Michael Parker Banton was a British social scientist, known primarily for his publications on racial and ethnic relations. He was also the first editor of Sociology.
Academic contribution
After graduating from the London School of Economics in 1950, Banton conducted research on the settlement of New Commonwealth immigrants in the East End of London for which he received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, from where he also gained a D.Sc. in inter-group relations in 1964. Here he studied under Kenneth Little at the Anthropology department which Banton noted was called "Negroes in Britain Industry". Banton remained at the department and produced three books under Little's supervison: subsequently wrote books about the settlement of rural immigrants in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and on the behaviour of the white British towards New Commonwealth immigrants. His book The Policeman in the Community, a comparative study of policing in Scotland and the United States, was the first book-length sociological study of the police. Banton became best known for his book Race Relations, which summarised contemporary social science knowledge of that field. This phase of his writing concluded with a volume, The Idea of Race, in which he introduced into the English language the concept of racialization as a process by which the idea of race as a physical category was socially utilized to organise perceptions of the populations of the world. Up to this point his work reflected sociological orthodoxy. For the next forty-plus years his publication energies focused increasingly on this subject as he turned out a succession of studies devoted to defining the study of race relations as a discipline. Banton's particular approach led to a long-running debate with John Rex. Other protagonists include Robert Miles who in 1982 published . Starting in 1976, Banton's criticisms of that orthodoxy strengthened. In Racial and Ethnic Competition he advanced a rational choice theory. The book ended with a discussion of what constituted 'good' racial relations; it concluded that good racial relations would be ethnic relations. He has been critical of accounts of majority-minority relations in Europe that interpret them in the light of conceptions conventional in the USA. Recalling Max Weber's statement that he became a sociologist 'in order to put an end to the mischievous enterprise which still operates with collectivist concepts' Banton has observed that 'ethnic group' is a collectivist concept. There are ethnic categories; those who are assigned to an ethnic category may come to form a group, but do not necessarily do so. From this starting point he has developed a theory ofsocial categories. Whereas Banton has been much concerned with the improvement of concepts and theories in this field, he has also written on measures for the reduction of racial discrimination. He served as an elected member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination from 1986 to 2001 and as its chairman for 1996-98.
'Decision-taking in the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination' pp 55–78 in Philip Alston & James Crawford, editors, The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring. 2000 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
'Historical and Contemporary Modes of Racialization' pp. 51–68 in Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice, edited by Karim Murji and John Solomos. 2005 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
