ABSTRACT
The first task, of the sociologist, is to try to understand this world, in order that the more immediate structural issues and, within these, the private troubles of individuals, might be looked at in perspective. Sociologists will certainly never be particularly popular if they expose latent functions. They will certainly find it difficult to get jobs, except where a higher authority, who is capable of taking the larger view, or looking further along the means-ends chain, wishes to review or criticise or blame a too insular underling. Town planning is a sphere in which the sociologist is often called upon to provide technical knowledge about means and ends. But if he looks critically at the problem which is posed to him, he will find that it has some curious features. The task which the sociologist would then set himself would be to look at the logic of the situation and see what 'latent functions' the new towns were serving.
