The book analyzes how three political movements used the concept of culture in France between the late 1960s and the early 1980s: the women's liberation movement, "immigrant" movements, and a far-right movement around the group GRECE. What did culture mean to the movements and when and why did they use the concept? The book discusses intellectual labor beyond well-known thinkers in both the practice and the theory of political activists. It helps readers understand the high-brow debates around the culture wars and the cultural turn as part of a larger societal trend that surpasses the academic field. It offers historical explanations beyond academia because of its focus on primary sources from quotidian political struggles. Two contexts shaped concepts of culture in society more broadly. First, decolonization as an intellectual and political development redefined political key concepts such as culture. Second, change through culture replaced earlier visions in which the state was seen as the central instrument for political change. Methodologically, the book treats political movements as production sites of concepts, thereby, connecting intellectual history with political and social history. /

Historical thinking has a politics that shapes its ends. While at least two generations of scholars have been guided into their working lives with this axiom as central to their profession, it is somewhat of a paradox that historiography is so often nowadays seen as a matter of intellectual choices operating outside the imperatives of quotidian politics, even if the higher realms of ideological inclinations or historiographical traditions can be seen to have played a role. The politics of historical thinking, if acknowledged at all, is seen to belong to the realms of nonprofessional ways of the instrumentalisation of the past.

This series seeks to centre the politics inherent in historical thinking, professional and non-professional, promoted by states, political organisations, 'nationalities' or interest groups, and to explore the links between political (re-)education, historiography and mobilisation or (sectarian?) identity formation. We hope to bring into focus the politics inherent in historical thinking, professional, public or amateur, across the world today.

Advisory Board:

Amar Baadj, American University Cairo

Berber Bevernage, University of Ghent

Federico Finchelstein, New School for Social Research, New York

Kavita Philip, University of British Columbia

Dhruv Raina, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Indra Sengupta, German Historical Institute, London

Jakob Tanner, University of Zurich