Jones, Gareth Stedman 1942–

PERSONAL:

Born December 17, 1942, in London, England; son of Lewis (a teacher) and J.O. Stedman Jones; children: two sons (one by Sally Alexander and one by Miri Rubin). Education: St. Paul's School, Lincoln College, Oxford, B.A. (with first class honors), 1964; Nuffield College, Oxford, D.Phil., 1970. Politics: Socialist. Hobbies and other interests: Country walks, collecting old books, cricket.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cambridge, England. Office—King's College, Cambridge CB2 1ST, England. Agent—Margaret Hanbury Literary Agency, 27 Walcot Square, London SE11 4UB, England. E-mail—gsj@kings.cam.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Educator, historian and writer. Oxford University, Nuffield College, Oxford, England, research fellow, 1967-70; St. Antony's College, Oxford, senior associate member, 1971-72; Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, Humboldt Stiftung, 1973-74; King's College, Cambridge, England, fellow, 1976—; Cambridge University, Cambridge, university lecturer in history, 1979-86, reader in history of social thought, 1986-97, codirector of the Center for History and Economics, 1991—, professor of political science, 1997—. Visiting professor at several institutions, including University of California at Santa Cruz, 1982, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1986, Göttingen University, Germany, 1993, and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 1994. Senior research fellow at United Nations University World Institute for Development and Economic Research (UNU-WIDER), 1990-91; Directeur d'Etudes Associé at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France, 1997; scholar in residence at the Centre for British Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2005.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Humboldt Award, West Germany, 1973-74.

WRITINGS:

Outcast London, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1971.

(Editor, with Raphael Samuel) Culture, Ideology, and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobabawn, Routledge & Kegan Paul (Boston, MA), 1982.

Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor, with David Feldman) Metropolis, London: Histories and Representations since 1800, Routledge (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Ian Patterson) Charles Fourier, The Theory of Four Movements, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with Alison Light and Sally Alexander) Raphael Samuel, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, Verso (New York, NY), 1998.

(Author of introduction and notes) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Penguin (New York, NY), 2002.

An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of articles to periodicals, including New Left Review, Modern Occasions, Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, and History Workshop Journal. Joint founder and joint editor of History Workshop Journal, 1976—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gareth Stedman Jones is a historian with a special interest in economics. In his book An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, the author traces ideas surrounding globalization and poverty back two centuries to the French Revolution and follows the debate through to the beginning of the twentieth century and World War I. He considers how economic theorist Adam Smith and writers such as Thomas Paine thought and wrote about ending poverty. Stedman Jones also explores how certain Christian evangelicals and Malthusian theorists did not believe in the growing social idea that poverty could be eliminated and railed against social-aid programs that they believed would lead to over-breeding of the poor.

An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate has been widely praised by critics. "Jones offers a lucid, erudite exploration of a fertile topic in European intellectual history," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Some reviewers also noted that the author's goal was to relate the past debate to current world problems concerning poverty. For example, David Feldman, writing in History Today noted: "Stedman Jones recommends that in the present we return to the republican legacy to combine commercial society with inclusive citizenship and greater equality." Commenting on the "moral" of Stedman Jones's book, Sheri Berman wrote in the World Policy Journal: "If Stedman Jones's tale in particular has anything to teach us, it is that moderate, ‘social democratic’ reforms have their best hope of success in a world that is peaceful and optimistic, where people are not scared by radical and destabilizing socioeconomic change (and therefore amenable to political extremism) and a belief in the ‘commonality of mankind’ and a commitment to the less fortunate is able to flourish."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Contemporary Review, December, 2004, review of An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate, p. 382.

History Today, December, 1998, review of Island Stories: Unraveling Britain, p. 56; August, 2005, David Feldman, review of An End to Poverty?, p. 56.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2005, review of An End to Poverty?, p. 957.

Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2005, review of An End to Poverty?, p. 43.

World Policy Journal, spring, 2006, Sheri Berman, review of An End to Poverty?, p. 63.

ONLINE

Centre for History and Economics, King's College, University of Cambridge Web site, http://wwwhistecon.kings.cam.ac.uk/ (April 5, 2007), profile of Stedman Jones.