The papers contained in this book arose indirectly from the work of the Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, of which I was Director between 1979 and 1984. Although that Unit was originally founded to do fundamental research in the field of ethnic and race relations, pressures were put on the Unit by its parent body the Social Science Research Council during the years involved to engage more and more in policy-oriented research. It became more and more apparent to me as Director that, if we were not to become simply technocrats researching on the means thought necessary to achieve Government ends and if we were to be able to maintain the independence necessary to look critically at those ends, we needed to have a comparative perspective, and that perspective was in turn dependent upon the understanding of theoretical issues.

On the face of it the development of a universally argued theory and an agreed paradigm for race and ethnic relations research seemed impossible. Not merely were there several disciplines involved, but within the main ones, namely sociology and social anthropology, there seemed to be a number of competing if not warring schools. None the less it was thought worthwhile to try to bring together some of the major internationally known scholars to present their ideas as to possible conceptualisations of the field in order to see whether what appeared at first to be irreconcilable conflict could in fact be replaced by a sense of complementarity.