Introduction: Experience, Culture and Society: New Insights into Historical Analysis

Abstract

The introductory article presents the history of experience as a new field that explores experiences in the socio-cultural world and their place in historical analysis. The article shows how experience as an analytic lens offers new conceptualisations of the past and its study by allowing one to look beyond the dichotomy of agency and structure. The introduction summarises how theoretical and methodological insights into temporality, spatiality, and social models of experience enrich the analysis of society, culture, and change.