Formal network methods in history: Why and how?

Lemercier, Claire

doi:10.1484/m.rurhe-eb.4.00198

Cited by 21 publications

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“…Eso no quiere decir, sin embargo, que las fuentes históricas no sean adecuadas para el análisis formal de redes. De hecho, como resalta Lemercier (2015), algunos tipos de fuentes, como las actas notariales o judiciales, son más fáciles de acceder si se trata de documentos históricos. Es cierto que la información histórica tiende a ser más escasa e inconsistente conforme retrocedemos en el tiempo, aunque las excepciones son demasiadas como para considerar que nos encontramos ante una regla general.…”

Section: El Análisis De Redes Aplicado a La Historiaunclassified

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El Análisis de Redes como herramienta para los historiadores

Vinuesa

Álvarez

2022

VdH

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En las últimas décadas las referencias al Análisis de Redes han ganado protagonismo entre los historiadores. Hemos asistido a una auténtica proliferación de artículos, monográficos y proyectos de investigación en los que el estudio de las interconexiones en sociedades del pasado ocupa un papel central. Desafortunadamente, en algunos de estos trabajos la conceptualización y la cuantificación han estado ausentes. El presente artículo pretende explorar el potencial del Análisis de Redes como herramienta metodológica aplicable a la disciplina histórica en sus distintos campos de investigación. Pretendemos hacer una apuesta clara por la integración de esta herramienta, superando la retórica de las palabras, pero también de la imagen. Para ello, incorporamos una panorámica de las principales aportaciones al Análisis de Redes en la historiografía. Además, analizamos sus elementos fundamentales y describimos su uso con ejemplos de publicaciones recientes, explorando los retos que se plantean de cara al futuro. Palabras Claves: Análisis de Redes, Metodología, Métricas, VisualizaciónTopónimos: Latinoamérica, EuropaPeriodo: Neolítico-Siglo XX ABSTRACTDuring recent decades, historians have referred with increasing frequency to network analysis. We have witnessed a veritable proliferation of papers, monographs and research projects in which the study of interconnections among individuals from past societies plays a central role. Unfortunately, conceptualization and quantifications have been absent from most of these works. This paper aims to explore the potential of network analysis as a methodological tool applied to history. The objective is to integrate this tool into the historian’s work, transcending the rhetoric of words and images. To this end, I first present the main contributions of network analysis to historiography, together with a description of its main elements, using examples from recent academic works. The paper also explores the challenges facing future research. Keywords: Network Analysis, Methodology, Metrics, VisualizationPlace names: Latin America, EuropePeriod: Neolithic- 20th Century REFERENCIASAhnert, R., Ahnert, S., Coleman. C. N. y Weingart, S. B. (2020), The Network Turn. Changing Perspectives in the Humanities, Cambridge, University Press.Batagelj, V. Mrvar, A. (2001), “A subquadratic triad census algorithm for large sparse networks with small maximum degree”, Social Networks, 23, pp. 237-243.Bernabeu Aubán, J., Lozano, S y Pardo-Gordó, S. (2017), “Iberian Neolithic Networks: The Rise and Fall of the Cardial World”, Frontiers in Digital Humanities (4).Bertrand, M., Guzzi-Heeb, S. y Lemercier, C. (2011), “Introducción: ¿en qué punto se encuentra el análisis de redes en Historia?”, REDES. Revista hispana para el análisis de redes sociales, 21, pp. 1-12.Böttcher, N., Hausberger, B. e Ibarra, A. (2011), Redes y negocios globales en el mundo ibérico, siglos XVI-XVIII, Ciudad de México, IberoamericanaBrughmans, T., Collar, A. y Coward, F. (2106), The Connected Past. Challenge to Network Studies in Archaeology and History, Oxford, University PressBrown, D. M., Soto-Corominas, A. y Suárez, J. L., (2017), “The preliminaries project: Geography, networks, and publication in the Spanish Golden Age”, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 32-4, pp. 709-732.Burt, R. (1995), Structural holes: The social structure of competition, Boston, Harvard University Press.Cachero, M. (2011), “Redes mercantiles en los inicios del comercio atlántico. Sevilla entre Europa y América, 1520-1525”, en N. Böttcher, B. Hausberger y A. Ibarra (eds.), Redes y Negocios Globales en el Mundo Ibérico, siglos XVI-XVIII, Ciudad de México, Colegio de México, pp. 25-52.Carvajal de la Vega, D. (2014), “Merchant Networks in the Cities of the Crown of Castile”, en A. Caracausi y C. Jeggle (eds.), Commercial Networks and European Cities, 1400–1800, Londres, Pickering Chatto, pp. 137-152.Castellano, J. L. y Dedieu, J. P. (1998), Réseaux, familles et pouvoirs dans le monde ibérique à la fin de l'Ancien Régime, París, CNRS.Crailsheim, E. (2016), The Spanish Connection. French and Flemish Merchant Networks in Seville. 1570-1650, Viena, Bohlau Verlag.— (2020), “Flemish merchant networks in early modern Seville. Approaches, comparisons, and methodical considerations”, en F. Kerschbaumere et al., The Power of Networks. Prospects of Historical Network Research, Londres, Routledge, pp. 84-109.Deicke, A. J. E. (2017), “Networks of Conflict: Analyzing the ‘Culture of Controversy’ in Polemical Pamphlets of Intra-Protestant Disputes (1548-1580)”, Journal of Historical Network Resarch, 1, pp. 71-105.Dermineur, Elise (2019), “Peer-to-peer lending in pre-industrial France”, Financial History Review, 3, pp. 359-388.Freeman, L. (2012), El desarrollo del análisis de redes sociales. Un estudio de sociología de la ciencia, Bloomington, Palibrio.Garrués-Irurzun, J. y Rubio, J. A. (2012), “La formación del espacio empresarial andaluz: 1857-1959”, Scripta Nova. Revista electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, 16, http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-404.htm (Consulta: 04-07-2020).Graham, S., Milligan, I. y Weingart, S. (2016), Exploring big historical data: the historian’s macroscope, Londres, The Imperial College Press.Gil Martínez, F. (2015), “Las hechuras del Conde Duque