Policy Press

Society, Culture and Arts

Culture – the beliefs, behaviours and objects common to the members of a particular group – is a fundamental part of the infrastructure on which our societies depend, and a wellspring from which we can reflect and reinvent, when faced with the urgent need to find ways to better co-exist on our planet.

Our publishing promotes Goal 3: Good health and well-being, through recognising the role culture plays in our lives, in our most disadvantaged communities, in old age and in the making of government policy. By listening to different societies, and different cultures within those societies, we can often find new perspectives and different approaches to tackling the problems that cut across all cultures.

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

SDG Publishers compact logoSDG 3: Good health and well-being

Showing 25-36 of 70 items.

A Criminology Of Narrative Fiction

Drawing on complex narratives across film, TV, novels and graphic novels, this authoritative critical analysis demonstrates the value of fictional narratives as a tool for understanding, explaining and reducing crime and social harm. McGregor establishes an original theory of the criminological value of fiction.

Bristol Uni Press

Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory

Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past

Social media platforms hold vast amounts of data about our lives. Content from the past is increasingly being presented in the form of ‘memories’. Critically exploring this new form of memory making, this unique book asks how social media are beginning to change the way we remember.

Bristol Uni Press

Reimagining Black Art and Criminology

A New Criminological Imagination

Martin Glynn explores the relevance black artistic contributions have for understanding crime and justice. Through art forms including black crime fiction, black theatre and black music, this book brings attention to marginalized perspectives within mainstream criminology.

Bristol Uni Press

Southern Craft Food Diversity

Challenging the Myth of a US Food Revival

Using oral histories, this book highlights the voices, experiences and histories of marginalized groups from diverse communities who are the backbone of the artisanal food movement in the US.

Bristol Uni Press

Researching Happiness

Qualitative, Biographical and Critical Perspectives

Edited by Mark Cieslik

This original collection draws on the latest empirical research to explore the practical challenges facing happiness researchers today. By uniquely combining the critical approach of sociology with techniques from other disciplines, the contributors illuminate new qualitative and biographical approaches of the study of happiness and well-being.

Bristol Uni Press

Media Technologies for Work and Play in East Asia

Critical Perspectives on Japan and the Two Koreas

Edited by Micky Lee and Peichi Chung

This book is the first comparative study of media technologies in Japan and the two Koreas which illuminates the peculiar geopolitical relations between the three countries through their development and use of digital technologies, drawing from political economy, cultural studies, and technology studies.

Bristol Uni Press

The Public and Their Platforms

Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media

Cutting across multiple disciplines, this book maps out a new role for the public sociologist in the post-COVID world. It envisions a new kind of public sociology that brings together “the digital” and "the physical” to create public spaces where critical scholarship and active civic engagement can meet in a mutually reinforcing way.

Bristol Uni Press

Arts, Culture and Community Development

Edited by Rosie Meade and Mae Shaw

Drawing on international examples, this book interrogates the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Contributors from six continents, reimagine community development as they consider how aesthetic arts contribute to processes of peacebuilding, youth empowerment, participatory planning and environmental regeneration.

Policy Press

Visual Criminology

In this pioneering work, Bill McClanahan provides a concise overview of visual criminology. With examples of the most prominent methods at work in visual criminology, this book explores the visual perspective in relation to prisons, police, the environment, and drugs, while noting the complex ethical implications embedded in visual research.

Bristol Uni Press

Researching the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Critical Blueprint for the Social Sciences

Challenging social science’s established orthodoxies, this book is a call for academia to embrace new theoretical frameworks and research methods to better understand the reality of life in a post-Covid world.

Policy Press

This Separated Isle

Invisible Britain

Edited by Paul Sng

This Separated Isle explores how concepts of ‘Britishness’ reveal an inclusive range of understandings about our national character. Featuring a diverse range of photographic portraits and narrative stories from across the UK, this landmark book examines the relationship between identity and nationhood, revealing the ties that bind us together.

Policy Press

Being Human During COVID-19

This transdisciplinary collection engages with key issues of social exclusion, inequality, power and knowledge in the context of COVID-19 for a more equitable and inclusive human future.

Bristol Uni Press