Writing History In The 21 St Century: Challenges And Responses

Abstract

In the first part I discuss recent changes in the field of cultural history. We seem to be living in an age of “turns”, in historical thought and beyond. Famous turns such as the social turn, the linguistic turn and the cultural turn, all located in the later 20 th century, have been followed more recently by the global turn, the affective or emotional turn, the material turn, the cognitive turn, the spatial turn, and a number of others. Then I focus on challenges to cultural history and alternatives to it. Today, the “cultural turn” and the New Cultural History are no longer new. The great problem with novelty, especially as a slogan, is that it is a cultural asset that depreciates very quickly. What is new today is the “natural turn”. I should like to discuss this turn, including the challenges to which it responds as well as the challenges that it is posing to cultural
historians, both young and old.

Keywords: Historiography, Cultural History, Natural Turn.