Editor's Introduction: 'The most important thinker that you have never heard of'?

Abstract

This issue will be a particularly stimulating one for the reader. It is a tour de force in terms of the calibre of some contributors who are leaders in their respective fields – Steven Pinker in psychology, Banton in racial/ethnic relations and Kilminster on fundamental issues in sociological theorising and the borderlines with philosophy, evolutionary biology and psychoanalysis– but it also features scholarly writers who tackle deep topics (Loyal and Quilley wrestle with Wittgenstein and Gellner). There are also interviews with Norbert Elias conducted in the 1980s, and offering insights into his development as ‘the most important thinker that you have never heard of’ (Pinker 2011: 59).