. In addition, the book explains key demographic variables to consider when formulating law and government policy relevant to childbearing, and it summarizes findings of social science research—findings that contradict popular assumptions about the impact of government interventions addressing the frequency of childbearing and immigration.

In highly unequal societies such as the UK, where the top 10% take a higher share of disposable income than in most other European countries, many feel resentment towards high earners. On paper, they are doing well, but inequality isn’t even working for them.

Uncomfortably Off reveals that those generally considered to be the most affluent feel anxious about the future and struggle to keep up, or even to stay put. They are starting to doubt their common sense ideas about hard work and meritocracy as work pays less and less and life is becoming more uncomfortable.

This book makes two crucial arguments. First, reducing income inequality will benefit everyone, even those quite near the top. Second, we need to understand the anxieties of high earners to understand their politics. As leading managers and professionals they have disproportionate influence on the institutions that rule over our public life. Their interests are ultimately not that dissimilar from those of the median earner: being able to afford a good quality of life in an ever more expensive and uncertain world.

The hope of this book is to prompt high earners to question accepted truths and long-held beliefs that affect how they see themselves and judge others. In doing so, it seeks to help us all understand why dismissing the concerns of this group will not help in the fight to solve inequality.

This collection explores leading values and concepts in global child-based research through the lens of reflexivity.

The book considers issues such as the identities and roles of researchers, as well as the burdens, boundaries, and ethical frameworks which govern their activities. Using empirical examples from Israel, India, Thailand, and England, expert contributors discuss a range of topics including online safety, disabilities, gang membership, safeguarding, sexting, and child prostitution.

This book guides childhood research towards a more reflexive debate that critically challenges conventions, and highlights plurality of voice.

Combining a compulsive read with rigorous academic analysis, this book tells the real-life stories of drug dealers involved in county lines networks, including their methods, motives and misfortunes. Conventional wisdom surrounding county lines often portrays drugs runners as exploited victims and gang proliferation as a market-driven exercise, and suggests a business model facilitated exclusively by smart phone technology and routinely regulated by violence.

Aimed at students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers, this myth-busting, accessible book offers a novel way of thinking about county lines in relation to gangs and serious organised crime and presents new ideas for drug crime prevention, intervention and enforcement.

For anyone studying childhood or families, a consideration of the state may not always seem obvious, yet a good critical knowledge of politics, social policy and social theory is vital to understanding their impacts upon families’ everyday lives. Accessibly written and assuming no prior understanding, it shows how key concepts, including vulnerability, risk, resilience, safeguarding and wellbeing are socially constructed.

Carefully designed to support learning, it provides students with clear guidance on how to use what they have read when writing academic assignments alongside questions designed to support the development of critical thinking skills.

Covering issues from what the family is within a multicultural society, through issues around poverty, social mobility and life-chances, this book gives students an excellent grounding in matters relating to work with children and families. It features:

• ‘using this chapter’ sections showing how the content can be used in assignments;

• tips on applying critical thinking to books and articles – and how to make use of such thinking in essays;

• further reading.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

In the latest edition of Social Policy Review, experts review the leading social policy scholarship from the past year.

The book addresses current issues and critical debates within the field, with a particular focus on intergenerational research. Contributors also explore key social policy and research developments across a wide range of themes, including the impact of COVID-19 on eldercare and homelessness, research into Faith Based Organisations, local social services in Italy and social policies for Autistic adults in England and Wales.

Published in association with the Social Policy Association, this comprehensive volume will be essential reading for students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines.

From Deliveroo to Amazon, digital platforms have drastically transformed the way we work. But how are these transformations being received and challenged by workers?

This book provides a radical interpretation of the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age, developing an invaluable approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations.

Using case studies taken from Europe and North America, it offers a comparative perspective on the mobilizing trajectories of different platform workers and their distinct organizational forms and action repertoires.

This is an innovative book that offers a complete view of the new labour conflicts in the platform economy.

Leading migration researcher Louise Ryan’s topical and intersectional book provides rich insights into migrants’ social networks.

It draws on more than 200 interviews with migrants who followed various transnational routes in every decade since the 1940s, in order to build valuable longitudinal perspectives and comparisons. With a particular focus on London, it charts how social networks are formed and sustained, how trust is developed and how social support is accessed, and explores the key opportunities and obstacles that migrants encounter.

This is a seminal fusion of migration studies and social network analysis that casts new light on both subjects, essential for those interested in immigration, ethnicity, diversity and inequalities.

A wave of innovation driven by the convergence of digital and molecular technologies is transforming food production and ways of eating in the US, Western Europe and Australasia. This book explores a range of contemporary agri-food issues, such as the digitalisation of farm production, aka Precision Agriculture, farmer independence, gene editing, alternative proteins and the rise of app-based home food deliveries.

This is the first book to provide a systemic analysis of technological innovation and its socio-economic consequences in modern food systems, including the ‘hollowing out’ of rural communities and pronounced industrial concentration. The food system is under growing public pressure to respond to global climate change, but this book finds little evidence of transition to sustainable low-carbon trajectories.

Generativity or ‘giving back’ is regarded as a common life stage, occurring for many around middle age. For the first time, this book offers qualitative research on the lives and social relationships of older imprisoned women. In-depth interviews with 29 female prisoners in the south-eastern United States show that older women both engage in generative behaviours in prison and also wish to do so upon their release.

As prisoners continue to age, the US finds itself at a crossroads on prison reform, with potential decarceration beginning with older prisoners. The COVID-19 pandemic has led many to consider how to thrive under difficult circumstances and in stressing the resilience of older incarcerated women, this book envisions what this could look like.

This book explores civil–military relations in Asia. With chapters on individual countries in the region, it provides a comprehensive account of the range of contemporary Asian practices under conditions of abridged democracy, soft authoritarianism or complete totalitarianism.

Through its analysis, the book argues that civil–military relations in Asia ought to be examined under the concept of ‘Asian military evolutions’. It demonstrates that while Asian militaries have tried to incorporate standard, Western-derived frameworks of civil–military relations, it has been necessary to adapt such frameworks to suit local circumstances. The book reveals how this has in turn led to creative fusions and novel changes in making civil–military relations an asset to furthering national security objectives.

