Forty Four Years of Debate: The Impact of Race, Community and Conflict

Race, Community and Conflict by John Rex and Robert Moore was published in 1967 and had a considerable public impact through press and TV. Forty four years later it is still widely cited in research on British urban society and ‘race relations’. It is used in teaching research methods, theory, urban sociology and ‘race relations’ to undergraduates. This article describes and explains the immediate impact of the book and its more lasting contribution to sociology. Race, Community and Conflict immediately addressed contemporary public issues around immigration and race relations and was the first book systematically to explore the responses of one city administration to the arrival of new migrants drawn in by the local demand for labour. The longer term impact of the book, it is argued, derives from its attempt to create a theoretical framework deriving from both the work of the Chicago School of Sociology and the adoption of a Weberian approach to social class and urban conflict. The combination of theorised structural analysis with detailed local ethnographic approaches to research probably accounts for the book's continued contribution to the teaching of sociology.