As a reference tool, I am presenting to you some very basic definitions of the above key terms according to how they make sense within an introductory consensus of critical theories.
 

Part I: Economics, Politics, and Ideology
 

The economic refers, in critical theoretical terms, to the entire social sphere of production, distribution, exchange, circulation, and consumption of goods and services necessary for human survival and subsistence and for the satisfaction of human needs and the fulfillment of human desires. This includes the totality of relations among human beings and all of the materials, instruments, and supplies necessary to carry out these social processes, as well as all of the ways -- or modes -- of organizing and conducting relations within these processes. Economics, whether understood in conventional disciplinary terms or otherwise, is therefore, from the vantage point of critical theory, the field of study of these kinds of relations and processes.
 

The political refers, in critical theoretical terms, to the entire social sphere of power relations, with "the state" (at least in historically "modern" forms of society) most often conceived to be the center of concentration, or at least a central site for the concentration of power, in society. "Government" is a particular manifestation or agent of "the state." Even more precisely, however, the political is understood to refer to the entire social sphere of conflict and struggle over right of access to, and opportunity for exercise of a society's natural and cultural resources, powers, and capacities, and this includes as well all of the ways in which this conflict and struggle is governed and regulated, managed and contained, facilitated and controlled within the particular society in question.
 

The ideological refers, in critical theoretical terms, to the social sphere concerned with general philosophies of life and existence or of being and reality. These general philosophies support, encourage, underlie, and sustain particular ways of thinking, understanding, feeling, believing, communicating, interacting, acting, and behaving among those who subscribe to them. An ideology is such a general philosophy. Ideologies are often further defined as concerned with representing the logic of the social as a totality and in offering guidance for living within the context of this whole. Also, they are often defined as representing the particular objective interests of particular social classes, class fractions and strata, and cross-class social categories in contestation with each other. Finally, at other times, ideologies are defined as only those general philosophies which present partial, distorted, biased, incomplete, inadequate, and inaccurate representations of significant aspects and dimensions of the larger social whole in ways which imply that these (mis)representations are entirely truthful. From this vantage point, ideologies are often thought to (mis-)represent that which currently exists at any given place and time as the absolute limit beyond which it is possible to go further/to go forward (especially in the hope of improvement or progress beyond what is already in place). The effect of this kind of representation is that which currently is will be seen as all that conceivably can and must be. Or, to put this in other words, what is cultural will seem natural, what is specific will seem general, what is particular will seem universal, and what is historically dynamic will seem eternal, inevitable, and unalterable. Other approaches to defining ideology see the above (narrower) definition of ideology as referring only to one way in which one kind of ideology works, and not therefore as identical with ideology per se: conservative ideologies often represent the way things are as the way they must be so as to encourage oppressed, alienated, and exploited people to accept and consent (and even to identify and conform with) the conditions of their own oppression, alienation, and exploitation rather than challenge, contest, and oppose these conditions so as to overcome and eliminate them. When this happens the status quo is maintained and perpetuated, and those who occupy dominant, powerful, or ruling positions within this status quo continue to enjoy their advantages and privileges over (and at the expense of) everyone else. Ideological analysis is concerned with an examination of how ideologies work, for whom and for what, whereas ideology critique goes beyond this to attempt, furthermore, to demonstrate the problems and limitations of an ideology so as to oppose and discourage the particular ways of thinking, understanding, feeling, believing, communicating, interacting, acting, and behaving the ideology in question supports and questions.
 
