Communities and Social Action

Based on deep ethnographic research, this book explores new practices and ideas about activism in the fight against social inequality. The book is both about feminist activists and is an act of feminist activism, with the author’s experiences as a volunteer ethnographer in New Zealand sitting at its heart.

Drawing on international examples, this book interrogates the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Contributors from six continents, reimagine community development as they consider how aesthetic arts contribute to processes of peacebuilding, youth empowerment, participatory planning and environmental regeneration.

This book explores how the uncertainties of the 21st century present existential challenges to civil society. Presenting original empirical findings, it highlights transferable lessons that will inform policy and practice in today’s age of uncertainty.

This book explores the ways in which communities are responding today’s society as government policies are increasingly promoting privatisation, deregulation and individualisation of responsibilities, providing insights into the efficacy of these approaches through key policy issues including access to food, education and health.

This ground-breaking and compelling book shows in fine detail the life struggles of those who live on a public housing estate in Dublin. Combining long-term research into residents’ lived experience with critical realist theory, it provides a completely fresh perspective on public housing in Ireland and arguably, beyond.

Many people living in rural areas face hardship but the UK’s welfare system is poorly adapted to meet their needs, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit and cutbacks exacerbating pressures. This book combines person-based and place-based approaches to tackling rural poverty.

This book brings a critical perspective to post-disaster reconstruction in Italy, and the sometimes radical changes in individual and collective behaviours that persist following such events. Considering the impacts of climate change and COVID-19, this edited book will stimulate debate on policy and practice in disaster recovery.

It is vital that we decolonise community education and development – learning from the past in order to challenge current discrimination and oppression more effectively . In this book, Marjorie Mayo identifies ways of developing more inclusive policies and practices, working towards social justice for the future.

This book argues that Myanmar’s resistance is deeply rooted in its university spaces. Drawing on the experiences of key actors – rectors, professors, students and activists – the book offers a compelling narrative about the life of the country following the latest coup d’état, an event that continues to puzzle the international community.

This timely book provides an alternative vision of social mobility and a route-map to achieving it. It examines how the term ‘social mobility’ structures what success means and the impact that has on society. It recasts the relationship with employers and covers progress in non-work areas of life.

Ten percent of the world’s population lives on islands, but until now the place and space characteristics of islands in criminological theory have not been deeply considered. This book addresses issues of how, and by whom, crime is defined in island settings, informed by the distinctive social structures of their communities.

Using international perspectives and case studies, this book discusses the relationships between community development and populism in the context of today’s widespread crisis of democracy. Exploring the synergies and contradictions between populism and community development, it offers new ways of understanding and responding to populism.