Poverty in India is intimately connected with caste, untouchability, colonialism and indentured servitude, inseparable from the international experience of slavery and race.

Focusing on historical and modern practices, this book goes beyond traditional economic approaches to poverty and demonstrates its genesis in exclusion, isolation, domination and extraction resulting in the removal of human and economic rights. Examining cash and asset transfers, as well as the enhancement of women’s rights, primary health and education, it scrutinizes inadequacies in compensatory policies for redressing the balance.

This is an original interdisciplinary contribution that offers bold domestic and international policies anchored in human radicalism to eradicate poverty.

This book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe.

Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture.

Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book centres on various contestations in Myanmar society and illustrates the ways in which these are reflected in civil society.

The book offers a concise overview of recent political developments in the country, from the short-lived attempts at democratization to the 2021 military coup, and analyses the involvement of various civil society actors, as well as their international supporters. It incorporates multiple identities and fault lines in Myanmar society and explains how these influence diverse perceptions, framing and agenda setting as political developments unfold.

The book provides an up-to-date overview of the main identities and contestations within Myanmar’s civil society and, by extension, within Myanmar society as a whole. It also gives recommendations to donors, policy makers and researchers wishing to better understand and support local civil society actors operating in repressive environments.

This book looks at the changes that have taken place in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, following the lockdown of societies and imposition of border controls in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus.

Using empirical evidence from Portugal, a geopolitically important point of intersection within Europe and between Global South and Global North, the book examines consequences of the apparent end of mobility expansionism, developing a refreshing theoretical concept of ‘immobility turn.’

Focusing on the tourist industry, universities hosting international students and migration agencies, the book offers invaluable insights about how the pandemic affected institutions and individuals’ lives, informing policy-making processes on a global level.

In the context of widespread precarity and ongoing crises, it is no surprise ruins have captured much attention in recent years. This book is about a new kind of space, one that is deeply troubling for consumer society: the retail ruin.

Jacob C. Miller bridges human geography, archaeology and critical urban studies to offer a starting point for conceptualizing retail ruins. Drawing on fieldnotes and photographs, Miller crafts a hauntological approach informed by the theories of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida to more recent thinking on assemblage, spectacle and the politics of urban space.

Computational media govern our experiences by externalizing our knowledge and memories, mining data from our behaviour to influence our decision-making, and creating emotionally rewarding and sensory pleasures. But does that mean human perception is becoming a product of human-machine symbiosis in this new media ecology?

This ground-breaking collection explores the ways in which digital information technologies form and influence human perception and experience. Examining the relationship between technological reductionism and the body, it takes on board discursive perspectives from the humanities and brings digital media, affect, and body studies into conversation with one another.

Written by pioneering authors in the field, this book expands our understanding of human perception, animation, technology, and the body.

Only 15 kilometres away from the border of Zimbabwe, Musina is an obscure town in South Africa that the media cast into the public eye in the wake of the 2008 Zimbabwean economic crisis.

Taking as its starting point the arrival of thousands of displaced Zimbabwean migrants at Musina, this book presents valuable new perspectives on the temporality of migration and the governance of immobilities. The author explores the role of humanitarian actors in supporting migrants and examines the outcomes of government-led activities in the longer term.

This is an insightful assessment of how state and non-state practices intertwine in the management of largely immobile people, and of the importance of time in understanding African migration and borders.

Democracy should enable citizens to play an informed role in determining how power is exercised for their common wellbeing, but this only works if people have the understanding, skills and confidence to engage effectively in public affairs. Otherwise, any voting system can be subverted to serve the interests of propagandists and demagogues.

This book brings together leading experts on learning for democracy to explore why and how the gap in civic competence should be bridged.

Drawing on research findings and case examples from the UK, the US and elsewhere, it will set out why change is necessary, what could be taught differently to ensure effective political engagement, and how a lasting impact in improving citizens’ learning for democratic participation can be made.

Bringing together a team of international scholars, this volume provides a foundational guide to queer methodologies in the study of political violence and conflict.

Contributors provide illuminating discussions on why queer approaches are important, what they entail and how to utilise a queer approach to political violence and conflict. The chapters explore a variety of methodological approaches, including fieldwork, interviews, cultural analysis and archival research. They also engage with broader academic debates, such as how to work with research partners in an ethical manner.

Including valuable case studies from around the world, the book demonstrates how these methods can be used in practice. It is the first critical, in-depth discussion on queer methods and methodologies for research on political violence and conflict.

Why is finance so important? How do stock markets work and what do they really do? Most importantly, what might finance be and what could we expect from it?

Exploring contemporary finance via the development of stock exchanges, markets and the links with states, Roscoe mingles historical and technical detail with humorous anecdotes and lively portraits of market participants.

Deftly combining research and autobiographical vignettes, he offers a cautionary tale about the drive of financial markets towards expropriation, capture and exclusion. Positioning financial markets as central devices in the organization of the global economy, he includes contemporary concerns over inequality, climate emergency and (de)colonialism and concludes by wondering, in the market’s own angst-filled voice, what the future for finance might be, and how we might get there.

The past 30 years have seen risk become a major field of study, most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic positioning it at the centre of public awareness, yet there is limited understanding of how risk can and should be used in policy making.

This book provides an accessible guide to the key elements of risk in policy making, including its role in rhetoric to legitimise decisions and choices.

Using risk as a framework, it examines how policy makers in a range of countries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and explains why some were more successful than others.

This book is about tax and social policy and how they interact with each other.

The impact of taxation as an instrument of social policy is central in influencing redistribution and behaviour. This broad-based edited collection fills a significant gap in both literatures, bringing together disparate debates in this emerging area of analysis.

It guides readers through the key interactions of tax and social policies and the central debates and challenges posed by their effect on each other. It examines how analyses might be combined and policy options developed for more effective delivery and impact in both areas.

From health tracking to diet apps to biohacking, technology is changing how we relate to our material, embodied selves.

Drawing from a range of disciplines and case studies, this volume looks at what makes these health and genetic technologies unique and explores the representation, communication and internalization of health knowledge.

