Bøker utgitt av Bristol University Press

Stepmothers often battle with a range of negative myths and stereotypes, with Cinderella's wicked stepmother being the most infamous. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with British stepmothers, this book reimagines the expectations, practices and position of stepmothers through a feminist sociological lens. Combining firsthand accounts, including the author's own experiences, the book reveals the complexities of stepfamily dynamics and how stepmothers navigate them. By examining the interplay between personal experiences and broader gendered, historical and social structures, the author offers a fresh perspective on contemporary stepmothers and stepfamilies.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Older adults' civic engagement has become a key concern in academic and policy debates in recent years. However, existing studies on this topic remain fragmented across various conceptual and methodological approaches. This book provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and multidimensional perspective on older adults' civic engagement. It proposes a conceptual framework which understands civic engagement as a multidimensional concept encompassing a diversity of activities through which older adults contribute to their communities and wider society. Contributors explore the factors shaping older adults' participation in various civic activities across the life course, considering their diversity in terms of social locations such as gender, health status, migrant background, socioeconomic background and residential arrangements. By analysing past and current research, policy and practice, the book offers recommendations for future efforts to advance the field.

Claims to 'crisis' reverberate across societal and academic discourses, as people around the world face dire situations and detrimental challenges. Yet, the study of crisis tends to remain siloed and therefore oblivious to the multi-dimensional nature of crisis, which inhibits learning from one type of crisis to the next. Bringing together a broad team of contributors, this book argues for a new interdisciplinary field of crisis studies. Covering a range of cases, the book critically explores the intersections of socio-economic, political, climate, and health factors to unravel the dynamic and transformative forces of crisis. In doing so, the book contributes novel insights into human precariousness and resilience in times of crisis shaped by global--local inequities, 'post-fact' discourses, and politics.

The EU's international environment is increasingly characterized by power politics, great-power rivalry, ideological contestation and war. This has challenged the liberal-internationalist identity that has been at the heart of the EU since its birth. This book examines how the EU has responded to these new realities. It analyses the introduction of a flurry of concepts including European sovereignty, strategic autonomy, civilization, responsibility and strategic compass, and asks whether these signal a reconsideration of foreign policy objectives, a new strategic orientation or possibly a paradigm shift. The book develops a theoretical framework on policy paradigms, worldviews, grand strategy, strategic narratives and the drivers of institutional change followed by chapters on the anti-liberal challenge, the evolution of the EU framework of ideas, the search for grand strategy and strategic autonomy, the response to Russian aggression and imperial thinking, and continuity and change in EU unity, working groups, green leadership and strategic communication.

Vulnerability theory offers an alternative to social-contract and rights-based paradigms. Beginning with the corporeal body, the theory argues we are inevitably and constantly dependent on social institutions that are generated (and ideally monitored) through law. Accordingly, vulnerability theory argues for a state attentive to the needs of the universally 'vulnerable subject'. Based on lectures at Trinity College Dublin that focused on four foundational concepts, this book highlights how vulnerability theory differs from individualistic liberal frameworks. Calling for a reorientation of law toward a collective responsibility-based approach, it is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory, social justice, and sociolegal scholarship.