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Professor Steven Michael Lukes, D.Phil. (born 1941) is the author of numerous books and articles about political and social theory. Currently he is a professor of politics and sociology at the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Siena, the London School of Economics and New York University.
Biography
Lukes took his B.A. in 1962 at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as a research fellow at Nuffield College and lecturer in politics at Worcester College and took his M.A. in 1967. He took his Ph. D. in 1968 on the work of Emile Durkheim. From 1966 to 1988 he was fellow and tutor in politics at Balliol College. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and a visiting professor at the University of Paris, New York University, University of California, San Diego, and the University of Jerusalem.
From 1974 to 1983 he was President of the Committee for the History of Sociology of the International Sociological Association.
He was the co-director of the European Forum on Citizenship at the European University Institute from 1995 to 1996.
In April 2006, Lukes married the political commentator and author Katha Pollitt; Lukes was previously a widower.*
Academic interests
His main interests are political and social theory, the sociology of Durkheim and his followers, individualism, rationality, the category of the person, Marxism and ethics, sociology of morality and new forms of liberalism, varieties of conceptions of power. the notion of the good society, rationality and relativism, moral conflict and politics.
Lukes's most famous academic theory is that of the 'Three faces of power'. This theory claims that governments have three ways in which they control people, decision making power, non decision making power and idelogical power. Decision making power is the most public of the three faces and is the manner in which governments want to be seen. Decision making power is the power of governments to make policy decisions after widespread consultation with opposition parties and the wider public. Non decision making power is the power that governments have to control the agenda in debates and make certain issues, such as merits of a communist economic system may be a Marxist example of this, outside of what is reasonable to discuss in moderate public forums. The third, and most important, face of power is idelogical power. It is idelogical power that is the power to contol people's wishes and thoughts and make them want things that are opposed to what would benefit them, women supporting a patriarchial society could be an feminist example of this.
He is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Sociology and directs a research project on what is left of the socialist idea in Western and Eastern Europe.
Publications
- Emile Durkheim: his life and work, (1972)
- Individualism, Blackwell, (1973)
- Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. A Historical and Critical Study, Penguin Press, (1973)
- Power: a Radical View, Macmillan, (1974)
- Essays in Social Theory, Columbia University Press, (1977)
- Rationality and Relativism, edited with Martin Hollis, Blackwell, (1982)
- Durkheim and the Law, edited with Andrew Scull, Martin Robertson, (1983)
- Marxism and Morality. Clarendon Press, (1985)
- The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, co-edited with M. Carrithers and S. Collins. Cambridge University Press, (1986)
- Power, Blackwell, (1986)
- Moral Conflict and Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1991)
- The essay "Five Fables about Human Rights", in On Human Rights, Susan Hurley and Stephen Shute (eds.), Basic Books, (1993)
- Isaiah Berlin: Tra la filosofia e la storia delle idee. Una conversazione con Steven Lukes, Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, (1994, Italian)
- The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat, Verso, (1995)
- Multicultural Questions (ed. jointly, 1999)
External links
1941 births | Former students of Balliol College, Oxford | Living people | Political theorists
"Steven Lukes"