Author Description

Professor Clark reconsiders the circumstances and motives of participants in the debate about the intrusion of the European Union into British customs and conventions. He shows how apparent confusions on the left and the right are not as easily corrected as conventional methods of social analysis imply. Such confusions reflect many people's deep-seated beliefs and commitments, framed by inherited rules concerning decision making, and now under threat due to new circumstances. He encourages a better appreciation of the irony of the type of situations where alliances are formed between old enemies in the face of new circumstances, and where customs and conventions take on a significance previouslly taken for granted. Professor Clark claims that his conception of social science is both more modest and more sceptical than is commonly the case.