Michael Billig

Who is Michael Billig?

Michael Billig is Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. Working in contemporary social psychology, he trained in Bristol with Henri Tajfel as an experimental psychologist and helped design the so called minimal group experiments which were foundational to the social identity approach. He moved away from experimental work to considering issues of power, political extremism and ideology in a series of important books. His Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations offered a trenchant critique of orthodox approaches to prejudice in psychology. Fascists helped reveal the classic fascist and anti-semitic ideology underlying the UK's National Front at a time when it was bidding for political legitimacy and electoral success. In the 1980s his focus shifted to everyday thinking and the relationship between ideology and common sense. This strand of work is shown in the collectively written work Ideological Dilemmas, Banal Nationalism, and in his major study of ideology and the UK royal family, Talking of the Royal Family.

His influence runs across the social sciences and he has been one of the key figures highlighting and reinvigorating the use of classic rhetorical thinking in the context of social issues. For example, he suggests that attitudes are best understood not as individual positions on topics, but as emergent in contexts where there is a potential argument. This perspective is introduced in his book Arguing and Thinking and has been the basis for innovative approaches to topics as diverse as psychoanalysis, humour and nationalism. It is also an important element to discursive psychology.