''Family and Kinship in East London'' was a 1957 sociological study of an urban

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colo ...

tight-knit community, and the effects of the post-war governments' social housing policy leading to their rehousing. Many East Londoners by rigid

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

moved out into the new estates of the

Home Counties The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Buckinghamshire and Surrey are usually included in definitions and Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent are also often included ...

(some of which is now outer Greater London). The study was carried out in the

Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green Bethnal Green was a civil parish and a metropolitan borough in the East End of London, England. It was formed as a civil parish in 1743 from the Bethnal Green hamlet in Stepney ancient parish, and the church of St Matthew, Bethnal Green, was ...

, in the East End of London and a new housing estate in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

. The research was carried out by Michael Young and Peter Willmott, who had been an integral part of building the

welfare state A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equita ...

in Britain during the tenure of Clement Attlee and the Labour government between 1945–51. The study itself has been acknowledged by many sociologists and in its authors' critiques as being one of the most influential sociological studies of the twentieth century.''New York Times'' - obituary to Michael Young
Margalit Fox. 25 January 2002. Retrieved 2013-07-09 It is argued by some that it has inspired British sociology to take new paths away from the more traditional broad Functionalist versus Marxist dichotomy. It used social observation as its means to do so, going away from statistical information that had been previously preferred. In this sense, it counters the Structuralist ( Positivist) model that posits statistics can always be found to prove cause and effect within society. The idea was to interact and understand a post-war community, to determine its aspirations, worries, doubts and insecurities. This key understanding moves the study into a more Interactionist line, about each individual's role within society. It could also be linked to Max Weber's idea of empathy and "going deep" to comprehend the complexity of communities. In 1992, Michael Young and the Institute of Community Studies he founded commenced on a new survey of the area to examine the changes to the area and in particular to examine the conflict between the white working class and Bangladeshi immigrants which had become a major feature of the area. This was eventually published in 2005 after his death as ''The New East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict'' by Michael Young, Kate Gavron,

Geoff Dench Professor Geoff Dench (14 August 1940 – 24 June 2018) was a British social scientist whose work related particularly to the lives of working class men. He did extensive research using opinion surveys and arrived at conclusions relating to immigr ...

. On 25 April 2007, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' society section reported on the 50th Anniversary of the study.

Madeleine Bunting Madeleine Clare J. Bunting (born March 1964) is an English writer. She was formerly an associate editor and columnist at ''The Guardian'' newspaper. She has written five works of non-fiction and two novels (''Ceremony of Innocence'' will be publi ...

expressed how "the voices they found described a world rich in social relationships, networks of dependence and mutual support that were central to the people's resilience in facing the adversity of insecure and low paid employment." Bunting also mentions how the pair were amongst the first to discover " social capital" and its role in shaping community life. It was the first British sociological study that properly investigated deeply people's attitudes, beliefs and feelings. Using detailed prose and limited statistical analysis, it charted how decisions from the top affected ordinary people in their day-to-day and prospective lives. *

References

;References {{DEFAULTSORT:Family And Kinship In East London Sociology books 1957 non-fiction books History of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets