`Careless talk': A critique of Dench, Gavron and Young's The New East End

Abstract

The task of revisiting Young and Willmott's Family and Kinship in East London was probably impossible. Dench, Gavron and Young extended the geographical coverage of their study area to include some fundamentally different zones adjacent to Bethnal Green. The study extended over a decade but the authors' The New East End fails to make clear dates, actors and locations. The theoretical framework is incoherent and especially so when referring to actors outside the area of study who the authors claim have considerable power and influence in the East End. Local people are static informants and so as a `community study' the book fails to provide a narrative or analysis rooted in local events during a very eventful period of its history. The discussion of social policy changes, which form the background to this study is partial and tendentious. Although there is an illuminating section discussing migration from Sylhet the book is simply bad sociology. One outcome of the publication of The New East End has been that more general readers (including both the BNP and the Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality) have been able to draw whatever conclusions from the book suit their own agendas.