Name Garry 3rd | ||
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Books The Theory of Cultural and Soci, A Treatise on Social Theory, Great Books - Bad Argument, Very Different - But Much, Social science and politi | ||
Walter Garrison Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford, CBE, FBA (born 10 November 1934), usually known informally as Garry Runciman, is a leading British historical sociologist.
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Background
Runciman is the son of Leslie Runciman, 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford, by his second wife Katherine Schuyler Garrison. British historian Sir Steven Runciman was his uncle.
Career
Runciman has been a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge since 1971, researching in the field of comparative and historical sociology. He is a Cambridge Apostle. His principal research interest is the application of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to cultural and social selection.
He holds honorary degrees from King's College London and the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and York. He is also an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Bencher of Inner Temple. He was elected to the British Academy in 1975 and served as its President from 2001 to 2005.
Royal Commission on Criminal Justice
Runciman chaired the British Government's Royal Commission on Criminal Justice which continued Sir John May's inquiry into the convictions of the Maguire Seven and encompassed further miscarriages of justice. As a result the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 established the Criminal Cases Review Commission as an executive Non-Departmental Public Body.
Publications
Runciman's first major publication was Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: a Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century Britain (Routledge, 1966), reprinted by Gregg Revivals in 1993. Since then, he has published A Critique of Max Weber’s Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge University Press, 1972), A Treatise on Social Theory (Cambridge University Press, Vol. 1 1983, Vol. 2 1989, Vol. 3 1997), and The Social Animal (HarperCollins, 1998). In 2004, he edited and contributed to a British Academy occasional paper Hutton and Butler: Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Power, which deals with the events surrounding Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq and the way in which it was presented to the British public.
Family
Runciman is married to Dame Ruth Runciman. Their son, David (b. 1967), a political scientist and writer who teaches at Cambridge University, is heir apparent to the title.