1962 : Introduction -- 2005 to 1938 : Lifting social groups out of the landscape -- 1938 : The British intellectual and highbrow culture -- 1954 : The challenge of technical identity -- 1940 : The resurgence of gentlemanly expertise in post-war Britain -- 1962 : The moment of sociology -- 1956 : The end of community : the quest for the English Middletown -- 1951 : The interview and the melodrama of social mobility -- 1941 : The sample survey and the modern rational nation -- 1948 to 1962 : The remaking of social class identities -- Conclusion : 2009 : The politics of method
Summary
Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940 examines how, between 1940 and 1970 British society was marked by the imprint of the academic social sciences in profound ways which have an enduring legacy on how we see ourselves. It focuses on how interview methods and sample surveys eclipsed literature and the community study as a means of understanding ordinary life. The book shows that these methods were part of a wider remaking of British national identity in theaftermath of decolonisation in which measures of the rational, managed nation eclipsed literary and romantic ones
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-271) and indexes
