Review by Choice Review
Sociologist Savage (Univ. of Manchester, UK) has focused his research to date on cultural class analysis, space and urban studies, and the history of social science methods. This ambitious book relates these themes and argues that the rise of a new social science in postwar Britain shaped class identities. The author draws on the archived sources of social scientists' fieldwork--the notes on their interviews and surveys--of the Mass Observation project and seven studies of working- and middle-class families in the 1950s-60s (including Goldthorpe and Lockwood's study in Luton and Young and Willmott's in Bethnal Green) as well as their publications. He traces how these researchers and the research tools they employed contributed to a new sense of the importance of technical skill in British society, as well as attachment to certain social landscapes. Collectively, their work raised the profile of the social sciences in general and sociology in particular, constituting a challenge to both the older "gentlemanly" social science and the traditional dominance of the arts and humanities in British universities and public life. Students of social science theory and method and the social and intellectual history of Britain will find much of interest here. Summing Up; Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. A. H. Plunkett Piedmont Virginia Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