Showcasing how power and inequality are reflected and reproduced by these technologies, discourses and practices, this book will be a go-to resource for scholars in science and technology studies as well as those who study the intersection of race, gender, socio-economic status, sexuality and health.

This book rethinks meritocracy as a form of coloniality, namely, a social imaginary that reproduces narratives of ethnic and racial difference between European centres and peripheries, and between Europe and its others.

Drawing on interviews with working and middle class, white and Black Italians who moved to Britain after the 2008 economic crisis, the book explores the narratives of Northern meritocracy and Southern backwardness that inform migrants' motivations for moving abroad, and how these narratives are experienced within classed, racialised and gendered migrations.

Connecting decolonial theory with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, this book provides innovative insights into the relationships between meritocracy, coloniality and European whiteness, and into the social stratification of EU migrations.

We are often expected to trust technologies, and how they are used, even if we have good reason not to. There is no room to mistrust.

Exploring relations between trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of ‘trustification’ used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimize exploitation and increase inequalities.

Aimed at social scientists, computer scientists and public policy, the book aptly reveals how trust is operationalized and converted into a metric in order to extract legitimacy from populations and support the furthering of technology to manage society.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded, stark social inequalities have increasingly been revealed and, in many cases, exacerbated by the global health crisis.

This book explores these inequalities, identifying three thematic strands: power and governance, gender and marginalized communities. By examining these three themes in relation to the effects of the pandemic, the book uncovers how unequal the pandemic truly is. It brings together invaluable insights from a range of international scholars across multiple disciplines to critically analyse how these inequalities have played out in the context of COVID-19 as a first step towards achieving social justice.

Women and families within the criminal justice system (CJS) are increasingly the focus of research and this book considers the timely issues concerning experiences of punishment, abuse and justice. With insights from frontline practice and from the lived experiences of women, the collection examines prison experiences in a post-COVID-19 world, domestic violence and the successes and failures of family support.

A companion to the first edited collection, Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice, the book sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the CJS.

Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.

To reduce emissions and address climate change, we need to invest in renewables and rapidly decarbonise our energy networks. However, decarbonisation is often seen as a technical project, detached from questions of politics and social justice. What if this is leading to unfair transitions, in which some people bear the costs of change while others benefit?

In this timely and expansive book, Ed Atkins asks: are we getting decarbonisation right? And how could it be made better for people and communities? In doing so, this book proposes a different type of energy transition. One that prioritises and takes opportunities to do better – to provide better jobs, community ownership and improve people’s homes and lives.

This edited collection offers the first system-wide account of the impact of COVID-19 on crime and justice in England and Wales. It provides a critical discussion of the challenges faced by criminal justice agencies (prison, probation, youth justice, courts, police), professionals and service users in adapting to the extraordinary pressures of the pandemic on policy, practice and lived experience.

The text integrates first-hand narrative and artistic accounts from a variety of key stakeholders experiencing the criminal justice system (CJS). The editors recommend a range of evidence-based policy and practice improvements, not only in terms of planning for future pandemics, but also those that will benefit the CJS and its stakeholders in the longer term.

Taking a unique and critical approach to the study of Public Law, this book explores the main topics in UK Public Law from a range of underexplored perspectives and amplifies the voices of scholars who are underrepresented in the field. As such, it represents a much-needed complement to traditional textbooks in Public Law.

Including insights from a diverse list of contributors, the book:

• Enriches students’ understanding of the dynamics that emerge within public law;

• Highlights the impact of historical and societal inequities on public law norms;

• Demonstrates the ways in which those norms may impact minorities and perpetuate inequalities.

With most chapters written by underrepresented or minoritised persons in the field, this text offers students a critical, rich, and insightful approach to public law.

Political hackers, like the infamous Anonymous collective, have demonstrated their willingness to use political violence to further their agendas. However, many of their causes – targeting terrorist groups, fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, and protecting people’s freedom of expression, autonomy and privacy – are intuitively good things to fight for.

This book will create a new framework that argues that when the state fails to protect people, hackers can intervene and evaluates the hacking based on the political or social circumstances. It highlights the space for hackers to operate as legitimate actors; guides hacker activity by detailing what actions are justified toward what end; outlines mechanisms to aid hackers in reaching ethically justified decisions; and directs the political community on how to react to these political hackers.

Applying this framework to the most pivotal hacking operations within the last two decades, including the Arab Spring, police brutality in the USA and the Nigerian and Ugandan governments’ announcements of homophobic legislation, it offers a unique contribution to conceptualising hacking as a contemporary political activity.

Following the global financial crisis of 2008, there has been significant interest among scholars and activists in alternative forms of organization that operate according to noncapitalist logic, including Alternative Consumer Cooperatives (ACCs).

Using the example of Turkey, where neoliberal economics combined with authoritarian politics formed conditions that have profound social and economic consequences, this book investigates ACCs as spaces for prefigurative food politics.

Offering a novel perspective on alternative forms of organizing, this book challenges the easy assumptions of what it means to be a scholar working on activism in the global north and shows how, through the foundational values of solidarity, reciprocity and responsibility, it is possible to create new and imaginative forms of politics and activism.

In a time of great gloom and doom internationally and of major global problems, this book offers an invaluable contribution to our understanding of alternative societies that could be better for humans and the environment.

Bringing together a wide range of approaches and new strands of economic and social thinking from across the US, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Luke Martell critically assesses contemporary alternatives and shows the ways forward with a convincing argument of pluralist socialism.

Presenting a much-needed introduction to the debate on alternatives to capitalism, this ambitious book is not about how things are but how they can be!

Rejecting the assumption that housing and cities are separate from nature, David Clapham advances a new research framework that integrates housing with the rest of the natural world. Demonstrating the wider context of human lives and the impact of housing on the non-human environment, the author considers the impact of current inhabitation practices on climate change and biodiversity.

Showcasing the significant contribution that housing policy can make in mitigating environmental problems, this book will stimulate debate amongst housing researchers and policy makers.

