ABSTRACT
Not least among them is the fact that the persons one is writing about can themselves read-perhaps a few of them may actually read the book itself (rather than summaries by journalists). And each of them is likely to have formed very decided and personal views about Swansea, about social class and the Welsh, about the chapels, and about the nature and importance of family life in the nineteensixties. After all, it is his society that is being examined, his town-and he does live there. The accuracy of statement and comment must be tested against his own experience. This thoughtof the ‘voters’ of Swansea looking over our shoulder as we writecan be very off-putting and restricting. It is an experience which the anthropologist writing about Africa or Central Borneo is happily spared. The sociologist of contemporary Western society works in a spotlight of public attention which is the lot of few other academic disciplines. Perhaps this is why some sociological writers occasionally appear to take refuge in a swirling smokescreen of unresolved statistics, or behind an impenetrable blockade of a bizarre and freshlyminted terminology, where they can at least be commended for their scholarship. Another solution to this dilemma is to avoid ‘theory’ and deal directly with ‘urgent social problems’ in a popular style, certain that you will be commended for your humanity. We have tried here-and we are aware how unsuccessfully-to find a middle way between these alternatives.
