Administrative/biographical history

Colin Campbell was born in Birmingham in 1940, joined the Rationalist Press Association in 1958 and was co-founder and chair of the Birmingham Humanist Group from 1962 until he moved to take his post as a lecturer in sociology at the new University of York in 1964. His Ph.D. was a study of the Humanist, Ethical and Rationalist Movements in the UK during the 19th and 20th centuries and was the basis for Toward a Sociology of Irreligion, originally published by Macmillan in 1971, and recently reprinted in a revised edition by Alcuin Academics in 2013. Colin was also a Director of the Rationalist Press Association during the 1980s and a regular speaker on Humanism.

As an academic his work embraced the sociology of religion, consumerism, cultural change, and sociological theory. He is probably best-known as the author of The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Macmillan 1987, Alcuin Academic edition 2005), while his other well-known publications on consumerism include The Shopping Experience (co-edited with Pasi Falk, Sage, 1997), and “The Craft Consumer: Culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society”, Journal of Consumer Culture 5 (1) 23-41 (2005). In the sociology of religion, in addition to his work on irreligion, he is known for his contributions to work on the cult and the cultic milieu (“The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularisation” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5, 119-36, 1972), while his contribution to sociological theory is evident in The Myth of Social Action (Cambridge University Press, 1996). In 2007 he published The Easternization of the West (Paradigm Publishers, 2007).

Scope and content

Papers of Colin Campbell (b 1940), including: papers and minutes of the British Humanist Association, 1959-1969; papers, minutes and promotional material regarding the University Humanist Federation, 1959-1970; papers, reports and ephemera regarding the National Secular Society, 1957-1964; completed questionnaire forms from and papers relating to a survey of Humanist groups conducted by Campbell and the BHA, 1963; completed questionnaire forms from and papers concerning a BHA/NSS survey, 'Who are the Humanists?', 1964; copy of Colin Campbell's PhD thesis, 'Humanism and the culture of the professions: a study of the rise of the British humanist movement, 1954-1963' (435pp), 1967.

Quantity

3 boxes.