ABSTRACT
The strength to be gained from such diversity is the stimulus of interdisciplinary contact and the constant challenging of conventional wisdoms; there are signs that historians, sociologists and geographers are beginning to learn from each other and utilize each other’s tools. Sociological studies, on the other hand, could perhaps be criticized for placing too much emphasis on theory, with a consequent disregard for the practicability of testing empirically the ideas which have been generated. Relatively few geographical studies of nineteenth-century towns have explicitly examined processes of change, or have focused on the behavioural or institutional factors which shaped the city. The generation of such theory depends both on more critical evaluation of the modern world and on detailed empirical studies of processes of change in nineteenth-century society. Many of the recent quantitative studies from all disciplinary backgrounds have focused too much on the census and other ‘objective’ sources, to the relative exclusion of other material.
