HOW CAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY SERVE A REFORM OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY?

Jean-Claude Perrot's intellectual project was formed during the preparation of his doctoral dissertation on the genesis of the city of Caen. During this investigation, he measured the limits of the economic and social history that was then imposed as a model and the potential of a history of contemporary economic and social knowledge of the phenomena studied. This overall vision matured over a period of thirty years, leading on the one hand to new proposals relating to intellectual history and on the other to a historiographical programme that combines these two dimensions. This programme inspired the "critical turn" of the journal Les Annales (1989) and was explored by its direct or indirect continuators. Finally, the article operates a conceptual consolidation according to the principle the historian analysed elsewhere.