Policy Press

Textbooks

Policy Press publishes a range of textbooks and other learning resources across the social sciences to suit a variety of course and learning needs. These are designed with students in mind and include many accessible features – from case studies and chapter summaries, to revision questions and illustrative boxes and diagrams.

The majority of our textbooks are available as consumer eBooks as well as in print and we are happy to discuss bespoke options such as print and digital packages or creating unique collections to suit your course needs. Our content is available through the key institutional content providers VitalSource and Kortext in early 2015, allowing seamless integration with VLE platforms. If you would like to discuss how we could help with your course resources, please contact pp-sales@bristol.ac.uk.

For more information about our textbooks, please see Information for Lecturers.

Showing 37-48 of 216 items.

A Contemporary History of Social Work

Learning from the Past

An important contribution to topical debates about social work education and the identity of the profession, drawing lessons from the recent history of social work to identify how and why it has lost its privilege and influence.

Policy Press

Critical community practice

This book provides a challenging approach to understanding community practice.It offers a much-needed theoretical perspective, setting out an analysis of power and empowerment and exploring new ways of understanding active citizenship.

Policy Press

Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth

Contemporary Policy and Practice

This original book explores the importance of geographical processes for policies and professional practices related to childhood and youth. Contributors from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds explore how concepts such as place, scale, mobility and boundary-making are important for policies and practices in diverse contexts.

Policy Press

Critical Perspectives on Police Leadership

This is a critical analysis of our understanding of police leadership and a bold new conceptualisation of the subject. Drawing on criminology, sociology and leadership studies and critical theory, leading authors Davis and Silvestri provide a critique of police leadership as a product of social, institutional and historical processes.

Policy Press

Critical perspectives on user involvement

This original and insightful reader provides a critical stock take of the state of user involvement and will be an important resource for students studying health and social care and social work, researchers and user activists.

Policy Press

Critical Questions for Ageing Societies

This myth-busting and question-focused textbook tackles the important social and policy issues posed by ageing. A unique pedagogical approach recognises the gap between the lives of students and older people, and equips students with the conceptual, analytical and critical tools to understand what it means to grow old and live in an ageing society.

Policy Press

Critical Social Work with Children and Families

Theory, Context and Practice

This fully-updated, accessible textbook considers the theory and practice of critical social work in addressing inequality and social injustice. It is essential reading for students, educators and practitioners of child and family social work.

Policy Press

Delivering Social Welfare

Governance and Service Provision in the UK

Drawing on examples across a range of policy areas, this important new book examines the radically changing system of governance and delivery of social welfare in the UK and assesses how changes in social policy and governance interact in the delivery of social welfare.

Policy Press

Digital Sociologies

This is the first book to connect digital media technologies in digital sociology to traditional sociological and offers a much needed overview of it. It includes problems of the digital age in relation to inequality and identity, making it suitable for use for a global audience on a variety of courses.

Policy Press

Direct Payments and Personal Budgets

Putting Personalisation into Practice

This third edition of the leading textbook on personalisation considers key policy changes since 2009 and new research into the extension and outcomes of personal budgets. It is essential reading for students, practitioners and policy makers in social work and community care services.

Policy Press

Discursive analytical strategies

Understanding Foucault, Koselleck, Laclau, Luhmann

This exciting and innovative book fills a gap in the growing area of discourse analysis within the social sciences. It provides the analytical tools with which students and their teachers can understand the complex and often conflicting discourses across a range of social science disciplines.

Policy Press

Doing Reflexivity

An Introduction

This book provides social science researchers with both a strong rationale for the importance of thinking reflexively and a practical guide to doing it. The first book to build on Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive work, it combines academic analysis with practical examples and case studies. The book will be of interest to researchers and students.

Policy Press