de Olivares. La alta administración de la monarquía desde el análisis de redes”, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, 40, pp. 63-88.Heredia López, A. J. (2019), “Los comerciantes a Indias y la Casa de la Contratación: vínculos y redes (1618-1644)”, Colonial Latin American Review, 28:4, pp. 514-537.Herrero Sánchez, M. y Kaps, K. (2017), Merchants and Trade Netwokrs in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550-1800, Londres, RoutledgeHinks, J. y Feely, C. (2017), Historical networks in the Book Trade, Nueva York, Routlege.Ibarra, A. (2000), “El consulado de comercio de Guadalajara, 1795-1821. Cambio institucional, gestión corporativa y costos de transacción en la economía novohispana”, en B. Hausberger y N. Böttcher (ed.), Dinero y negocios en la historia de América Latina, Frankfurt, Vervuert, pp. 231-264.Iglesias, D. (2016), “Las redes político-intelectuales y los orígenes del Plan Barranquilla, 1929-1931”, en A. Pita González, Redes intelectuales transnacionales en América Latina durante la entreguerra, Ciudad de México, Universidad de Colima, pp. 25-50.— (2017), “El aporte del análisis de redes sociales a la historia intelectual”, Historia y Espacio, 49, pp. 17-37.Imízcoz Beunza, J. M. (1998), “Communauté, reséau social, élites. L'armature sociale de l'Ancien Régime”, en J. L. Castellano y J. P. Dedieu, Réseaux, familles et pouvoirs dans le monde ibérique à la fin de l'Ancien Régime, París, CNRS, pp. 31-66.— (2011), “Actores y redes sociales en Historia”, en D. Carvajal de la Vega et al. (eds.), Redes sociales y económicas en el mundo bajomedieval, Valladolid, Castilla ediciones, pp. 21-33.— (2018), “Por una historia global. Aportaciones del análisis relacional a la ‘global history’”, en A. Ibarra, A. Alcántara y F. Jumar (eds.), Actores sociales, redes de negocios y corporaciones en Hispanoamérica, siglos XVII-XIX, Ciudad de México, UNAM- Bonilla Artigas Editores, pp. 27-57.Imízcoz Beunza, J. M. y Arroyo Ruiz, L. (2011), “Redes sociales y correspondencia epistolar. Del análisis cualitativo de las relaciones personales a la reconstrucción de redes egocentradas”, REDES, Revista para el análisis de redes sociales, 21, pp. 99-138.Kerschbaumer, F., Keyserlingk-Rehbein, L., Stark, M. y Düring, M. (2020), The Power of Networks. Prospects of Historical Network Research, Londres, Routledge.Lamikiz, X. (2020), Reseña de The Spanish Connection. French and Flemish Merchant Networks in Seville. 1570-1650, Investigaciones de Historia Económica, 16-1, pp. 60-61.Lemercier, C. (2015), “Formal network methods in history: why and how?”, Social Networks, Political, Institutions, and Rural Societies, Leiden, Brepols, 281-310.Lemercier, C. y Zalc, C. (2019), Quantitative methods in the Humanities. An Introduction, Charlosttesville, University of Virginia Press.Mac Shane, B. A. (2018), “Visualising the Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Nuns’ Letters”, Journal of Historical Network Research, 2, pp. 1-25.Maillard Álvarez, N. (en prensa), “Las grandes compañías europeas en el mercado hispano del libro durante siglo XVI: el caso de Sevilla y Ciudad de México”, en P. Bravo (ed.), Livres écrits, lus, transmis, échangés, collectionnés: circulation des livres et des hommes au Siècle d'Or, París, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.Martín Romera, M. Á. (2010), “Nuevas perspectivas para el estudio de las sociedades medievales: el análisis de redes sociales”, Studia Historia. Historia Medieval, 28, pp. 217-239.Martínez Carro, E. y Ulla Lorenzo, A. (2019), “Redes de colaboración entre dramaturgos en el teatro español del Siglo de Oro: nuevas perspectivas digitales”, RILCE: Revista de Filología Hispánica, 35-3, pp.896-917.Molina, J. L. (2001), El análisis de redes sociales. Una introducción, Barcelona, Edicions Bellaterra.Pascua Echegaray, E. (1993), “Redes personales y conflicto social. Santiago de Compostela en tiempos de Diego Gelmírez”, Hispania, 53-185, pp. 1069-1089.Picazo Muntaner, A (2015), “Comparative systems and the functioning of networks: the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific models of trade. XVII and XVIII centuries”, Culture History Digital Journal, 4 (1): e0009.Polonia, A., Pinto, S. y Ribeiro, A. S. (2014), “Trade Networks in the First Global Age. The case study of Simon Ruiz Company: Visualization Methods and Spatial Projections”, en A. Crespo Solana, Spatio-Temporal Narratives: Historical GIS and the Study of Global Trading Networks (1500-1800), Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 140-177.Ponce Leiva, P. y Amadori, A. (2008), “Redes sociales y ejercicio del poder en la América Hispana: consideraciones teóricas y propuestas de análisis”, Revista Complutense de Historia de América, 34, pp. 15-42.Rodríguez Treviño, Julio César (2013), “Cómo utilizar las Redes Sociales para temas de historia”. Signos Históricos, 29, pp. 102-141.Rubio, J. A. y Garrués-Irurzun, J. (2017), “Escasez de vínculos débiles: el atraso económico de la Andalucía contemporánea desde la perspectiva de redes empresariales”, Hispania, 257, pp. 793-826.Sánchez Balmaseda, M. I. (2002), Análisis de redes sociales e historia, una metodología para el estudio de redes clientelares, Madrid, Universidad Complutense.Sarno, E. (2017), “Análisis de redes sociales e historia contemporánea”, Ayer, 105, pp. 23-50.Shepard, J. (2018), “Networks”, Past Present, 238, supplement 13, pp. 116-157.Smith, R. M. (1979), “Kin and Neighbors in a Thirteenth-Century Suffolk Community”, Journal of Family History, 4, pp. 27-62.Starnini, M. (2012), “Random walks on temporal networks”, Physical Review, 85, núm. 5.Vieira Ribeiro, A. S. (2011), Mechanisms and Criteria of Cooperation in Trading Networks of the First Global Age. The case study of Simón Ruiz network. 1557-1597 (Tesis doctoral defendida en la Universidad de Oporto), http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/mechanisms-and-criteria-of-cooperation-in-trading-networks-of-the-first-global-age-the-case-study-of-simon-ruiz-network-1557-1597/ (Consulta: 23-12-2020)Vieira Ribeiro, A. S. (2015), Early Modern Trading Networks in Europe. Cooperation and the case of Simon Ruiz, Abingdon, Routledge.Wetherell, C. (1998), “Historical Social Network Analysis”, International Review of Social History, 43, pp. 125-144.

