Steven Lukes

Steven Lukes is Professor of Sociology at New York University. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Durkheim under the supervision of the anthropologist E. E. Evans-Prichard. He has held posts in politics and sociology at Balliol College, Oxford, in political and social theory at the European University Institute in Florence, in moral philosophy at the University of Siena and in sociology at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and an editor of the European Journal of Sociology.

For the academic year 2011-2012 Steven is at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. He has also been awarded an Hon. D. Littt at the University of East Anglia.

His writing and teaching have ranged over political science, political and moral philosophy, sociology, anthropology and the philosophy of the social sciences. His published works include Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, Individualism, Marxism and Morality, Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity, The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat: A Comedy of Ideas (a Novel) and Power: A Radical View, which recently appeared in a much expanded second edition, and he co-edited Rationality and Relativism and The Category of Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. His most recent book is Moral Relativism.

In April 2006, he married the political commentator and author Katha Pollitt.