ABSTRACT
Race relations is an area of interdisciplinary study and it is to be expected that students from different disciplines will have sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting, insights into particular problems. None the less this does not mean that there are no distinct disciplinary ways of posing and looking at problems. Still less does it mean that complex concepts can be elucidated, or theories tested and refuted, by simplistic and sub-disciplinary survey methods. It was with this in mind, that I introduced into an empirical study of race relations in the urban zone of transition in Birmingham, the sociological concept of ‘housing classes’.
