Blind men and the elephant: one view of the field of migration studies

There are many ways to conceive and represent the field of migration studies. The CrossMigration article provides us with a broad overview to help us understand and contribute to the field’s development. This article explores a number of additional and complementary views drawn from the field-building activities of the Social Science Research Council between 1994 and 2014. (Source: Charles Maurice Stebbins & Mary H. Coolidge, Golden Treasury Readers: Primer, American Book Co., New York, 1909, p. 89. For the story of the “Blind Men and the Elephant,” see pp. 87-91: https://books.google.com/books?id=_dIAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false:)

Conclusion

The conclusion describes how the Social Science Research Council, and in particular the discipline of sociology, came under increasing attack by Conservative policy makers in the 1970s and 1980s. It briefly outlines Young’s biography and career after 1970, and summarizes the key arguments of the book as a whole. The conclusion cautions against populist and communitarian arguments which idealize nostalgic visions of community, pointing out that Young’s portrayals of the East London working class were ideologically and politically motivated, and did not fully account for changing gender norms or the impact of immigration. The book concludes by re-emphasizing the importance of the social sciences in twentieth-century politics and political thought, and argues that historians should continue to take their role in modern British history seriously.