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The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic presented opportunities to engage in collective reflection about doing research in a continuing and unfolding global public health crisis. Focusing on qualitative and digital methods and taking “crisis” as a turning point for reflection, reflexivity and positionality in research methods and ethics, this volume particularly explores qualitative, arts-based and digital methods, while reflecting on researching in “fast” and “slow”, recurring and longer-term crises. The volume’s 15 chapters draw on experiences and reflections of 33 researchers doing diverse research amidst the pandemic, from the UK, Ireland, Nepal, New Zealand, Australia, Puerto Rico, Gaza, Nigeria and Guatemala. The contributions consider researching across different locations, highlighting research and researcher positionality, methodology, reflexivity and ethics. Different types of connections are made, surfacing ethical and creative dialogues across researcher-researched relationships and settings. The methods discussed in the chapters include ethnography, autoethnography and autonetnography; ‘digital kinning’; therapeutic ‘arts-based research and auto-ethnography’; creative museum practice connecting First Nations and Indigenous creators; phenomenology; participatory action research; and take in critical, feminist, decolonial and transformative approaches.The transnational dimension of this book forms an appropriate backdrop for rich and complex discussions of methods and ethics across the chapters. Concerned to go beyond an exploitative or extractive crisis epistemology, the overall volume looks towards an ethics of responsibility and connection that is responsive and generative in times of crisis.

As lights come on in the streets and darkness descends on cities, most ‘call it a day’. The night is rarely a popular issue for news headlines, local governments or urban researchers. Yet what in our cities happens afterhours, and how city leaders manage it, is far from inconsequential. Managing Cities at Night intervenes in this landscape with an accessible, evidence-based and internationally minded volume capable of inspiring a greater appreciation of the night-time economy in research and practice. It offers a useful guide to urban governance after hours with a unique stock-take of this reality with an eye at questions of urban equality, not least by taking into account the momentous impact of COVID-19 on night-time activity. The book presents an updated review of night-time governance across five continents, with insights from realities as different as London, New York, Valparaiso, Sydney, Tokyo, Berlin, Bogota and Melbourne. It does so to explicitly broaden the imagination of what it means to manage cities ‘after hours’, as an explicitly ‘scholarly’ guide for practitioners and novices of the night-time economy. It presents a distinctive focus on night governance, the role of night mayors and night commissions, and does so in an informative case-based way that sketches one of the widest variety of vignettes and case studies currently available on night-time economies of cities the world over.

Focusing on the Criminalisation of Social Policy, this book explores the intersections between crime and social policy and the ways in which contemporary social policies in many different countries look more like crime control policies. From anti-immigration agendas, which criminalise vulnerable populations, to the punishment of the poor and the governance of parenting, the book engages with the ways in which certain constituencies in our societies, who need help and support, are made to feel criminal in their relationships with the state and its agents. Specific policy examples chosen from across countries show that the criminalisation of social policy has resonance internationally. These are selected from the fields of work and welfare; borders and citizenship; family policy, urban planning and offender reintegration. In illuminating intersecting, and at times very troubling policy interventions, the book wrestles with ideas as to what social policy and welfare states should look like in our societies. It incites the reader to continue this process so that we reclaim the best of the ‘social’ in social policy for the twenty-first century.

There is increasing pressure on the humanities to justify their value and on criminology to undertake interdisciplinary research. In this book, the author establishes a new interdisciplinary methodology, ‘criminological criticism’, harnessing the synergy between literary studies and critical criminology to produce genuine interventions in social reality. The author practices criminological criticism on George Miller' Mad Max: Fury Road, Prime Video's Carnival Row, and J.K. Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling, demonstrating how these popular allegories provide insights into the harms of sexism, racism, and class prejudice. The book proposes a model for collaboration between literary studies and critical criminology that is beneficial to the humanities, the social sciences, and society.

