Young people's accounts of personal relationships in a multi-cultural eastLondon environment: Questions of community, diversity and inequality

A thematic decomposition of group interviews conducted with 176 young peopl e from Last London on the topic of personal relationships is presented. The focus of the analysis is on the role played by cultural and community fact ors on the form of personal relationships, and particular emphasis is given to the power-related issues of gender and ethnicity. Five broad themes are discussed, entitled 'An imagined community: Harmonious diversity', 'multic ulturalism and racism', 'Asian communities and families', 'the inter-relati onship of gender with ethnicity' and 'the role of religion in shaping relat ionships'. The findings are discussed in relation to inadequacies with abst ract and generalized psychological models that fail to grasp the specificit ies of community relations. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.