A Social Survey of the Oxford District
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1936.tb02436.x |
| Published date | 01 July 1936 |
| Author | R. F. Bretherton |
| Date | 01 July 1936 |
A
Social
Survey
of
the
Oxford
District
By
R.
F.
BRETHERTON,
M.A.
Wadham
College,
Oxford
[Pafier
to be discussed
at
the Summer Conference,
Oxford,
July,
19361
HEN
I
was asked
to
write
a
paper for
this
Conference on the
W
“
Barnett House Social Survey in Oxford,”
I
felt some hesib-
tion about accepting the invitation; for the Survey has really only
settled down to work during the past year, and has
as
yet published
none of the results of
its
work.
So
I
cannot give you
a
considered
account of its
findings
about the
Oxford
District.
I
can
only
tell you,
first, what
we
are fxying
to
do, how we are
trying
to do it, and why
we hope that,
at
the end, the work
will
prove
to
have been worth
while; and, second,
I
can point out, in the light of the knowledge
already acquired, some
of
the
main
administrative and
social
questions
with
which the Survey must necessarily be concerned.
The
making
of
social and economic
(‘
surveys
I’
has recently
become
a
fashionable occupation. At least a dozen, large and small,
wide and narrow in scope, have been completed in
this
country
alone
during the last five years, or are still
in
the making. They range
from
such enormous works as .the
“
New Survey
of
London Life and
Labour
”
to
small
inquiries into the
facts
uf housing or unemploy-
ment in quite small towns. Now the making
of
these surveys certainly
amuses the surveyors, finds employment
for
the funds
of
trusts
for
the advancement
of
the social sciences, and satisfies that desire for
statistical computation and tabulation which,
it
is said,
is
possessed
exclusively by
homo
sapiens
and the calculating horse. But
many
people-particularly those long-suffering
local
government
officials
upon whose knowledge and co-operation the
“
surveyors
”
largely
rely-must be inclined to ask whether such social surveys are
of
much
real use,
or
at least, whether their utility is commensurate
with
the
amount of ,time, trouble,
and
money, which is spent upon them.
And
this
question
leads
to
another. Even supposing that it
is
granted
that the surveys already made have served
a
useful
purpose,
where
is
the process to stop? We have detailed physical maps
of
the whole
256
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