Policy Press

Sociology and Social Theory

Sociology is a growth area for us and our books in sociology and social theory include exciting work from new authors and well-known academics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate textbooks.

Our wide range of sociology and social theory books include high quality research and range from textbooks through to specialised monographs. Many also ‘make a difference’ in a tangible way, whether it be informing a key policy or practice debate, or improving the education of students.

Showing 1-12 of 284 items.

Minority Women and Austerity

Survival and Resistance in France and Britain

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Bassel and Emejulu explore minority women’s experiences of austerity measures in France and Britain. They demonstrate how they use their race, class, gender and legal status for collective action in the face of the neoliberal colonisation.

Policy Press

Blamestorming, Blamemongers and Scapegoats

Allocating Blame in the Criminal Justice Process

This is the first detailed criminological account of the role of blame in which the authors present a novel study of the legal process of blame attribution, set in the context of criminalisation as a social and political process. It will also be of wider interest to anyone wishing to discover the role of blame in modern society.

Policy Press

Engaging with Policy, Practice and Publics

Intersectionality and Impact

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book examines the increasing importance of engagement with non-academic groups and actors in the co-production of knowledge and real-world influence in academic research.

Policy Press

Gender Based Violence in University Communities

Policy, Prevention and Educational Initiatives

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book provides the first in-depth overview of research and practice in GBV in universities. It sets out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to GBV in elsewhere in Europe, in the US, and in Australia.

Policy 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

Digital Bodies

The pieces in this Byte raise important questions about what it means to bring our embodied selves into contact with digital media technologies. The selections expand our understanding of what it means to live in and through bodies augmented by digital technologies within a deeply unequal social world.

Policy Press

Digitized Institutions

In this Byte, the contributions consider the way that digitally meditated social processes are transforming institutions. It examines the interconnectedness of institutions and considers digitization across schooling, work, and media, with an eye on inequality.

Policy Press

Coercion and Women Co-offenders

A Gendered Pathway into Crime

This is the first book to explore coercion as a pathway into crime for co-offending women. It analyses four cases of women co-accused of a crime with their partner who suggested that coercive techniques had influenced their involvement and concludes by exploring the implications for public understanding of coercion and female offending.

Policy Press

American Tianxia

Chinese Money, American Power and the End of History

After a meteoric rise, China's growth has come to a screeching halt. Salvatore Babones provides an up-to-date assessment of how China's economic problems are undermining its challenge to the Western-dominated world order. He tells how liberal individualism has become the leitmotif of American Tianxia.

Policy Press

Fake Goods, Real money

The Counterfeiting Business and its Financial Management

The books examines the financial and business structures of the counterfeiting business and considers how the internet and e-commerce present financial opportunities for counterfeiters. It explores ‘organised crime’ and criminal markets, digital technologies and cultural values and practices.

Policy Press

Rethinking Poverty

What Makes a Good Society?

This book calls for a bold forward-looking social policy that addresses continuing austerity, under-resourced organisations and a lack of social solidarity. Based on a research programme by the Webb Memorial Trust, a key theme is power which shows that the way forward is to increase people’s sense of agency in building the society that they want.

Policy Press