While there has been a gradual increase in scholarship on men, ageing and masculinities, little attention has been paid to the social relations of men in later life and the implications for enhancing their social wellbeing and counteracting ageist discourse.

Bringing together scholars in social gerontology and the social sciences from across Global North and South nations, this collection fills the gaps in key texts by foregrounding older men’s experiences.

It provides new perspectives across the intersections of old age, ethnicities, class and sexual and gender identity, paying particular attention to older men from seldom heard or marginalised groups.

Negative emotions, including anger, fear, and shame, have been at the heart of recent political events, such as the protests against COVID-19 restrictions. These negative emotions can be politically destructive, leading people to act rashly without due concern for democratic principles. However, they can also accurately signal wrongdoing and motivate acts to redress the situation, as displayed in the Black Lives Matter and climate change movements.

This volume brings together perspectives from political science and philosophy to shed new light on the political faces of negative emotions. Engaging with real-world political events from Europe, the US, and Africa, contributors critically evaluate much-discussed emotions, such as anger and fear, but also less prominent ones, such as frustration and discomfort.

This book addresses the policing and social control of eco–justice movements during the COVID–19 pandemic, as well as activist practices of resistance during the same period. It is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Trento, Italy, focusing on two eco–justice groups opposing a high–speed railway and the containment of wild bears.

Rooted in critical, green, cultural and sensory approaches within criminology, the book discusses the intensification of policing strategies against eco–justice protesters during the pandemic and their increased exclusion from urban centres. Highlighting activists’ radical and transformative practices of resistance, the book identifies directions for future critical and green criminological research in the area.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left inequalities in schools wider and uncertainty about the future greater. Now seems an appropriate time to think about the contribution schooling makes to the communities it serves and the country generally.

However, drawing on his recent research, Richard Riddell argues that the increasingly narrow focus of Education governance after 20 years of reform has made new thinking impossible and has degraded public life.

Nevertheless, he highlights new possibilities for democratic behaviour and the opening up of schooling to all it serves.

What role does dialogue play in peacebuilding? How can community-based activities contribute to broader peace processes? What can participatory research methods add to local efforts to build peace?

In this book, the authors examine these questions through their work with two different Colombian communities who have pursued dialogue amidst ongoing violence, environmental injustice and socio-economic challenges. By reflecting on what people in these contrasting places have achieved through participatory peacebuilding, the authors explore different forms of local agency, the prospects for non-extractive academic engagement, and practical and theoretical lessons for participating in peace in other conflict-affected settings.

Once hidden behind the veils of entrepreneurship, it is now clear that platforms are reshaping the world of work, and Amazon has been a forerunner in setting the trend.

This book examines two key and contrasting Amazon platforms that differ in how they organize workers: its e-commerce platform and digital labor platform (Mechanical Turk). With access to the people who are working at the heart of these platforms, it explores how different working conditions alienate workers, and how, despite these conditions, workers organize within their political-economic contexts to express their agency in traditional and alternative ways.

Written for social scientists studying and researching the platform economy, this is a timely and important analysis of work and workers on the (digital) shop floor.

Exploring the digital frontiers of feminist international relations, this book investigates how gender can be mainstreamed into discourse about technology and security.

With a focus on big data, communications technology, social media, cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, the book explores the ways in which technology presents sites for gender-based violence. Crucially, it examines potential avenues for resistance at these sites, especially regarding the actions of major tech companies, surveillance by repressive governments and attempts to use the Global South as a laboratory for new interventions.

The book draws valuable insights that will be essential to researchers in international relations, security studies and feminist security studies.

The law is heavily implicated in creating, maintaining, and reproducing racialised hierarchies which bring about and preserve acute global disparities and injustices. This essential book provides an examination of the meanings of decolonisation and explores how this examination can inform teaching, researching, and practising of law.

It explores the ways in which the foundations of law are entangled in colonial thought and in its [re]production of ideas of commodification of bodies and space-time. Thus, it is an exploration of the ways in which we can use theories and praxes of decolonisation to produce legal knowledge for flourishing futures.

Chapter 12 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion in science communication are in danger of generating much concern without effecting change and systematic transformations.

This radical volume addresses these circular discourses and reveals the gaps in the field. Putting the spotlight on the marginalised voices of so-called 'racialised minorities', and those from Global South regions, it interrogates the global footprint of the science communication enterprise.

Moving beyond tokenistic and extractive approaches, this book creates a space for academics and practitioners to challenge issues around race and sociocultural inclusion, providing mutual learning, paradigm-shifting perspectives, and innovative ways forward for the science communication advancement agenda.

This work has received Special Recognition from the CIMUSET Award Committee.

Bauman argues that our lives are ruled by ambivalence. In this ambiguous world, liquified social structures can create an anxiety towards the ‘other.’

This innovative book takes Bauman’s notions of ‘liquid modernity’ one step further to develop a theory of ‘liquid racism’. The authors show that while post-race theory argues that society is moving beyond racism, in reality, historical manifestations of racism continue. Except, society is now faced with a racism whose structures have changed.

Examining Brexit, education and black youth culture as case studies to reveal the application of liquid racism, this book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the (un)changing nature of racism.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

This book assesses how the practice of contracting-out public employment services via competitive tendering and Payment-by-Results is transforming welfare-to-work in Ireland.

It offers Ireland’s introduction of a welfare-to-work market as a case study that speaks to wider international debates in social and public policy about the role of market governance in intensifying the turn towards more regulatory and conditional welfare models on the ground.

It draws on unprecedented access to, and extensive survey and interview research with, frontline employment services staff, combined with in-depth interviews with policy officials, organisational managers and jobseekers participating in activation.

Poverty is perceived as an urban problem, yet many in rural Britain also experience hardship. This book explores how and why people in rural areas experience and negotiate poverty and social exclusion. It examines the role of societal processes, individual circumstances, sources of support (markets; state; voluntary organisations; family and friends) and the role of place.

It concludes that the UK’s welfare system is poorly adapted to rural areas, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit and cutbacks exacerbating pressures. Voluntary organisations increasingly fill gaps in support left by the state. Invaluable to those in policy and practice, the book recommends a combination of person-based and place-based approaches to tackle rural poverty.

