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and Bradley (1991, p.212) suggests that to apply Annales notions, more refined chronologies
than we have at present, are needed.
However, although the different timescales are somewhat abstract notions and an `historian’s
writing of periodicity` rather than `the experience of temporality` (Thomas 1996, p.35) they
can provide a useful framework for thinking about the past. Other scholars, recognising that
time can be seen on different levels, do mediate successfully between them. Giddens’
Structuration theory (1984) also allows an investigation of different temporal levels (1984,
1991). His analysis of society, of how structure is created by individuals, which in turn
affects how people act, and his idea of a double hermeneutic – the understanding of the world
at societal level and an understanding on an individual level borne of experience - can be
equated with the Annaliste longue durée and/or social time (the division between which
Bradley sees as being blurred at the edges, 1991, p.210), and events which belongs to
individual time. From a Heideggerian stance, this has similarities with ‘private’ or
‘existentialist’ time and ‘public’ or ‘pragmatic’ time (Thomas 1996, p.44). The connection
this theory has to the Annales tradition is its ability to allow a systemic way of looking at
things to take place, connected to the large scale, but that also allow a consideration of the
small-scale events and actions.
Both Giddens and scholars associated with the Annales School, see human existence as
operating at different levels and are concerned with the interrelationship of these levels.
However, the Annales School although recognizes cognition, the role of agency in the
creation of structure, which in turn affects how people act, as Giddens explains it, is absent.
Instead, Annales historians, and in particular Febvre, (1928; 1942, see Bintliff, 1993, p.5)
consider cognition, not on an individual basis at all, but as a mentalité, referring largely to the
psychology of an epoch. There are aspects of this with which I agree, particularly the strong
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