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Emeritus Professor Nicholas Abercrombie
Emeritus Professor
Department: Sociology
Degree: B.A. Politics, Philosophy and Economics; M.Sc. Sociology; Ph.D.
Associated research centres and groups: Institute for Advanced Studies
Research Interests
Born 1944. Educated at Oxford University (B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics) and London School of Economics (M.Sc. in Sociology). Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Lancaster. Appointed in 1968 as a Research Officer in a Unit specializing in town planning research in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College, London. Moved to a lectureship in sociology at the University of Lancaster in 1970, then Professor of Sociology and subsequently Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1995 to 2004. Now retired and Emeritus Professor.
My initial research interests lay in urban sociology and sociological theory. I started some work on the town planning movement in Britain between the wars, trying to identify the different impulses behind the movement and relating them to wider social and cultural movements of the time. In particular, I tried to relate the importance of social order in the work of many town planning theorists to the poetry, novels and paintings of the period and the way in which much left-wing theory also stressed the significance of social order. In sociological theory I wrote articles on a range of topics including neo-evolutionism, indexicality and patronage.
In the mid-1970s my sociological interests shifted towards the sociology of knowledge, and the concept of ideology. To start with, this shift was prompted by a reading of the work of Karl Mannheim and resulted in an attempt to relate the classical sociology of knowledge to Marxist approaches (published as articles on Mannheim and Class Structure and Knowledge (1980)). In turn this led to a series of studies on the relation of ideological systems to economic life carried out jointly with Stephen Hill of the London School of Economics and Bryan Turner now of the University of Cambridge (published as The Dominant Ideology Thesis (1980), Sovereign Individuals of Capitalism (1986) and Dominant Ideologies (1990)). Related to these concerns was a project with John Urry on the middle class (published as Capital, Labour and the Middle Class (1983)).
My subsequent research has concentrated on two main areas. The first is in many ways a continuation of earlier work on dominant ideologies and mechanisms of cultural transmission. It has resulted in two publications - Television and Society (1996) and Audiences (with Bryan Longhurst (1998)). In the latter book we attempt to formulate an account of the way in which being a member of an audience has become a constitutive characteristic of living in contemporary societies.
The second area of research concerns the impact of processes of commodification and marketisation on cultural values. A first aspect of this is the way that markets force changes in relationships of authority. Some of this work is published in two edited collections - Enterprise Culture (with Russell Keat (1991)) and The Authority of the Consumer (with Russell Keat and Nigel Whiteley (1994)). I am beginning work on a second aspect on money as a cultural value, the way that it has contradictory effects, and the manner in which cultural formations can regulate the onward march of commodification. A short sketch of the argument is published in Cultural Values 4.3 (2000).
It is, I believe, important to bring sociology to as wide an audience as possible. To this end I have collaborated in a number of introductory books (chiefly the Penguin Dictionary of Sociology (with Stephen Hill and Bryan Turner (4th Edn 2000)) and Contemporary British Society (with Alan Warde, Rosemary Deem, Sue Penna, Keith Soothill, John Urry, Andrew Sayer and Sylvia Walby (3rd Edn 2000)). Recently, I have published an introductory book, Sociology (2004) and, together with Alan Warde, I plan a book for the general reader on the constitution of British society.
Associated Keyword: Sociology
Contact Details
Tel: +44 (0)1524 N/A
Room: N/A
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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YD
United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 1524 510851
Fax: +44 (0) 1524 510857
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