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 1-12 of 70 items.

Ageing and the Media

International Perspectives

Edited by Virpi Ylänne

Bringing together leading scholars, this international collection examines different dimensions of ageing and ageism in a range of media and how older adults use and interact with the media.

Policy Press

Agenda For Social Justice

Solutions For 2020

Examining topics from criminal justice to media concerns, environmental problems, economic problems and issues concerning sexualities and gender, the 2020 agenda provides accessible insights into some of the most pressing social problems in the United States and proposes public policy responses to those problems.

Policy 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

Beer and Racism

How Beer Became White, Why It Matters, and the Movements to Change It

Beer in the United States has always been bound up with race, racism, and the construction of white institutions and identities. This unique book carves a much-needed critical and interdisciplinary path to examine and understand the racial dynamics in the craft beer industry and the popular consumption of beer.

Bristol Uni Press

A Beginner’s Guide to Building Better Worlds

Ideas and Inspiration from the Zapatistas

Written by an international team of authors, this ambitious volume offers radical alternatives to staid ways of thinking on the most crucial global challenges of our times. Bridging real examples of political agency, collective action and mutual aid with big-picture concepts, the book encourages readers to ‘be a Zapatista’, wherever they are.

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

The Class Ceiling

Why it Pays to be Privileged

This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Drawing on 200 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – it explores the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile.

Policy Press

Comedy and Critique

Stand-up Comedy and the Professional Ethos of Laughter

Comedy and Critique explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions.

Bristol Uni Press

Contextual Safeguarding

The Next Chapter

This book shares stories from child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation and peer violence about what has been learnt from the Contextual Safeguarding approach to understanding harm that happens to young people in their communities and what is required to respond.

Policy Press

Controversial Encounters in the Age of Algorithms

How Digital Technologies are Stifling Public Debate and What to Do About It

This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and therefore can fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of controversy, (arguing all sides of a case) it offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in our society.

Bristol Uni Press
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COVID-19 and the Voluntary and Community Sector in the UK

Responses, Impacts and Adaptation

Curating rigorous academic, policy and practice-based research, this book explores the response and adaptation of the UK voluntary sector to the COVID-19 pandemic and considers what can be learned to maximise its contribution in the event of future crises.

Policy Press

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