Field Citations to books in 2007 Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Philosophy, sociology, criticism 2,521 Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Sociology 2,465 Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Philosophy 1,874 Albert Bandura (1925- ) Psychology 1,536 Anthony Giddens (1938- ) Sociology 1,303 Erving Goffman (1922-1982) Sociology 1,066 Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) Philosophy, sociology 1,049 Max Weber (1864-1920) Sociology 971 Judith Butler (1956- ) Philosophy 960 Bruno Latour (1947- ) Sociology, anthropology 944 Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Psychoanalysis 903 Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) Philosophy 897 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Philosophy 882 Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Philosophy 874 Noam Chomsky (1928- ) Linguistics, philosophy 812 Ulrich Beck (1944- ) Sociology 733 Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Philosophy 725 David Harvey (1935- ) Geography 723 John Rawls (1921-2002) Philosophy 708 Geert Hofstede (1928- ) Cultural studies 700 Edward W. Said (1935-2003) Criticism 694 Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Sociology 662 Roland Barthes (1915-1980) Criticism, philosophy 631 Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) Anthropology 596 Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Political theory 593 Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Criticism, philosophy 583 Henri Tajfel (1919-1982) Social psychology 583 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Philosophy 583 Barney G. Glaser (1930- ) Sociology 577 George Lakoff (1941- ) Linguistics 577 John Dewey (1859-1952) Philosophy, psychology, education 575 Benedict Anderson (1936- ) International studies 573 Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) Philosophy 566 Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) Psychoanalysis, philosophy, criticism 526 Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) History and philosophy of science 519 Karl Marx (1818-1883) Political theory, economics, sociology 501 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Philosophy 501

Thomson Reuters recently collected citations from the journal literature it indexed in 2007 to books and their authors. In the sciences, the journal is the main vehicle for scholarly communication, whereas in the social sciences and especially in the arts and humanities, the book holds a more important position in conveying and influencing research. The table above lists those authors whose books, collectively, were cited 500 or more times in 2007. While representing a somewhat rough summary, these results provide some insight into the current trends in research in the social sciences and humanities: the listed authors serve as symbols for their ideas and approaches. What this says of modern scholarship is for the reader to decide – and it is imagined that judgments will vary from admiration to despair, depending on one’s view. Nineteenth- and early 20th-century authors, such as Weber, Freud, Durkheim, Wittgenstein, Dewey, Marx and Nietzsche, will likely elicit little surprise. Kant, too, the only representative of the 18th century, is expected. The youngest author, Judith Butler (born in 1956), specialises in feminist studies, queer theory, postmodernism and post-structuralism. But the most telling indicator of current trends is the high ranking of three French scholars born between the two world wars – Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Their influence has recently been surveyed in François Cusset’s French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, Jeff Fort (translator), University of Minnesota Press, 2008.