 

Part II: History, Society, and Culture
 

History refers to both 1. what has happened (and, according to many theories, also to what is happening and will happen as well -- insofar as past, present, and future are continuous with and overlapping of each other) and 2. the ways in which human beings talk or write about what has happened. History is very much involved with time and its passage, and especially with how reality, natural and social, changes over time. It is conventional to see history as happening according to days, weeks, months, seasons, years, decades, centuries, etc., and yet this is an arbitrary imposition upon the motion of reality in time which does not necessarily direct attention to what is of chief interest and importance in explaining the nature, the direction, the pace, the rhythm, the shape, etc. of this motion, or of discontinuities, ruptures, dislocations, etc. in the historical process. From a critical-theoretical perspective, therefore, it is important to study conditions, forces, structures, processes, cycles, systems, etc. which are far more fundamental and fundamentally determinate in the movement of reality over time than simple chronology. Also of great concern is the relationship between history as "the represented" and history as "the representation" of what has happened (is happening, and will happen) in terms of how accurately and/or adequately the latter is to the former. "History" and "story" were originally identical terms and it is a matter of continuous debate within critical theory over what, if anything, today distinguishes histories from stories, especially non-fictional histories from fictional stories.
 

Society is the most general term available for the body of relationships and institutions (occupying a particular expanse of space and maintaining a particular duration in time) within which a large number of people live. It also is used to refer to the general condition in or under which such relationships and institutions are made possible, are recognized as useful and necessary, and are formed and maintained. Some critical theorists distinguish the former usage from the latter by referring to the former as the social formation and the latter as the social. Therefore a social formation is an historically particular and concrete totality of relations, practices, institutions, enterprises, structures and processes, and the social is the condition of living in some kind of relation to others as part of such a totality, even when one is extremely alienated, objectively or subjectively, from the rest of society. Where disagreement among different critical theories usually comes is over precisely how societies are organized (as well of course over how they could or should be) and over what are the relations, within what kinds of structures, that exist and are possible for the various "parts" of these societies as concrete wholes, including the "places" available for the various (different) "individuals" and "groups" who exist within these societies.
 

Finally, culture is the equivalent of the "second nature" that human beings create by acting in and upon nature to transform nature into a new kind of reality: culture is everything that has been created, built, learned, and conquered by human beings in the course of their entire history, in distinction from what nature has given, including the natural history of human beings themselves as a species of animal. Culture includes all that human beings create as a result of their deliberate transformation of both nature itself and the products of prior human transformations of nature. Culture includes all that is invented by human beings and not simply provided by nature itself. This is universal human culture. At times human culture is seen as divided into material culture and spiritual (or ideal) culture. Material culture includes all of the physical products which result from human transformation of nature (and the transformation of the products of prior transformations) whereas spiritual or ideal culture includes all of the intellectual products of human transformation of nature (and the transformation of the products of prior transformations). Sometimes, and increasingly within much recent popular discourse and within many currently popular critical and theoretical perspectives, "culture" is used much more narrowly than I have indicated above to refer only to certain aspects of ideal culture, in particular the totality of "texts," those discrete objects which are in one way or another created to express, to communicate, and to signify. Beyond universal human culture and material and ideal culture, there is also the culture of a particular society: the organic sum of knowledge and capacity which characterizes the entire society, or at least its ruling class. This culture embraces and penetrates all fields of human work within the society in question and gives rise to their systematic unity. Within any particular society, there furthermore also exist many, additional cultures and/or subcultures. These comprise the sum total of the particular knowledges, capacities, fields of work (and fields of play), customs and habits, traditions, values and attitudes, social roles and identities, and ways of thinking, feeling, acting, interacting, and behaving which characterize and, more importantly than merely characterize, which internally unify and externally differentiate particular regions, classes, and other social groups. Subcultures are always part of the general culture; they are not simply parts which differ from or oppose the (or a) dominant culture, even when this is the manifest intention of those who live within or identify with a particular subculture. Instead subcultures comprise particular segments of the general culture of a society, and because these segments very often overlap and interrelate, subcultures also involve a particular rearrangement of elements of the general culture of society -- and also a particular rearrangement of elements of universal human culture. This rearrangement is itself both the product of and that which enables the reproduction of a specific mode of cooperation and a specific mode of collective praxis unique to the subculture. Finally, particular subcultures may anticipate possible directions for further development and future reorganization (and/or transformation) of the general culture (and this as a whole or in some of its particular aspects and dimensions) -- or they may persist as remnants of prior levels of development and forms of organization of the general culture (again, as a whole or in some particular aspects and dimensions).
 

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