Civilization a civilization is a complex culture in which large numbers of people share a variety of common elements

 
Historicism 
A theory which holds that historical analysis of human beliefs, concepts, moralities and ways 
of living is the only tenable means of explaining such phenomena. Thus, an historicist rejects 
the belief that, for example, there are any a-historical, necessary truths concerning the 
construction of human identity, on the grounds that such concepts are the result of historical 
processes particular to specific cultures and cultural forms. Historicism therefore extols a 
cultural relativism. Thinkers associated with the historicist approach include sociologist Karl 
Mannheim, who (combining an epistemological relativism and a cultural relativism) argued 
that all knowledge of history is a matter of relations, and that the perspective of the observer 
cannot be excised from historical analysis. 

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Critical Theory 
‘Critical theory’ is something of an umbrella term, and has come to be associated in the Anglo
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American academic world with a brand of textual analysis which has taken root predominantly 
in university English literature departments. The term itself, however, was first linked to the 
work of the Frankfurt School (e.g. Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin and Marcuse). In the hands 
of these thinkers, critical theory was envisaged as a rigorous critical engagement with social 
and philosophical issues which aimed at the cross-fertilisation of research methods derived 
from the social sciences with a Marxist theoretical framework for conceptualising social 
relations. However, as exemplified by Horkheimer and Adorno’s book Dialectic of 
Enlightenment, there always existed in the work of the Frankfurt School a tendency to question 
certain ideas that were central to Marxism (for instance, the traditional Marxist confidence in 
the politicisation of the proletariat leading to revolution, or an unproblematic affirmation of the 
Enlightenment ideal of rationality as providing the key to social progress).