Social issues & processes

With the UK’s decision to leave the EU as one of the greatest challenges in the EU’s history, this book seeks to understand the role played by social policy in the referendum campaign and withdrawal negotiations, and considers what Brexit means for social policy development both in the UK and across the EU.

How should we treat animals? The field of animal rights raises pressing questions about how humans treat the other animals as livestock farming exerts an increasing toll on the planet, and we learn more about their capacity to think and experience pain. This book shows what the world might look like if animals had greater rights.

Offers a rare and vivid insight into the everyday lives, attitudes and behaviours of the rich as well as the poor across the UK, demonstrating how those marginalised and validated by the existing welfare system make sense of the prevailing socio-political settlement and their own position within it.

From Margaret Thatcher’s first government to austerity politics, Ian Cummins traces changing attitudes to imprisonment and the social state. With fresh insights and critical thinking, he demonstrates how increasingly punitive approaches to crime and welfare have shaped the neoliberal economy and created stigma around those living in poverty.

In this book, Sarah Kerr explains that we live in a state of ‘wealtherty’, characterised by the hyper-concentration of wealth and a stark distinction between the rich and the poor. In pursuit of social and economic justice, she argues that we need to stop talking about poverty and start addressing the social and political problems caused by wealth.

Using many data sources, this timely book provides a comprehensive discussion of issues of wealth, looking at potential policy responses, including 'asset-based' welfare and taxation.

This book explores the recent experiences of diverse paid care workers in four very different national contexts – Finland, Canada, South Africa and England – to learn from their experiences during COVID-19 and its aftermath.

Drawing from case studies across the globe, this book explores how the pandemic and the policies it has prompted have caused changes in the ways cities function. The contributors examine the advancing social inequality brought on by the pandemic and suggest policies intended to contain contagion whilst managing the economy in these circumstances.

This international volume explores the transformations of public space and public transport in response to COVID-19, both those resulting from official governmental regulations and from everyday practices of urban citizens. The contributors discuss how the virus made urban inequalities clearer, and redefined public spaces in the “new normal”.

This book casts light on how the virus has impacted the experience of home and housing through the lens of wider urban processes around transportation, land use, planning policy, racism and inequality, and offers crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises.

Contributions to this volume engage directly with different urban communities around the world. They give voice to those who experience poverty, discrimination and marginalisation in order to put them in the front and centre of planning, policy and political debates that make and shape cities.

Based on ethnographic research conducted over a year, this book tells the story of twelve people, each living with illness. Focusing on everyday life, it explores ideas of care, vulnerability and choice. Juxtaposing text with illustrations, the book highlights the intimacies of visual sociology and demonstrates the value of sensuous scholarship.