Ian Taylor (11 March 1944 – 19 January 2001) was a British sociologist. He was born in Sheffield. Taylor completed his undergraduate degree at Durham University, where he was an active socialist and involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. He continued his studies at Cambridge before returning to Durham for his doctorate.

National Deviancy Symposium and Critical Criminology

Taylor was one of the founding members of the National Deviancy Symposium and was one of the co-authors of The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance in 1973 along with Jock Young and Paul Walton, as well as later editing Critical Criminology with both of them. In 1981, whilst lecturing at Sheffield University he wrote Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism, which Jock Young states: Moving to Canada shortly after, he lectured at Carleton University before returning to become chair of Sociology at the University of Salford. On leaving Salford, he became the Principal of Van Mildert College, Durham until he retired due to illness.

Left realism and beyond

In 1999 he published his final book, Crime in Context after becoming Principal of Van Mildert College at Durham University, a role he stepped down from a year prior to his death due to his ill health. In Crime in Context, he sets out his relationship to the left realism project, saying that his involvement was 'more tangential' than with Critical Criminology, and that "The continuing legacy of that realist influence in this text are evident in two important respects. I have been concerned, first, 'to take crime seriously'... Secondly, I share with left realism a commitment to a 'realist' (as distinct from idealist) strategy with respect to the actual analysis of 'crime' (as both behaviour and mass-media representation)"

Publications and articles

1960s

Taylor, Ian and Laurie Taylor. 'We are All Deviants Now', International Socialism 34 (1968) 1st series

1970s

1980s

1990s