As nations reel from the effects of poverty, inequality, climate change and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels as though the world has entered a period characterized by pessimism, cynicism and anxiety. This edited collection challenges individualized understandings of emotion, revealing how they relate to cultural, economic and political realities in difficult times. Combining numerous empirical studies and theoretical developments from around the world, the diverse contributors explore how dystopian visions of the future influence, and are influenced by, the emotions of an anxious and precarious present. This is an original investigation into the changing landscape of emotion in dark and uncertain times.

Developing a trilayer analysis of global, national and individual perspectives, this book examines ageing and the health and social care crisis. It begins with an examination of how broad structural and discursive trends, such as neoliberalism and globalisation, have influenced the financing and provision of health and social care for older people in Western countries including Germany, Sweden and the UK. It then goes onto discuss the impact that privatisation, ‘choice’ and competition has had on service provision, including how declining social protections have impacted upon employment practices. Three UK case studies (active ageing, pre-emergency, and end of life care) provide insight into individual’s (both older people and health care workers) experiences of navigating the risky, fragmented and complex health and social care system. Then the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is compared with Sweden and Germany’s, and the UK government’s intended solutions to the health and social care crisis is discussed. Finally, the book ends by showcasing examples of innovative care solutions that have been trialled in the UK, and what broader cultural and political changes are necessary to provide a more sustainable and dignified health and social care system for older people.

Using striking examples of imprisonment in different continents and cultures Prisons of the World raises fundamental questions about the manner in which governments and societies (mis)use prison as a response to a wide range of fundamental social, economic and political issues. It describes the mistreatment of women prisoners in North America and the United Kingdom and of elderly prisoners in Japan, the intractable influence of gangs in Latin America, the legacy of colonialism in South Africa and the Caribbean and the continuing influence of the Gulag system in many countries of the former Soviet Union. The book discusses the work of international bodies such as the Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Europe, the involvement of the Inter American Court of Human Rights in the Caribbean and of court interventions in respect of the excessive use of solitary confinement in Canada and the United States. There is also a description of the author’s involvement in a unique instance of prison monitoring to resolve a violent dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The book concludes by offering some positive pointers for the future. In the medium term many of the resources which are currently invested in the demand led imprisonment industry could be transferred to initiatives such as those which are known as Justice Reinvestment and in the longer term radical change could be achieved through use of the Human Development model.

The concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the 20th century and has influenced discussions around artificial intelligence, brain–computer interfaces, genetic technologies and life extension. Despite its enduring influence in the public imagination, a fully developed philosophy of transhumanism has not yet been presented. This book explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalization, gene technologies, and ethics. It examines the history and meaning of transhumanism and asks bold questions about human perfection, cyborgs, genetically enhanced entities, and uploaded minds. Offering insightful reflections on values, norms, and utopia, this will be an important guide for readers interested in contemporary digital culture, gene ethics, and policy making.

The premise of the book is that building and construction practices are insensitive to the needs of many people, and implicated in the widespread despoliation and degradation of ecological systems and the environment. From the construction of transport networks and major commercial and residential property in rapidly urbanising countries, to the popularisation of self-build and home improvements, we are living in a period of incessant and unprecedented building. Few places are untouched by construction and infrastructure projects that are part of an ideology of building that has little regard to what is needed and, instead, are shaped by political and economic values that regard building and construction as ‘a good thing’. Using examples from around the world, the book identifies the mentalities of construction and building that are failing people and places in many different ways, and calls for radical changes to city living and environments by building less, but better.

Feeding Britain while preparing for the ravages of climate change are two key issues — yet there's no strategy for managing and enhancing that most precious resource: our land. This book explores how the pressures of leaving the EU, recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and addressing global heating present unparalleled opportunities to re-work the countryside for the benefit of all. Incorporating personal, inspiring stories of people and places, the book sets out the innovative measures needed for nature's recovery while protecting our most valuable farmland, encouraging local food production and repeopling remote areas. In the first book to tackle these issues holistically, the author argues that we need to reshape the countryside with an adventurous new agenda at the heart of government.