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

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

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 (some of which is now outer

Greater London Greater London is an administrative area in England, coterminous with the London region, containing most of the continuous urban area of London. It contains 33 local government districts: the 32 London boroughs, which form a Ceremonial count ...

). The study was carried out in the

Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green Bethnal Green was a Civil parishes in England, civil parish and a Metropolitan boroughs of the County of London, metropolitan borough of the County of London between 1899 and 1965, when it was merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney and t ...

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

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

. 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 (polity), 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 oppor ...

in Britain during the tenure of

Clement Attlee Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee (3 January 18838 October 1967) was a British statesman who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. At ...

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 Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

dichotomy A dichotomy () is a partition of a set, partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets). In other words, this couple of parts must be * jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and * mutually exclusive: nothi ...

. 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 Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns tha ...

( 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 Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

's idea of empathy and "going deep" to comprehend the complexity of communities. In 1992, Michael Young and the

Institute of Community Studies The Institute for Community Studies at The Young Foundation is a United Kingdom, British non-profit research institute that works with communities, organisations, and policymakers to effect social change. It was founded in 1953 and is based in ...

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 Bangladeshis ( ) are the citizens and nationals of Bangladesh, a South Asian country centred on the transnational historical region of Bengal along the Bay of Bengal, eponymous bay. Bangladeshi nationality law, Bangladeshi citizenship was fo ...

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 and Geoff Dench. On 25 April 2007, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' 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 Social capital is a concept used in sociology and economics to define networks of relationships which are productive towards advancing the goals of individuals and groups. It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interper ...

" and its role in shaping community life. It was one of the first British sociological studies that 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