Garry Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford

Walter Garrison Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford, CBE PBA, is a leading British historical sociologist, usually known informally as Garry Runciman. He is married to Dame Ruth Runciman.

Career and Positions

He has been a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge since 1971, researching in the field of comparative and historical sociology. His principal research interest is the application of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to cultural and social selection Fact|date=April 2007.

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.

He was elected to the British Academy in 1975. He served as President from 2001 to 2005 [ [http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/archive.asp?fellowsID=453 British Academy Fellows Archive.] British Academy. Accessed September 30, 2008] .

He is also Chairman of the shipping company Andrew Weir and Co. Ltd.

Royal Commission on Criminal Justice

He 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 [ [http://www.ccrc.gov.uk/about/about_28.htm CCRC Website] ] .

Publications

His 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.

References