Publications

The rise of subversive religious beliefs has been recently documented as related to the politico-economic radicalization of places that feel left behind. When is the traditional local religious institution so socio-economically inefficient in providing hope for “not walking alone” to become substituted by subversive religious beliefs on the market for hope? This article suggests a…

There is now an extensive literature on the related concepts of soft power and modernity. The former is sometimes known as cultural or public diplomacy and is an international relations factor in what is now called hybrid conflict or even war. As is well-known, Joseph Nye, an American political scientist, coined the term “soft-power” in the early 20th Century….

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on rural development programs aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Global South. The research question examines how the Smart Rural Communities (SRC) framework can support the SDGs as an international cooperation model. The article presents findings from fieldwork action research including a critical analysis of…

Recent, UK-based studies have focused on the construction of working-class masculine identity and documented changes and softer displays among young men. This article contributes to this literature and is based on ethnographic research conducted in Wales, UK, and a sample consisting of the most marginalised working-class young men often associated with protest masculinity, homophobia and…

Territorial cohesion is a guiding set of EU principles to achieve sustainable development. However, evidence suggests that within and across rural and peripheral regions in particular, prosperity and social and economic wellbeing continue to lag behind other regions. The aim of this article is to examine how a spatial justice perspective can provide new development…

As new municipalism comes of age, prefixes proliferate: from democratic and autonomist to post-growth and care municipalisms. How do all these variegations relate to each other and to the wider movement of which they claim a part? What does all this conceptual creativity amount to, epistemologically and politically? How can we distill the most salient…

Read our annual report, WISERD Insight, featuring our key areas of activity, income profile, funding and engagement activities in 2022.

The Civil Society and Social Change series provides interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on the rapidly changing nature of civil society at local, regional, national and global scales. The series comprises a core set of edited volumes reporting on research findings from across the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data Civil Society Research…

Environmental planning disputes often combine questions of regulation and legislation with distinctive, place-based epistemic issues that lend themselves to citizen science approaches. Whilst these citizen science activities often concern the enforcement of regulations, here we describe the attempts of a local community group to prevent the start-up of a new biomass incineration plant by showing…

This Data Insight explores how information is used to inform decisions regarding the provision of careers guidance interviews among key stage 4 (KS4) pupils in Wales. It explores the relative importance of background characteristics contained within administrative education records compared to information supplied by pupils via the Careers Wales diagnostic tool.