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.
Rebecca Willis, author of Too Hot to Handle? The Democratic Challenge of Climate Change, out this month, identifies five things every government needs to do to tackle the climate emergency.…Read more
Phil O’Keefe, Geoff O’Brien and Peter J Taylor, authors of Cities Demanding the Earth: A New Understanding of the Climate Emergency, talk about reinventing the nature of our cities to be understood as part of nature and central to the solution to climate change. …Read more
Stuart Rees, author of Cruelty or Humanity: Challenges, Opportunities and Responsibilities, publishing later this year, talks about how non-violent expressions of power in music and poetry can provide a perspective that is the very opposite of top down, militaristic ways of thinking and behaving.…Read more
In 'The Shame Game: Overturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative', out later this month, Mary O’Hara shows why the ‘shame game’ being played out against poorer people in the US and the UK is so destructive and effective. Danny Dorling explains why this new book is so important - and how you can change things - in his foreword.…Read more
Helena Liu, author of Redeeming Leadership, explains why we must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anti-racist feminist communities and join their struggles for life beyond imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist and patriarchal oppression.…Read more
Alison Shaw, Chief Executive of Bristol University Press, looks at how university presses can make a real difference to scholarship, to the translation of ideas, and to policy, practice and cultural change.…Read more
Following the tragedy in Essex last month, where 39 people were found in a lorry container, Alice Bloch, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, examines the complex issue of migration. Migration is not a new phenomena and nor are the immigration polices that try and restrict migration or those that make the lives Read More
In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast we speak to Sam Wren-Lewis, author of The Happiness Problem: Expecting Better in an Uncertain World. In his book, Sam argues that the way we’re thinking about happiness in modern societies is wrong. We’re not seeing the bigger picture because we’re so focused on control and distracted Read More
In this long read, Roger Brown, author of The Inequality Crisis: The Facts and What We Can Do About It, outlines causes of the Neoliberal turn and shows how it has created vastly increased and unjust social inequality. Crucially, he explains where we need to begin in order to reverse the tide. In November 1984, Read More
The term ‘crime’ may appear, at least at first glance, a rather simplistic concept in which particular images and ideas spring to mind. We often ask students to provide an example of what exactly constitutes a ‘crime’ and on almost all occasions responses include such criminal acts as serial murder, mass shootings, contract killings and Read More