Ted Benton

British sociologist and philosopher From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ted Benton is a British academic.[1][2][3]

Career

As an academic, Benton works as an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Essex.[4] He has taught subjects such as social theory and environmental social science for more than forty years.[4]

His most notable book is Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies, published by Routledge, which was reviewed in Sociology, Acta Sociologica and the American Journal of Sociology.[5][6][7] He was influential in some of the early discussions that grew into the critical realism tradition in philosophy of science and the social sciences and has since maintained a realist position, though outside the mainstream of critical realism.[8] He has had a particular interest in the relation between the social and natural sciences, where he has criticized some of the more constructionist approaches to this relation.[9] He has also been a strong advocate of eco-socialist ideas, influenced by the Marxist tradition.[10][11]

Alongside his work in philosophy and social theory, Benton is an active natural historian, who has published well regarded works, specializing in insects and particularly in bees.[8] In 2007, he received the Stamford Raffles Award given by the Zoological Society of London.[12]

Books

  • Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (1977)[12]
  • The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism (1984)
  • Natural Relations (1993)
  • The Greening of Marxism (editor) (1996)
  • Philosophy of Social Science (2001)
  • The Butterflies of Colchester and North East Essex (2002)
  • The Easy Butterfly Guide: Britain and Europe (2006)
  • The Sage Handbook of Environment and Society (2007)
  • Nature, Social Relations and Human Needs (2009)
  • Grasshoppers and Crickets, Collins New Naturalist (2012)
  • Alfred Russel Wallace: Explorer, Evolutionist, Public Intellectual (2013)
  • A Naturalist's Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Northern Europe (2017)
  • Solitary Bees (2017)
  • Solitary Bees, Collins New Naturalist (2023) with Nick Owens

Awards

References

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