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The following list includes summaries, reviews, essays, definitions and explanations and critical discussions regarding issues and thinkers within the Humanities. These posts vary in their style and intention. Some are pure summaries or overviews of a certain topic or thinker while other are more critical and interpretative. Other posts include definitions of concepts and explanations of ideas. If you have anything to add to our growing list of articles, be it an essay of even class notes, please contribute here and will make sure your work benefits cultural readers everywhere.

A short history of Western Philosophy  

Descartes
The Philosophy of Rene Descartes

Soren Kierkegaard

A Guide to Soren Kierkegaard's Philosophy
Soren Kierkegaard: Terms, Ideas and Concepts
Overview of Kierkegaard’s thought and philosophy
Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic, Ethical and Religious - Summary and Explanation

Karl Marx

Karl Marx: Summary of Ideas and Theory

Ideology according to Marx – definition and explanation
Marx's Materialist Theory of History - Summary and Explanation
Marx on Class Conflict - short summary and definition
Marx on Capitalism and Exploitation - Summary
Marx on Commodity - Summary and Explanation
Marx on Human Nature, Alienation and The Structures of Capitalist Society - summary
Karl Marx - The Dialectic and the Dialectical Method - Summary
The Sociology of Karl Marx

Karl Marx – dialectical materialism – summary and definition 

Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim Explained
Anomie according to Durkheim - Definition and explanation

The Durkheim tradition in cultural analysis
Durkheim's totemic principle in modern western societies

Hegel

Hegel: Overview of Philosophy
Hegel on Religion, Christianity, Morality and Ethics

Hegel on Idealism, Fichte and Schelling

Hegel on the Absolute 

Hegel on Self-Consciousness

Hegel on Master-Slave Dialectic

Hegel on Universal Consciousness and Reason

Max Weber

Max Weber - Summary of Theories
Max Weber and Ethnomethodology
Max Weber and feminist thought
Max Weber on social inequality
Max Weber and social stratification
Max Weber on rationality and rationalization

Ferdinand de Saussure

De Saussure's nature of the linguistic sign
The sign according to de Sausure 
Signifier and signified

Langue and parole, 

The arbitrary nature of the Sign / arbitrariness of the sign

Paradigm and syntagm 

Ferdinand de Saussure's Linguistic Revolution- summary, analysis and review
Ferdinand de Saussure and structuralism 

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault: Summary of Main Ideas
Foucault's concept of discourse
Foucault on power and knowledge
technologies of power
Foucault's Concept of Heterotopia
Foucault's Panopticism explained 
Michel Foucault and Marxism
Foucault, Structuralism and post-structuralism

Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard – Summary and Review of main Theories
Jean Baudrillard on Disneyland and Watergate 

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud - Summary of Ideas and Main Concepts
Jung's Concept of Archetypes – Explanation

A list of Jungian Archetypes + short explanations

Lacanian Terminology – Central Concepts in Lacan's Theory

Gender and Feminism

Simone de Beauvoir's explanation for gender inequality in "The Second Sex"
Masculinity studies – an overview

Judith Butler / Gender Trouble: Drag Queens and Gender Performance
Sherry Ortner /  Female to Male as Nature to Culture?
he Laugh of the Medusa / Helene Cixous 

Other

Walter Benjamin on the Aestheticization of Politics
A history of the Subject – Subject Theory Explained
Constructionist and Essentialist Perceptions of the Subject - Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory
Bourdieu and the art world
Pierre Bourdieu's concept of linguistic market and linguistic capital
Characteristics of ideology according to Louis Althusser
Ferdinand de Saussure -  langue and parole - Explanation and Summary
Roland Barthes – Myth Today – Criticism
Victor Turner on Liminality and Communitas
The Marxist tradition in cultural analysis
Clifford Geertz's "Thick Description" explained
Clash of Civilizations explained 
The End of History by Fukuyama - explanation
The Rosenhan Experiment Explained
The Nacirema Culture Explained 
Actor-Network Theory explained
Structuralism - Summary and short Explanation 
A history of the Subject – Subject Theory Explained
Roland Robertson's Concept of Glocalization - definition
Problems in the definition of culture

Division of labor theory: Smith, Marx and Durkheim 
The Political Unconscious by Jameson


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