A key resource for students, academics and practitioners, this concise guide brings together various concepts vital to the theoretical, policy and practical debates on forensic psychology and its relationship with crime and policing.

Covering issues such as criminal behaviour, police decision making and crime scene investigation, each entry provides a succinct overview of the topic, together with an evaluation of the emerging issues. The text includes:

• associated concepts and further reading from research and practice;

• references and glossary.

Accessible and comprehensive, this book is the go-to guide for those getting to grips with the relationships between forensic psychology, crime and policing.

Digital media technologies have enabled some LGBTQ+ individuals and communities to successfully organize for basic rights and justice. But these technologies can also present risks, such as online and in-person harassment and assault, and unsettled standards of privacy and consent.

Justin Ellis provides new insights on LGBTQ+ identity formation through social media networks and platform biometrics. Drawing on debate over gender, procreation, religion, nationalism and tech-regulation, he considers the effects of surveillance technologies on LGBTQ+ agency. In doing so, he brings an interdisciplinary ‘digiqueer’ perspective to negotiations of LGBTQ+ identity through case studies of digital harms from case law, parliamentary debates, social and mainstream media and LGBTQ-tech advocacy.

The subject of policy analysis in Thailand is less examined than in Western societies. This is the first English-language book to engage in a detailed, comprehensive and current study of policy analysis in Thailand.

Providing a broad view of history, styles and methods, it examines policy analysis both within and beyond executive government, revealing the role of parties, the military and interest groups.

It will be a valuable resource for policy analysis researchers and practitioners, and as a comparison with other volumes in the International Library of Policy Analysis series.

Bringing together the perspectives of researchers, policy makers, activists, educators and practitioners, this book critically interrogates the Western-centric assumptions underpinning education and development agendas and the colonial legacies of violence they often uphold.

The book considers the crucial connection between the idea of sustainable futures and the demand to decolonize education. Containing an innovative mixture of text, stories and poetry, it explores how decolonized futures can be conceived and enacted, offering theoretical and practical examples, including from practice in educational and cultural organizations. In doing so, the book highlights education’s potential role in facilitating processes of reparative justice that can contribute to decolonized futures.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title in Economics 2023.

In this stimulating analysis, Hannes Gerhardt outlines the potentials and challenges of a technology-enabled, commons-focused transition out of capitalism.

The book shows that openness and cooperation are more beneficial in today’s economies and societies than competition and profit-seeking. Driven by this conviction, Gerhardt identifies key imperatives for overcoming capitalism, from democratizing our digital, material, and financial economies to maintaining a robust, political mobilization. Using clear examples, he explores tactical openings through the lens of ‘compeerism’, a newly constructed framework that highlights the latent counter-capitalist possibilities, but also limits, of our emerging technological landscape.

This is an accessible contribution to counter-capitalist discourse that is both inspiring and pragmatic for academics and activists alike.

What are the challenges for the current generation of graduate millennials? The role of universities and the changing nature of the graduate labour market are constantly in the news, but less is known about the experiences of those going through it.

This book traces the transition to the graduate labour market of a cohort of middle-class and working-class young people who were tracked through seven years of their undergraduate and post-graduation lives.

Using personal stories and voices, the book provides fascinating insights into the group’s experience of graduate employment and how their life-course transitions are shaped by their social backgrounds and education. Critically evaluating current government and university policies, it shows the attitudes and values of this generation towards their hopes and aspirations on employment, political attitudes and cultural practices.

Through the lenses of comparative and critical rhetoric, this book theorizes how alternative approaches to communication can transform legal meanings and legal outcomes, infusing them with more inclusive participation, equity and justice.

Viewing legal language through a radical lens, the book sets aside longstanding norms that derive from White and Euro-centric approaches in order to re-situate legal methods as products of new rhetorical models that come from diasporic and non-Western cultures.

The book urges readers to re-consider how they think about logic and rhetoric and to consider other ways of building knowledge that can heal the law’s current structures that often perpetuate and reinforce systems of privilege and power.

This is a detailed analysis of how understanding of health management past, present and future has transformed in the digital age.

Since the mid-20th century, we have witnessed ‘healthy’ lifestyles being pushed as part of health promotion strategies, both via the state, and through health tracking tools, and narratives of wellness online. This marks a seismic shift from a public welfare state responsibility for health towards individualised practices of digital self-care. Today health has become representative of ‘lifestyle correction' which is performed on social media.

Putting the spotlight on neoliberalism and digital technology as pervasive tools that dictate wellness as a moral obligation, Rachael Kent critically analyses how users navigate relationships between self-tracking technologies, social media, and everyday health management.

From earthquakes to oil spills, Italy is recurrently affected by different kinds of disasters. This book brings a critical perspective to post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, which can impact in both the short- and long- term upon society, politics and organizations.

It is often assumed that disaster-hit areas return to normality or even 'build back better' thanks to the interventions of experts. Giuseppe Forino considers the complexities of disaster recovery and the sometimes radical changes in individual and collective behaviours that persist following such events.

Bringing together the impacts of natural hazards (including climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic), this edited book will stimulate debate on policy and practice in disaster recovery.

Exploring what it means to enact feminist geography, this book brings together contemporary, cutting-edge cases of social justice activism and collaborative research with activists. From Black feminist organizing in the American South to the stories of feminist geography collectives in Latin America, the editors present contemporary case studies from the global north and south.

The chapters showcase the strength and vibrancy of activist-engaged scholarship taking place in the field and serve as a call to action, exploring how this work advances real-world efforts to fight injustice and re-make the world as a fairer, more equitable, and more accepting place.

Bringing together the voices of local scholars in the Philippines, this book offers critical insights into one of the world’s most disaster-prone regions.

The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world, with the effects of climate change contributing to rising sea levels and increasingly frequent typhoons and floods. Case studies in this book examine such disasters, including the aftermath of 2013 super typhoon Haiyan. Discussions are centered around four themes: women and empowerment, economics and recovery, community and resilience, and religion and spirituality.

