Ethical issues & debates

Winner of the British Society of Criminology Annual Book Prize 2022. This valuable exploration of work duality calls for recognition of the experiences of sex workers, featuring the accounts of individuals who take extraordinary risks to hold jobs in both sex industries and non-sex work employment.

This visionary new book explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalisation, gene technologies and ethics. It examines the history and meaning of transhumanism, offering insightful reflections on values, norms and utopia.

This timely and thought-provoking collection of writings considers values in crime theory, criminal justice and research practice, uncovering the many different 'sides' that criminologists, policy makers and researchers take.

This book offers a theory of trafficking and modern slavery with implications for policy. Going beyond polarised debates on the sex trade, this book shows the importance of coercion and the societal complexities that perpetuate modern slavery.

This book rethinks social work’s history of both political resistance and complicity with oppressive practice. Comparing international case studies, the book uncovers the role of social workers in politically tense episodes of recent history, skilfully navigating the profession’s collective political past while considering its future.

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.

Is it possible to experience the joy and benefits of computing in a way that asserts individual and collective autonomy?

Drawing on the ideas of the ‘slow movement’, Slow Computing sets out numerous practical and political means to take back control and counter the more pernicious effects of living digital lives.

Using the evidence from New Zealand, this unique collection examines how decriminalisation is experienced by different groups of sex workers and reveals the enduring challenges for sex workers in this context. This is an invaluable contribution to the urgent debates regarding sex work laws and the global struggle to realise sex worker’s rights.

New Zealand’s decriminalisation of sex work, and its unusual success in combatting COVID-19, have both attracted international media interest. This accessibly written book uses the lens of news media coverage to consider the pandemic’s impacts on both sex workers and public perceptions of the industry.

Scientific and technical expertise, now largely understood as the ultimate source of authoritative knowledge, are vital to how our societies operate. This punchy introduction to thinking about science-society relations draws on research and concepts to argue for the importance of knowing.

An invaluable resource to help understand the role of scientific knowledge in governance, societal developments and democracy, this accessible book introduces students to perspectives from the field of science and technology studies.