Social issues & processes

This book argues there is urgent need for a radical reassessment of the way the law mediates between citizens and the state. Drawing on public inquiries into high-profile cases, this book examines how the regulation of street-level bureaucracy can play an integral part in reimagining postliberal politics and the role of the law.

Exploring the relationship between humour and offensiveness, this book delves into offensive jokes, their impact, and the dark side of laughter. It blends cultural analysis, politics, and philosophy to offer an antidote to positive thinking and guide readers through offensive humour.

In recent years, UN agencies, global tech corporations, states and humanitarian NGOs have invested in surveillance technologies to support migrant communities and streamline their management.

This book reveals the way in which they grant extensive powers to states and big tech corporations to control communities.

This book offers a holistic view of Julio Boltvinik’s vast and important work on poverty conceptualisation and measurement. It provides the foundations, application and empirical examples of Boltvinik’s Integrated Poverty Measurement Method, which could potentially transform poverty narratives globally as it has done in Mexico.

Presenting in-depth accounts of North Korean women defectors living in the UK, this book examines how the harrowing experiences they endured and their utopian dream of a better future for fellow North Korean women have become an impetus for their activism.

With a public health crisis gripping the UK, this book examines the organisational and political barriers to an effective public health system and determines that a new social contract is needed, in which health policy is truly public.

Addressing previously neglected groups of care leavers such as unaccompanied migrants, street youth, young parents and those with a disability, this book considers the precarity often experienced by many care leavers. It makes research relevant to practitioners and policy-makers aiming to enable, rather than label, vulnerable groups.

The health and fitness industry has experienced a meteoric rise over the past two decades, yet its slick exterior conceals a darker side. Using ethnographic data from gyms, interviews and social media platforms, this book investigates the growing use of image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) and their role in masculine body image.

Setting out big public policy ideas, enhanced by contributions from academic and campaigning experts, as well as those with lived experience, Raising the Nation shows why we must prioritise child-centred policies to ensure the future strength of our communities, environment and economy.

This book presents a critical history of criminological thought from the Enlightenment to the present day. Mehozay contends that Western criminological approaches are based upon ‘otherness’ which validate projects of control and exclusion, modernization and care, and even eugenics.

Drawing on a wealth of qualitative longitudinal evidence, this book casts light on women’s lived experiences of welfare and work. It uncovers the hidden gendered bias of conditional welfare reforms to challenge dominant political discourses, policy design and practice norms.