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Giddens trumps Marx but French thinkers triumph
26 March 2009
Their books may not challenge J.K. Rowling's in the bestseller lists, but what they lack in appeal as a holiday read, they more than make up for in terms of scholarly interest.
A list published today by Times Higher Education reveals the most-cited academic authors of books in the humanities, based on an analysis of research in the field in 2007.
As one of the world's pre-eminent sociologists, Anthony Giddens, the Labour peer and former director of the London School of Economics, will be used to academic accolades.
But even he may be pleased to hear that his books are cited more often than those of iconic thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx.
Lord Giddens, now emeritus professor at LSE and a life fellow at King's College, Cambridge, is the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities, according to the list produced by scientific data analysts Thomson Reuters.
The only living scholar ranked higher is Albert Bandura, the Canadian psychologist and pioneer of social learning theory at Stanford University.
Topping the list are three Frenchmen. In first place is Michel Foucault, the late historian and philosopher. He is best known for his studies of power and sexuality and his influence is felt across the humanities and social sciences.
He is followed by Pierre Bourdieu, the sociologist, who died in 2002, and Jacques Derrida, the philosopher and founding father of deconstructionism.
Freud enters the list in 11th place. The American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, who is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and whose political books have a broader readership than some of his peers in the list, is 15th.
As well as Lord Giddens, another Briton to make the top 20 is David Harvey, a University of Cambridge-educated geographer and social theorist now based at the City University of New York, where he is professor of anthropology.
john.gill@tsleducation.com
Readers' comments
how did Giddens get so cited, if that's what the future minds of the world are using as support for their ideas we are all in big trouble. Or maybe everyone is citing him to cut him down, the dumbass he is.
Why does no Academic stand on Marx's shoulders and look back to see where he went wrong? Higher Communism could have been achieved by reducing the human population, more easily than by going through Capitalism and destroying Earth's ability to support Life. I started talking of a Dialectical Synthesis of Marx and Malthus in 1947. how many years earlier should Marx have seen that for himself. Fair play to Marx he never had the benefit of talking to Sam Mainwaring Jr about what a group of Wobblies thought in 1912 in California. The answer to my question is that there are many Dogmatic Marxists and very very few Scientific Marxists. Ken John got a PhD for his work on Sam Mainwaring Senior.
somehow the french continue to dominate the intellectual scene. given the impression of france and paris that i (we) have as the cultural (intellectual) capital of the world, it is no surprise. but the question is are the intellectuals from the third world coutries being read and cited enough? or are we still as deeply entrenched in the western systems of thought as before?
I can't believe y'all still call them Lords.
It's all you know very shallow, lacking a deep analysis of popularity, not revealing the underlying intellectual reasons for citation. If, say, Giddens were in sex and power, like Foucault, wouldn't Giddens come first? Sure, he would.
Giddens is, in my view, often cited by rarely read. The same is true of Bourdieu and Derrida. However, Derrida is a barmy badger, Giddens a pleasant pheasant, but Bourdieu is a ferocious ferret - always nibbling away at the facts and taking them back to theoretical nest to keep them safely in order.