Through its analysis, the book demonstrates the scopes, inequities, and inefficiencies of policies and responses, as well as forms of empowerment and resilience, in meeting challenges in disaster-afflicted communities in the Philippines. Its conclusions provide a more nuanced and grounded perspective of policies, practices, and approaches in the sociology of disasters today.

Whereas crime more generally has fallen over the last 20 years, levels of serious youth violence remain high. This book presents innovative research into the complex relationship between adverse childhood experiences and serious youth violence. While the implementation of trauma-informed approaches to working with adolescents in the justice system is becoming common practice, there remains a dearth of research into the efficacy of such approaches.

Foregrounding young people’s voices, this book explores the theoretical underpinnings of trauma and the manifestations of childhood adversity. The authors conclude by advocating for a more psychosocial approach to trauma-informed policy and practice within the youth justice system.

Recognising diverse groups within society is a vital part of policy research and analysis, yet few texts have drawn together the breadth of experiences of welfare provision from a diverse group of citizens.

This book fills this gap, by exploring how diverse citizens experience welfare provision. It aims to promote debate about the importance of social divisions in society and to address the gaps in research, in relation to race, ethnicity, disability, gender and LGBTQ+.

It comes at a crucial time as we emerge out of a decade of austerity, a global pandemic and Brexit, where issues of diversity have been at the forefront of debates, and renews the call for analysis within social policy, particularly on issues of diversity in the 21st century context.

The frequent failure of military or armed interventions to protect civilians is well known. This edited collection provides a comprehensive account of a different, effective paradigm: unarmed civilian protection (UCP).

The principles and methods of UCP have been used for many decades to protect both specific, threatened individuals as well as whole communities. Featuring contributions from around the world, this book brings together a wide range of UCP practices in order to examine their underlying theory and interrelated strategies.

The book provides an important illustration of the contributions UCP can make, while also discussing its limitations and failures.

Two decades have passed since the devolution of social care policy, with key differences emerging between the UK’s four systems, but what impact have these differences had? This book presents for the first time research on the perspectives of social care policy makers on the four systems in which they operate and the ways in which they borrow from one another.

Drawing on extensive interviews with national and local policy makers across the UK, the book raises vital questions about the role of ‘standardisation’ and ‘differentiation’ in social care, concluding that when given equal capacity to reform their respective systems, the regimes in each nation may take radically different shapes.

Chapter 4 and chapter 7 are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book examines the evolution of digital platform economies through the lens of online gaming.

Offering valuable empirical work on Valve’s ‘Steam’ platform, Thorhauge examines the architecture of this global online videogame marketplace and the way it enables new markets and economic transactions. Drawing on infrastructure, software, platform and game studies, the book interrogates the implications of these transactions, both in terms of their legality, but also in how they create new forms of immaterial labour.

Shedding new light on a previously under-explored branch of the study of digital platforms, this book brings a unique economic sociology perspective into the growing literature on videogame studies.

A book on queer themes and science communication is timely, if not well overdue.

LGBTIQA+ people have unique contributions to make and issues to meet through science communication. So, bringing ‘queer’ and ‘science communication’ together is an important step for queer protest, liberation, and visibility.

This collection examines the place of queer people within science communication and asks what it means for the field to ‘queer’ science communication practice, theory and research agendas.

Written by leading names in the field, it offers concrete examples for academics, students and practitioners who strive to foster radical inclusivity and equity in science communication.

In times of increasing migration flows, Greece is often viewed as the gateway to Europe for significantly high numbers of asylum-seeking individuals, including unaccompanied minors. Between 2016 and 2020, under Greek law unaccompanied children were to be temporarily placed in a protective environment upon irregular entry, pending referral to suitable accommodation. However, in reality they were being subjected to detention procedures instead.

Giving voice to migrant children and professionals throughout, the author combines legal analysis with criminology and unveils the discrepancy between the law and practice. The findings demonstrate that unaccompanied children in Greece are criminalised through detention processes, while being deprived of the right to be heard.

This book promotes child-friendly practices in the international migration setting, with a view to safeguarding the fundamental rights of unaccompanied minors experiencing detention upon arrival in host countries.

Understanding prisons and the policies surrounding them is of fundamental importance to students and practitioners of criminology and related fields. This concise and accessible guide offers a compendium of key information, theories, concepts, research and policy, presenting a rounded and critical overview of the prison system in England and Wales.

Covering the historical and contemporary context of prisons, the text guides the reader through the work of prison officers, a tour of international prisons and how prison life is experienced by different groups, such as women.

Focusing on the experiences of stakeholder groups and the themes of power, legitimacy and rehabilitation, the book concludes with an overview of the future challenges for prisons.

Each chapter includes key learning features:

• end of chapter questions;

• definitions of key terms and concepts;

• examples and illustrative case studies;

• learning outcomes;

• summary boxes of major research studies and further reading.

Postcolonial legacies continue to impact upon the Global South and this edited collection examines their influence on systems of policing, security management and social ordering. Expanding the Southern Criminology agenda, the book critically examines social harms, violence and war crimes, human rights abuses, environmental degradation and the criminalization of protest.

The book asks how current states of policing came about, their consequences and whose interests they continue to serve through vivid international case studies, including prison struggles in Latin America and the misuse of military force. Challenging current criminological thinking on the Global South, the book considers how police and state overreach can undermine security and perpetuate racism and social conflict.

This topical, edited collection analyses the state of the planning system in England and offers a robust, evidence-based review of over a decade of change since the Conservative-led coalition government came to power. With a critique of ongoing planning reforms by the UK government, the book argues that the planning system is often blamed for a range of issues caused by ineffective policy making by government.

Including chapters on housing, localism, design, zoning and the consequences of Brexit for environmental planning, the contributors unpick a complicated set of recent reforms and counter the claims of the think-tank-led assault on democratic planning.

This accessible book introduces students to perspectives from the field of science and technology studies.

Putting forward the thesis that science and democracy share important characteristics, it shows how authority cannot be taken for granted and must continuously be reproduced and confirmed by others. At a time when fundamental scientific and democratic values are being threatened by sceptics and populist arguments, an understanding of the relationship between them is much needed.

