Michael Billig
Michael Billig | |
---|---|
Born | 1947 |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Bristol |
Known for | rhetorical psychology |
Awards | Fellow of the British Academy |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Social psychology |
Institutions | University of Birmingham, Loughborough University |
Thesis | Social categorization and intergroup relations (1972) |
Doctoral advisor | Henri Tajfel |
Michael Billig (born 1947) is a British academic. He is
Early life and education
Billig was born in 1947 to a
Career
As Tajfel's research assistant, Billig's task was to help design, conduct and analyse the first so-called minimal group experiments which examined how people will favour members of their own group and discriminate against members of an outgroup, even when these groups were deliberately artificial and meaningless. These experiments were to become foundational to the approach of social identity theory. In 1973 Billig was appointed to a lectureship in psychology at the
. He wrote a series of important books exploring these topics.His Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations (1976) offered a critique of orthodox approaches to the study
In the 1980s Billig's focus shifted to everyday thinking and the relationship between ideology and common sense (Ideology and Social Psychology, 1982). This strand of work became more pronounced after he moved to Loughborough University in 1985 to become professor of Social Science in the multidisciplinary department of Social Sciences. He became interested in highlighting and reinvigorating the use of classical rhetoric to explore thinking in the context of social issues. For example, he suggests that attitudes are best understood not as individual positions on topics, but as rhetorical stances in argumentative contexts. This perspective was introduced in his book Arguing and Thinking (1987; 2nd Edition, 1996).
Ideological Dilemmas (1988), which was collectively written with his Loughborough colleagues, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton and Radley, argued that if you look closely at the ways people justify and criticise, it is possible to see how common sense and everyday thinking are not marked by consistency as many social psychologists suppose. At Loughborough he was a founding member of the influential Discourse and Rhetoric Group, which included figures such as Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter. The group, which stressed that psychologists should examine in detail the way language is used, was central to the creation of discursive psychology.
One feature of Billig's work is the variety of topics that he has worked on.
Billig's work often has a historical and cultural dimension. The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology (2008) sought to expand conventional histories of psychology by arguing that in the eighteenth century the
More recently, Billig has been critically examining the ways that social scientists write. Learn to Write Badly (2013) criticised social scientists for using too much jargon. Billig argued that, when it comes to describing human actions, heavy technical nouns are, in fact, often less precise than ordinary language. He developed these themes in More Examples, Less Theory (2019), which claims that psychologists and other social scientists today accord theory too much importance. Billig suggests that researchers should try to examine real-life examples directly, rather than through the oversimplifying lens of theory.[6] In this book, Billig proposed Marie Jahoda as the example that psychologists today should try to follow on account of her clear writing, social commitment, scepticism of theory and use of well-chosen examples.
Billig retired in 2017 and was appointed emeritus professor at Loughborough University.
Awards
- 2010: awarded Distinguished Contribution to Social Psychology Award by the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society
- 2020: elected a Fellow of the British Academy
Personal life
His aunt was the doctor Hannah Billig, MBE.
Bibliography
- Billig, M. (1976). Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press.
- Billig, M. (1978). Fascists: A social psychological view of the National Front. London: Academic Press.
- Billig, M. (1979). Psychology, Racism & Fascism. A.F. & R. Publications. A Searchlight pamphlet.
- Billig, M. (1981). L'internationale raciste: de la psychologie a la "science" des races. Paris: Maspero
- Billig, M. (1982). Ideology and Social Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- Billig, M. (1987). Arguing and Thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M., Middleton, D. and Radley, A.R. (1988). Ideological Dilemmas. London: Sage Publications.
- Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions: Studies in rhetorical psychology. SAGE Publications Limited.
- Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications.
- Billig, M. (1996). Arguing and Thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology, revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Italian edition: Discutere e Pensare: un approccio retorico alla psicologia sociale. Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 1999).
- Billig, M. (1998). Talking of the Royal Family: second edition with new introduction. London: Routledge.
- Billig, M. (1999). Freudian Repression: conversation creating the unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65956-6
- Billig, M. (2000). Rock’n’Roll Jews. Nottingham: Five Leaves/ New York: Syracuse University Press.
- Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and Ridicule: toward a social critique of humour. London: Sage.
- Billig, M. (2008). The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology: Understanding the Impact of Locke, Shaftesbury and Reid. London: Sage.
- Billig, M. (2013). Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107676985
- Billig, M. and C. Marinho (2017). The Politics and Rhetoric of Commemoration: how the Portuguese parliament celebrates the 1974 Revolution. London: Bloomsbury.
- Billig, M. (2019). More Examples, Less Theory: historical studies of writing psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
References
- ^ For an account of Tajfel's influence, see Billig, M. (1996). Remembering the background of Social Identity Theory. In Social Groups and Identities, ed. P. Robinson. London: Butterworth-Heinemann. See also, chapter 7, Billig, M. (2019), More Examples, Less Theory.
- .
- ^ For more details of this variety, see C. Antaki and S. Condor (eds), Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology: essays in honour of Michael Billig (2014, London: Routledge). The philosopher David Edmonds has described Billig as a "social scientist polymath" who has "written on a dizzying array of topics" https://www.thejc.com/culture/features/from-rock-stars-to-group-dynamics-1.497261
- ^ Banal Nationalism has been described as 'the fourth most cited work on nationalism ever published', (Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich, Everyday Nationhood 2017, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 1).
- ^ Rock'n'Roll Jews was shortlisted for the Wingate Non-Fiction Prize in 2001.
- ^ For a critical discussion of the influence of theory, see, for instance, Michael Marinetto, 'Why are journals so obsessed by theory? Times Higher Education, 2020, April 29.