Reflections provoked by Michael Banton's John Rex's main mistake

Abstract

Banton's article provoked a number of reflections on working with John Rex in the 1960s. The idea of race has a long history both in human relations and sociological theory. But the possibility of there being a specific field of ‘race relations’ remains contested. Ideas of race and ethnicity are elided in public discourse, making the resolution of linguistic issues in the field especially difficult and as yet unresolved. These reflections touch upon the political environment in which John Rex's earlier writing on race was conducted and upon the breadth of influences upon a sociologist rooted in the classical tradition, especially the sociology of Max Weber.