This is an invaluable resource for all who are interested in the role of scientific knowledge in governance, societal developments and the implications for democracy, concerned publics and citizen engagement.

The latest edition in the International Library of Policy Analysis series explores a comprehensive overview of policy analysis in Argentina. It explores theoretical frameworks, views of the State, the development of the field, and current paradigms before examining knowledge produced at different levels (federal, provincial, and local); the application of the discipline by 'Internal Policy Advisory Councils, Consultants, and Committees'; the role of think tanks, NGOs, and political parties; and the developments provided by university teaching and research.

Analysing the conceptual frameworks and methodologies used from a meta-theoretical perspective, it provides a panoramic picture of the perspectives and challenges of policy analysis in Argentina.

Telling the stories of young refugees in a range of international urban settings, this book explores how newcomers navigate urban spaces and negotiate multiple injustices in their everyday lives.

This innovative edited volume is based on in-depth, qualitative research with young refugees and their perspectives on migration, social relations and cultural spaces. The chapters give voice to refugee youth from a wide variety of social backgrounds, including insights about their migration experiences, their negotiations of spatial justice and injustice, and the diverse ways in which they use urban space.

Gender-based violence (GBV) can take many forms and have detrimental effects across generations and cultures. The triangulation of GBV, rurality and rural culture is a challenging and essential topic and this edited collection provides an innovative analysis of GBV in rural communities.

Focusing on under-studied and/or oppressed groups such as immigrants and LGBTQIA+ people, the book explores new theories on patterns of violence. Giving insights into GBV education and prevention, the text introduces community justice and victim advocacy approaches to tackling issues of GBV in rural areas. From policy review into actionable change, the editors examine best practices to positively affect the lives of survivors.

This book exposes how inequalities based on class and social background arise from employment practices in the digital age. It considers instances where social media is used in recruitment to infiltrate private lives and hide job advertisements based on locality; where algorithms assess socio-economic data to filter candidates; where human interviewers are replaced by artificial intelligence with design that disadvantages users of classed language; and where already vulnerable groups become victims of digitalisation and remote work.

The author examines whether these practices create risks of discrimination based on certain protected attributes, including ‘social origin’ in international labour law and laws in Australia and South Africa, ‘social condition’ and ‘family status’ in laws within Canada, and others. The book proposes essential law reform and improvements to workplace policy.

Social work is often presented as a benevolent and politically neutral profession, avoiding discussion about its sometimes troubling political histories.

This book rethinks social work’s legacy and history of both political resistance and complicity with oppressive and punitive practices. Using a comparative approach with international case studies, the book uncovers the role of social workers in politically tense episodes of recent history, including the anti-racist struggle in the US and the impact of colonialism in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

As the de-colonisation of curricula and the Black Lives Matter movement gain momentum, this fascinating book skilfully navigates social work’s collective political past while considering its future.

This book offers insights into the development of social welfare policies by exploring the interconnections between policies and practice throughout history.

It challenges tacitly accepted arguments that favour particular approaches to welfare, such as conditionality and eligibility. It provides examples of enduring social assumptions which influence the way we perform social welfare, such as the equivocal position of women in social welfare and the unintended consequences of reforms such as Universal Credit.

By identifying continuities in welfare policy, practice and thought, it offers the potential for the development of new thinking, policy making and practice.

This textbook offers students and practitioners an accessible introduction to strengths-based approaches in Social Work and Social Care practice. Covering the theory and research in support of these approaches, and packed full of case studies, the book will allow readers to develop a critical understanding of how strengths-based approaches work, and how they can be successfully applied in order to improve outcomes for people with lived experience.

Covering the five main models of strengths-based practice, the text presents international research and evidence on the efficacy of each approach, enabling students and practitioners to apply the benefits in their own social work practice. The guide features the perspectives of people with lived experience throughout and includes the following key learning features:

• case studies of best practice;

• points for practice: succinct tips for practitioners and students on practice placement;

• further reading list and resources;

• glossary.

Escape is an enticing idea in contemporary cities across the world. Austerity, climate breakdown and spatial stigma have led to retreatist behaviours such as gated communities, enclave urbanism and white flight. By contrast, urban community growing projects are often considered by practitioners and commentators as communal havens in a stressful cityscape.

Drawing on ethnographic research in urban growing projects in Glasgow, this book explores the spatial politics and dynamics of community, asking who benefits from such projects and how they relate to the wider city. A timely consideration of localism and community empowerment, the book sheds light on key issues of urban land use, the right to the city and the value of social connection.

The subdiscipline of economic geography has a long and varied history, and recent work has pushed the field to diversify even further. This collection takes this agenda forward by showcasing inspiring, critical and plural perspectives for contemporary economic geographies.

Highlighting the contributions of global scholars, the thirty chapters showcase fresh ways of approaching economic geography in research, teaching and praxis. With sections on thought leaders, contemporary critical debates and future research agendas, this collection calls for greater openness and inclusivity.

A uniquely hybrid approach to welfare state policy, ecological sustainability and social transformation, this book explores transformative models of welfare change.

Using Ireland as a case study, it addresses the institutional adaptations needed to move towards a sustainable welfare state, and the policy of making such transformation happen.

It takes a theoretical and practical approach to implementing an alternative paradigm for welfare in the context of globalisation, climate change, social cohesion, automation, economic and power inequalities, intersectionality and environmental sustainability, as well as perpetual crisis, including the pandemic.

Analyses of humour often focus primarily on the Global North, with little consideration for examples and practices from elsewhere. This book provides a vital contribution to humour theory by developing a Global South perspective.

Taking a wide-ranging view across the whole of the continent, the book examines the relationship between humour and politics in Africa. It considers the context of the production and reception of humour in African contexts and argues that humour is more than just symbolic. Moving beyond the idea of humour as a mode of resistance, the book investigates the ‘political work’ that humour does and explores the complex entanglements in which the politics, practices and performances of humour are located.

The past three decades have seen an international ‘turn to participation’ – letting those who will be affected by outcomes play an active role in decision-making – but there is widespread dissatisfaction with actual instances of citizen-state engagement. Neighbourhood planning in England exemplifies this contradiction.

