Most cited authors of books in the humanities, 2007

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.