This book traces the history of British sociology and empirical social research over the last hundred years. Its coverage includes the census of population, the classic poverty surveys of Booth and Rowntree, the slow growth of social science between the wars, mass-observation, the rise of the Government Social Survey, the establishment of academic sociology after 1945 outside Oxford and Cambridge, and independent initiatives such as the foundation of the Institute of Community Studies. A concluding section considers the uses made of British sociology, the place of the citizen as the subject...