This innovative analysis brings theory, research and practice together to give insights into how and why citizen voices become effective or get excluded. Ethnographic data from detailed studies of neighbourhood planning are used to illustrate the constraints and possibilities of a wide range of participatory governance practices and social movements. The book concludes with recommendations to re-invigorate community involvement in planning and beyond.

The Greek island of Lesvos is frequently the subject of news reports on the refugee ‘crisis’, but they only occasionally focus on the dire living conditions of asylum seekers already present on the island. Through direct experience as an activist in Lesvos refugee camps and detention centres, Iliadou gives voice to those with lived experiences of state violence.

The author considers the escalation of EU border regime and deterrence policies seen in the past decade alongside their present impacts. Asking why the social harm and suffering border crossers experience is normalized and rendered invisible, the book highlights the collective, global responsibility for safeguarding refugees’ human rights.

When disaster strikes, our instinctive response is to make things better, not only as individuals but also as groups, organisations, communities and major institutions within society.

With increasing climate-related disasters and the potential for future global pandemics, philanthropy will continue to play an essential role. Yet our knowledge of how philanthropic responses to disasters are motivated, organised and received is fragmented.

This book is a step toward curating our existing knowledge in the emerging field of ‘disaster philanthropy’ and to building a robust base for future research, practice and public policy.

The authors highlight unknowns and ambiguities, extensions and unexplored spaces, and challenges and paradoxes. Above all, they recognise that philanthropic responses to disasters are complex, conditional and subject to change.

Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting work and workers in the Global South.

Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality studies, it explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalisation can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.

Semiotics provides key analytical tools to understand the creation and reproduction of meaning in social life. Although some fields have productively incorporated semiotic models, sociology still needs to engage with semiotic mediation.

Written by a diverse group of authors in interpretive sociology, this ambitious volume asks what the relationship between meaning systems and action is, how we can describe culture and which roles we assign to language, social processes and cognition in a sociological context. Contributors offer empirical research that not only outlines the conceptual issues at stake, but also demonstrates ‘how to do things’ with semiotics through case studies.

Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for scholars interested in the connection between semiotics and sociology.

The liberal arts approach to higher education is a growing trend globally. We are told that the mental dexterity and independent, questioning spirit cultivated by such interdisciplinary degrees are the best preparation for the as-yet unknown executive jobs of tomorrow.

This book explores the significant recent growth of these degrees in England in order to address an enduring problem for higher education: the relationship between meritocracy and elitism.

Against the view that the former is a myth providing rhetorical cover for the latter, it argues that these are two entangled, but discrete, value systems. Sociology must now pay attention to how students and academics attempt to disentangle them.

This book examines policies on unpaid care throughout the UK since the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. It questions why, after decades of policies and strategies, unpaid care remains in a marginal position in the social care system and in society more broadly, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It provides critical analysis of key policies and professional practice over three decades and highlights the continuing challenges faced by people in caring relationships, as well as reflecting on developments in the position of unpaid carers in the system of social care.

By questioning why this crucially important sphere of human life remains under-resourced, it sheds light on the ways in which care is understood and how policy makers and service providers perceive the need for support.

This book explores the relationship between the state and war within the context of seismic technological change.

As we experience a fourth industrial revolution, technology already exerts a huge impact on the character of war and military strategies in the form of drones and other types of ‘remote’ warfare. However, technological developments are not confined to the defence sector, and the diffusion of military technology inevitably also affects the wider economy and society.

This book investigates these possible developments and speculates on their ramifications for the future. Through its analysis, the book questions what will happen to war and the state and whether we will reach a point where war leads to the unmaking of the state itself.

Chapters 1, 3 and 5 are available Open Access under CC-BY licence.

Safeguarding adults at risk of abuse or neglect is a core area of social work practice but knowledge of how social workers make adult safeguarding decisions is limited.

Applying recent sociological and ethnographic research to this area for the first time, this book considers how adult safeguarding practice is developing, with a focus on risk management. The author explores how social workers conduct safeguarding adults assessments, work with multiple agencies and involve service users in risk decisions. The book is essential reading for those wishing to understand how risk and uncertainty are managed within frontline adult social work and how current practice can be improved.

Deepening inequalities and wider processes of demographic, economic and social change are altering how people across the Global North move between homes and neighbourhoods over the lifespan.

This book presents a life course framework for understanding how the changing dynamics of people’s family, education, employment and health experiences are deeply intertwined with ongoing shifts in housing behaviour and residential pathways. Particular attention is paid to how these processes help to drive uneven patterns of population change within and across neighbourhoods and localities.

Integrating the latest research from multiple disciplines, the author shows how housing and life course dynamics are together reshaping 21st-century inequalities in ways that demand greater attention from scholars and public policy makers.

During the second half of the 20th century, Colombia suffered extreme levels of political violence. This book explores the involvement of the international community in peacebuilding efforts in Colombia since 2016. In particular, it examines how interventions were framed in order to promote and sustain their involvement and questions whether these frames reflected reality within Colombia.

The book focuses on key donors, including the US, the EU, Canada, Sweden and the UK, as well as multinational actors, such as the UN and the World Bank, to demonstrate how their framing of local issues for national and international consumption can have real world implications for peacebuilding efforts on the ground.

Written by leading social scientists working in and across a variety of analytic traditions, this ambitious, insightful volume explores interpretation as a focal metaphor for understanding the body’s influence, meaning, and matter in society.

Interpreting body and embodiment in social movements, health and medicine, race, sex and gender, globalization, colonialism, education, and other contexts, the book’s chapters call into question taken-for-granted ideas of where the self, the social world, and the body begin and end.

Encouraging reflection and opening new perspectives on theories of the body that cut through the classic mind/body divide, this is an important contribution to the literature on the body.

This book presents a sensitive account of the challenges faced by adult children when making difficult decisions about care for and with their ageing parents in later life.

It offers new insights into the practical, emotional and physical effects that witnessing the ageing and death of parents has on those in late midlife and how these relationships are negotiated during this phase of the life course.

The author uses a psychosocial approach to understand the complexity of the experience of having a parent transition to care and the ambiguous feelings that these decisions evoke.