ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on providing a systematic exploration of the ways in which the interrelationship between race and social relations has been theorised and the subject of empirical research. In exploring these issues in detail, it also lays the foundation for some of the core themes we shall engage more fully in the rest of the book. It engages with the ways in which scholarship in this field has addressed the linkages between racial and ethnic relations and questions about class, gender, and other social divisions. It also discusses the efforts to explore the ways that race and ethnicity are shaped through class and other social relations and how they, in turn, interact with broader social and political relations in the world around us.
