Abercrombie, Nicholas 1944-

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* Indicates that a listing has been compiled from secondary sources believed to be reliable, but has not been personally verified for this edition by the author sketched.

ABERCROMBIE, Nicholas 1944-

PERSONAL: Born April 13, 1944, in Birmingham, England; son of Michael (a university professor) and Jane (a university professor; maiden name, Johnson) Abercrombie; married Brenda Patterson (a publisher), January 2, 1969; children: Robert Benjamin, Joseph Edward. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Queen's College, Oxford, B.A., 1966; London School of Economics and Political Science, London, M.Sc., 1968; University of Lancaster, Ph.D., 1980. Politics: Socialist.

ADDRESSES: Home—1A Derwent Rd., Lancaster LA1 3ES, England. Office—Department of Sociology, University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster, England; fax: 01524-36841. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of London, University College, London, England, research officer in town planning, 1968-70; University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, England, lecturer, 1970-83, senior lecturer, 1983-88, reader, 1988-90, professor of sociology, 1990—, pro-vice chancellor, 1995—. Framework Press, chair. Active in local political organizations and with Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Arts (fellow), British Sociological Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Morris Ginsberg fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, 1983.

WRITINGS:

Class, Structure, and Knowledge, Basil Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1980.

(With Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner) The Dominant Ideology Thesis, Allen & Unwin (London, England), 1980.

(With John Urry) Capital, Labour, and the Middle Classes, Allen & Unwin (London, England), 1983.

(With Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner) The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, Penguin (London, England), 1984, 4th edition, 2000.

(With Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner) Sovereign Individuals of Capitalism, Allen & Unwin (London, England), 1986.

(With Alan Warde, Keith Soothill, and others) Contemporary British Society, Polity Press (Cambridge, England), 1988, 3rd edition, 2000.

(Editor, with Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner) Dominant Ideologies, Unwin Hyman (London, England), 1990.

(Editor, with Russell Keat) Enterprise Culture, Routledge (London, England), 1991.

(Editor, with Alan Warde) Social Change in Contemporary Britain, Polity Press (Cambridge, England), 1992.

(Editor, with Russell Keat and Nigel Whiteley) The Authority of the Individual, Routledge (London, England), 1994.

(Editor, with Alan Warde) Family, Household, and Life-Course, Framework Press (Lancaster, England), 1994.

(Editor, with Alan Warde) Stratification and Inequality, Framework Press (Lancaster, England), 1994.

(Editor, with Russell Keat and Nigel Whiteley) The Authority of the Consumer, Routledge (London, England), 1994.

Television and Society, Polity Press (Cambridge, England), 1996.

(With Brian Longhurst) Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination, Sage Publications (London, England), 1998.

(Editor, with Alan Warde) The Contemporary British Society Reader, Polity Press (Cambridge, England), 2000.

Contributor to books, including The University in an Urban Environment: A Study of Activity Patterns from a Planning Viewpoint, Sage Publications (London, England), 1973.

WORK IN PROGRESS: An introductory book on sociology as a way of thinking, for Polity Press; further editions of The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology; Getting and Spending, a book on money.

SIDELIGHTS: Nicholas Abercrombie once told CA: "I am an academic interested in the sociological analysis of culture. My primary interest lies in the impact of cultural values on a society. The Dominant Ideology Thesis, for instance, is an examination of the idea that there are dominant beliefs in a society which become widely shared and help to perpetuate the particular social order. My coauthors and I showed, to the contrary, that in historical societies, and contemporary ones, there is either no dominant culture or, if there is, it makes remarkable little impact on subordinate groups, mainly because the machinery for transmitting it is relatively inefficient.

"In other work, past or projected, I examine the relationship of individualistic values to economic life, the impact of television on audiences, particularly in the way that viewers talk about television and the manner in which a consumer culture affects the book publishing industry.

"I also try to write introductory books on sociology, books that are accessible to the general reader. This accessibility is very important to sociology, as is a method of teaching that is student-centered, not teacher-centered. The latter consideration has dictated my involvement with a firm that publishes teaching materials for use in schools in the United Kingdom."