Global social challenges
There are multiple interlocking crises currently gripping the planet. Significant threats and dangers lie ahead of us, but so do opportunities, as new ways of being, thinking, and doing emerge.
This stream of Transforming Society is a space for exploring the complexities of the global social challenges across disciplines and fields. It seeks to build and share the knowledge needed to shape a fairer world, across and for the global south and north, hoping to foster dialogue between academics, practitioners, policy makers and the wider public.
Hartley Dean, author of 'Understanding Human Need', explores what it means to be human and whether we need to reframe what human need means.…Read more
Chris Gilleard and Paul Higgs, authors of 'Social Divisions and Later Life', show that COVID-19 is like a magnifying glass, amplifying but not fundamentally altering the chronology of life and death nor the impact of social divisions. …Read more
Laura Dean, author of 'Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia', discusses whether current human trafficking policies are effective, and how they might be improved. There is an accompanying policy briefing to this piece. …Read more
Based on Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia, by Laura Dean, this briefing covers key messages and policy recommendations around human trafficking policies in Eurasia.…Read more
Dr Martin Glynn, criminologist, academic and data storyteller looks at race, COVID-19 and the ongoing struggle for ‘racial recognition’ within parts of British society. He is the author of the forthcoming 'Black Art and the Criminological Imagination', out in 2021. An audio version of this blog piece is available on Soundcloud, Apple and Spotify.…Read more
Amanda Grenier, Chris Phillipson and Rick Settersten, editors of 'Precarity and Ageing', examine some of the challenges facing older people, with particular focus on the precariousness that can come with old age.…Read more
Susan Halford, BSA president, explores the sociological dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis that are becoming increasingly apparent.…Read more
Katie Phillips, John S. Lee, Mark Casson and Catherine Casson, authors of 'Compassionate Capitalism', show how entrepreneurs in medieval Cambridge were practising social responsibility, offering lessons we can learn in relation to contemporary challenges.…Read more
Rebecca Tomlinson, Commissioning Editor for Criminology at Bristol University Press, highlights key titles that contribute to the research on the environment and green criminology.…Read more
Vulnerability is strongly influenced by the social context that people live in. Gottfried Schweiger, one of the editors of 'Absolute Poverty in Europe', shows how this is becoming more evident with the COVID-19 pandemic as people affected by poverty, exclusion and other disadvantages are facing additional challenges and becoming victims more than most.…Read more