This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Michael Banton's classic book reviews historical theories of racial and ethnic relations and contemporary struggles to supersede them. It shows how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concepts of race attempted to explain human difference in terms of race as a permanent type and how these were followed by social scientific conceptions of race as a form of status. In a new concluding chapter, 'Race as social construct', Michael Banton makes the case for a historically sensitive social scientific understanding of racial and ethnic groupings which operates within a more general theory of collective action and is, therefore, able to replace racial explanations as effectively as they have been replaced in biological science. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand contemporary debates about racial and ethnic conflict.

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The sociological problems presented by ethnic relations should be distinguished from problems of social policy. The foundations for a micro-sociology of ethnic relations laid by Max Weber in 1906-11 have to be inter-related with the macro-sociological contexts within which ethnic groups are constructed by collective action. When ethnic relations have their origin in trans-national migration, much depends on the immigrants' points of entry into the receiving society's scale of socio-economic status, and, thereafter, on transmitted inequalities. While the nature and causes of social differences associated with ethnic origin have been illuminated by quantitative and qualitative studies, new styles of research are needed to bridge these modes of analysis, such as the measurement of relative preferences for association with co-ethnics.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) was, in 1969, the first of the UN human rights treaties to come into force. Many of the 143 states that by 1995 had become parties to it did not initially appreciate how extensive were the obligations they had assumed. They undertook to submit periodic reports; these have to be examined by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which in turn reports to the UN General Assembly. During the years 1970–1995, CERD has greatly improved international oversight of governmental action in this field, but understanding of what is entailed in the prohibition of this form of discrimination is still limited. Further progress depends upon a triangular relationship between states parties, the treaty monitoring body, and members of the public within states parties.