Prof Ted Benton

Biography

Ted began his working life as a science teacher in a pioneering comprehensive school in Leicester. Subsequent study for degrees in philosophy eventually led to his appointment as philosophy lecturer in the sociology department at Essex (where he has remained ever since). His background in both philosophy and the natural sciences (especially biology) is quite unusual for a sociologist, and he has tried to use his interest in these areas to make a distinctive contribution in several sociological controversies. 1. Ted's earlier research focused on a range of issues at the boundaries of sociology and philosophy. At that time ‘positivist’/empiricist positions were in battle against their hermeneutic/interpretivist critics. He was amongst a small group of academics who tried to move the debate beyond that polarity by foregrounding non-empiricist but still realist accounts of the ‘natural’ sciences. This showed that there were ways of representing the sorts of knowledge aimed at in the social sciences which did not fit into either the ‘positivist’ or the interpretivist models. Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (1977) was one of the founding texts of what has come to be known as ‘critical realism’, while the 2001 Philosophy of Social Science (with the late Ian Craib) developed those ideas in the light of subsequent work in the field. 2. At the same time Ted continued to work on a series of projects which could be described as ‘history of ideas’. In part this work focused on the history of biological ideas, with the aim of developing a realist but non-empiricist view of the nature of biological explanations, and also of the character of conceptual change and innovation in the life-sciences. But he was also concerned with wider questions of the relationships between biological ideas and both social scientific and ‘popular’ understandings of human nature and social processes. This resulted in a series of articles, including the very influential ‘Biology and social science’ (Sociology 1991). Another outcome was the book Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights, and Social Justice (1993) which engaged with the current debate about the moral status of non-human animals and at the same time constructed conceptual means for thinking about the place of humans in nature consistent with but not reducible to Darwinian evolutionary theory and ecology. This same theme also issued in a series of critiques of ‘ultra-Darwinian’ reductive accounts of human nature and society (eg the 1999 ‘Evolutionary psychology and social science’ in Advances in Human Ecology). One current research interest is a related historical/ critical exploration of the debate between Darwin and Wallace on human evolution and prospects (‘Race, sex and the earthly paradise’, in Carter & Charles (eds) 2010; Wallace's dilemmas:the laws of nature and the human spirit, in Smith & Beccaloni (eds) 2008; Alfred Russel Wallace: Explorer, Evolutionist, Public Intellectual. A Thinker for our Own Times? Siri Scientific, 2013)). 3. In the course of all this, Ted also attempted to develop a version of historical materialist social theory on the basis of the view of social scientific knowledge that the group of ‘critical realist’ philosophers had been elaborating (The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism, 1984). One upshot of that attempt was a recognition that the most sophisticated version of Marxism at that time (‘structural Marxism’) was (like almost all social science at that time) radically under-developed in its view of the relations between human social forms and the natural environment. In part, this was a consequence of the attempt (laudable in itself) of the structural Marxists to counter critics of economic-determinist versions of Marxism, with an emphasis on developing Marxist cultural theory. 4. Both intellectually and politically Ted had been concerned with the seriousness of the challenge posed by the rise of ecological politics and the growing recognition of the dangers of environmental degradation. In the latter part of the 1980s his research efforts were devoted to a critical engagement with ecological and environmentalist literatures, and this issued in a series of publications on ‘green’ social and political theory, as well as an ecological critique of ‘orthodox’ Marxism. This latter insisted that deep level conceptual revision was required, but that several features of the Marxian theoretical heritage were indispensible (both theoretically and practically) for any adequate response to the ‘ecological challenge’ (e.g. Marxism and natural limits New Left Review 1989; Ecology, Socialism and the mastery of nature, New Left Review 1992; With M Redclift (ed.) Social Theory and the Global Environment, 1994; An ecological historical materialism, in Gale & M'Gonigle (eds) 2000;Social theory and ecological politics, in Dunlap et al. (eds) 2003; Beyond neolibetralism, or life after capitalism? A red-green debate in Jones & O'Donnell (eds) 2017... etc)). 5. Independently of his academic research and writingTed has been active as a field naturalist and ecologist, with numerous written and photographic publications. One of these (Bumblebees, New Naturalist 98, 2006) was an attempt to bring sociological insights into a topic so far studied from natural scientific perspectives. This has been very well received and prompted the award of the Stamford Raffles prize for 2007 by the Zoological Society of London. Since that time he haas published several highly regarded monographs on various other invertebrate groups (e.g Grasshoppers and Crickets (New Naturalist, 2011, Solitary Bees (Pelagic, 2017, Butterflies of Britain and Northern Europe (Beaufoy, 2017) and is developing video film as an approach to the study of insect behaviour. While ostensibly books of natural history, they take further the project of engaging existing life-science approaches with insights from sociology. In the case of grasshoppers and crickets, the focus was on sexual selection and sex-divisions, in the case of 'solitary' bees, intermediate forms between 'pure' solitary life-styles and fully social ones was explored for insights into the evolutionary emergence of sociality. In all these works, sociology and political economy were used as resources in explaining a range of issues in wildlife conservation.

Qualifications

• CertEd and BA Leicester,

• BPhil Oxford,

• PhD University of Essex,