This project focuses on horse riding as a social practice in late medieval Spain and its expansion into the Americas
(13th-16th c.). This specific equine-human relationship was fundamental to almost all aspects of premodern societies.
By approaching horse riding as a social practice, the critical evaluation and further development of current social
practice theory will be a key component of the project. The envisaged project will help us understand the major
transformations experienced by Iberian society in the early modern era as well as the challenges posed by the
expansion into the New World .
By choosing an untraditional focus on the late medieval and early modern period, the project challenges the still
predominant caesura of 1492 in historical research. By critically challenging traditional narratives, this study brings
the largely unknown riding and horsemanship knowledge of medieval Spain in fruitful discussion with early modern
transformations of the social and cultural significance of riding in particular and of social inclusion and exclusion in
Spain’s territories in general.
This pioneering project, however, also contributes to the current methodological discussion of social practice theory
and puts the concept of bodily routines to the test. By shifting the main research interest from riding culture to the
social significance of this specific human-animal interaction and co-movement, recent developments in German and
Anglo-American social theory could prove highly fruitful. Social practice theory can be understood as a significant
turn away from grand narratives of society and also away from human-only agents. Recent methodological and
heuristic developments highlight the analytical potential to detect societies’ social border regimes. Methodologically,
this theoretical approach allows the inclusion all kinds of agents that constitute or challenge what is to be understood
as the social.
