In an era in which culture and its ‘wars’ increasingly frame our understanding of the world, cultural history has emerged as an important strand of historical practice. This article will discuss its development and show some of the ways it might be applied in your work.
Cultural history is not easy to define. As an object of study – the history of ‘culture’ – it takes in a very broad range of things, from high-culture literature and art to popular (or folk) practices, material objects, concepts and mentalities. A cursory internet search for recent books shows the wide variety of things that can be studied through the prism of cultural history: work, twin beds, the rose, fashion, gesture, taste, humour, the home, war and climate, to name a few.
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