Since the aim of the programme is both comparative and interdisciplinary, it is not desirable to privilege in advance any particular theoretical standpoint or method. Studying cultural pluriformity as a distinctly European characteristic during the centuries under consideration must be done in conjunction with the cultural/theoretical pluriformity of the scholars involved. The kind of interdisciplinarity this project wishes to create goes beyond mere cooperation between specialists in different fields to expect that every scholar involved acquires different competencies in different areas of research.
Methods, in the precise sense of the term, will vary with the problems to be discussed. Methodologies are not exclusively bound to certain topics ; aesthetic theories, for instance, also apply to artifacts, while archeological description and dating systems apply to art and anthropology. One of the most fascinating prospects will be to test different theories and methods for approaching extremely complex problems, such as the role of images both in unifying and differentiating culture in Europe.
The whole programme will therefore share a common approach, following our collective intention to write a social history of European culture from a reception point of view. This new cultural history uniting the project draws upon different disciplines and focuses on culture in the plural rather than upon a single high culture, i. e., on the everyday, on the whole population, on the history of reception, on images or objects or visual culture rather than simply on art. Theories and models are numerous in this broad field, including for example Bourdieu or De Certeau as well as reception theory. In order to grasp culture in a new key, distant from any unique model and from methodology prevalent two decades ago, the programme seeks neither to impose a single theoretical attitude nor simply to apply a theory, but to test theories against a range of examples provided by early modern Europe. This method of exploring the new cultural history will also help us identify the most appropriate interdisciplinary tools to apply.
