Technology, data and society
Reflecting on UN Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industries, Innovation and Infrastructure, Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities and Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, our list looks at the potential for innovation and creative solutions to global social problems, whilst critically engaging with the risks, such as worsened social inequality and damage to human rights.
Subjects covered include the development of sustainable technology to help combat climate change, the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse data more efficiently, the way social media creates a space for people to organise international social activism and the need to balance our digital lives and retain data sovereignty, especially for the most vulnerable in society.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Technology, data and innovation, we aim to address the following goals:
Biomedical Innovation in Fertility Care
Evidence Challenges, Commercialization and the Market for Hope
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book analyses the clashes between evidence-based medicine and the dynamics of an increasingly privatised fertility care industry. With a unique focus on "add-on" treatments, it reveals how these controversial treatments are now widespread and can border on hopemongering.
- ForthcomingHardbackGBP 45.00 Pre-order
- Currently not availableEPUB
The Politics and Ethics of Transhumanism
Techno-Human Evolution and Advanced Capitalism
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
This book interrogates the promises of transhumanism, arguing that it is deeply entwined with capitalist ideology. It casts doubt on a utopian techno-capitalist narrative of unending progress and shows how an alternative ethical framework might foster a more inclusive future.
- ForthcomingPaperbackGBP 27.99 Pre-order
- Currently not availableEPUB
- Currently not availablePDF
The Public and Their Platforms
Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media
Cutting across multiple disciplines, this book maps out a new role for the public sociologist in the post-COVID world. It envisions a new kind of public sociology that brings together “the digital” and "the physical” to create public spaces where critical scholarship and active civic engagement can meet in a mutually reinforcing way.
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- AvailableHardbackGBP 80.00 Add to basket
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Activists in the Data Stream
The Practices of Daily Grassroots Politics in Southern Europe
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-ND licence
This book pulls back the curtain on the link between technology and activism, showing shows how activists navigate the impact of digital media on today’s grassroots politics.
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Remaking Money for a Sustainable Future
Money Commons
Engaging imaginatively with the future of money, this book examines the real-life efforts of grassroots movements and activists from across the world who are reclaiming power by designing, organising and implementing complementary currencies. It will be of interest to all who are interested in constructing a more sustainable and just world.
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Epigenetics and Responsibility
Ethical Perspectives
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This thought-provoking collection redefines the boundaries of moral responsibility. It shows how epigenetics reveals connections between our genetic make-up and our environment. The essays suggest a shift in focus from individual to collective responsibility.
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Care Technologies for Ageing Societies
An International Comparison
Exploring the role of technology in Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, this book compares the ways in which technology is being implemented in different national contexts to contribute effectively to the sustainability of care systems.
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Gender Inequalities in Tech-driven Research and Innovation
Living the Contradiction
ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This volume centres on the lived experience of women working in tech-driven research and innovation areas in the Nordic countries.
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Data Power in Action
Urban Data Politics in Times of Crisis
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
Drawing on the study of different cities in the Global South, this book explores how data have become a generative force in shaping what cities are, how they are governed and inhabited, especially during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Digital Bodies
The pieces in this Byte raise important questions about what it means to bring our embodied selves into contact with digital media technologies. The selections expand our understanding of what it means to live in and through bodies augmented by digital technologies within a deeply unequal social world.
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- AvailableKindleGBP 3.99
Digital Sociology in Everyday Life
Chapters in this Byte cover topics such as designing a research framework and how to work ethically as a digital researcher, continually interrogating one’s position as a researcher and reflecting on the process of knowledge creation. Cumulatively, they highlight the value of sociological theory for understanding our digital world.
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- AvailableKindleGBP 3.99
Digitized Institutions
In this Byte, the contributions consider the way that digitally meditated social processes are transforming institutions. It examines the interconnectedness of institutions and considers digitization across schooling, work, and media, with an eye on inequality.
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- AvailableKindleGBP 3.99
Related journals
Evidence & Policy
eHealth technologies and the know-do gap: exploring the role of knowledge mobilisation
Sharing confidential health data for research purposes in the UK: where are ‘publics’ in the public interest? [Open Access]
International Journal of Care and Caring
Responses to vulnerability: care ethics and the technologisation of eldercare
Critical and Radical Social Work
Technicist education: paving the way for the rise of the social work robots?