ABSTRACT
Whereas it was established in order to promote cultural history, the Association pour le développement de l’histoire culturelle (ADHC) soon had to manage its own growth in France. The challenge was less that of defining cultural history than understanding how contemporary history had converted to it. Some historians think that the link between cultural history and political history is stronger than the one to social history. Others consider that the cultural turn has transformed the way of making history. So practicing cultural history does not mean simply giving a cultural dimension to a research subject but also accepting that a historical fact can fall within several contexts of interpretation. It is one of the great merits of the ADHC to have opened up a dialogue with contemporary social history. Although their origins are different, there are many similarities to their approaches. However, not all subjects studied by cultural history are a priori socially relevant, and a historian who does not count runs the risk of anachronism.
