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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

John Rex
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Summary

The papers contained in this book arose indirectly from the work of the Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, of which I was Director between 1979 and 1984. Although that Unit was originally founded to do fundamental research in the field of ethnic and race relations, pressures were put on the Unit by its parent body the Social Science Research Council during the years involved to engage more and more in policy-oriented research. It became more and more apparent to me as Director that, if we were not to become simply technocrats researching on the means thought necessary to achieve Government ends and if we were to be able to maintain the independence necessary to look critically at those ends, we needed to have a comparative perspective, and that perspective was in turn dependent upon the understanding of theoretical issues.

On the face of it the development of a universally argued theory and an agreed paradigm for race and ethnic relations research seemed impossible. Not merely were there several disciplines involved, but within the main ones, namely sociology and social anthropology, there seemed to be a number of competing if not warring schools. None the less it was thought worthwhile to try to bring together some of the major internationally known scholars to present their ideas as to possible conceptualisations of the field in order to see whether what appeared at first to be irreconcilable conflict could in fact be replaced by a sense of complementarity.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1986

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  • Preface
  • Edited by John Rex, David Mason
  • Book: Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations
  • Online publication: 01 June 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511557828.001
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  • Preface
  • Edited by John Rex, David Mason
  • Book: Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations
  • Online publication: 01 June 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511557828.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Edited by John Rex, David Mason
  • Book: Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations
  • Online publication: 01 June 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511557828.001
Available formats
×