Historical Research on Cultural Life Scripts. An Exploration of Opportunities and Future Prospects

Abstract

People live their lives guided by images and assumptions based on dominant representations of an idealized life that are shared with others in the community. They view the representation of an idealized life as a life script. The cultural life script provides a conceptual link between individual and society. Such cultural life scripts are not fixed but change in the face of new ideas and in response to changing social en economic structures and conditions. For that reason, scientific research based on cultural life scripts is not only a challenge for sociologists, social psychologists and anthropologists, but also for cultural historians, social historians and historical demographers. Seven contributions of the Nijmegen based research group Self, Script and Society have been selected to show the wide variety of research possibilities of cultural life scripts within the domain of historical research and to place cultural life scripts more firmly on the future agenda of historians.