ABSTRACT
There is a noticeable strain in much contemporary sociology between theoretical and empirical work. There is, indeed, something of a division of labour within the discipline, some sociologists devoting most of their time to the development of often highly sophisticated theoretical perspectives with little concern for their empirical applications, while others busy themselves with large-scale research projects which generate interesting case material but which sometimes appear to bear little relation to the dominant theoretical concerns of the day. Sometimes, of course, theoretical and empirical perspectives do come to complement each other, but such a happy coalescence is often difficult to achieve given the level of abstraction and generality of the former, and the concrete and specific character of the latter. Certainly, in the field of urban politics, there has been little empirical material published in Britain which can be related directly to the sorts of questions considered in the preceding chapters.