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Section: El Análisis De Redes Aplicado a La Historiaunclassified

“…Como señalabaLemercier, (2015): "Network methods, as they are based on graph theory, tend to be intrinsically static, although it is now possible to visualize network evolutions as films; but this in turn opens the complicated question of dating ties".…”

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confidence: 99%

El Análisis de Redes como herramienta para los historiadores

Vinuesa

Álvarez

2022

VdH

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“…• Finally, the fourth element-probably the most important one-is the peculiar nature of archeological networks and their construction. As extensively discussed in Lemercier (2010), the resistance offered by raw historical or archeological data is so difficult to overcome that it is almost impossible for network scientists to build networks by their own. To build a network from raw archeological record is challenging because, in gen eral, one has to face all the typical issues of the other classes of data at once.…”

Section: At the Periphery Of Network Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Wiring the Past: A Network Science Perspective on the Challenge of Archeological Similarity Networks

Prignano

Morer

Dı́az-Guilera

2017

Front. Digit. Humanit.

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Nowadays, it is a common knowledge that scholars from different disciplines, regardless of the specificities of their research domains, can find in network science a valuable ally when tackling complexity. However, there are many difficulties that may arise, starting from the process of mapping a system onto a network which is not by any means a trivial step. This article deals with those issues inherent to the specific challenge of building a network from archeological data, focusing in particular on networks of archeological contexts. More specifically, we address technical difficulties faced when constructing networks of contexts or sites where past interactions are inferred based on some kind of similarity between the corresponding assemblages (Archeological Similarity Networks or ASN). We propose a basic characterization in formal terms of ASN as a well-defined class of networks with its own specific features. Throughout the article, we devote special attention to the problem of quantifying the similarity between sites, especially in relation with the ubiquitous issues of data incompleteness and the reliability of the inferred ties. We argue that, generally speaking, human past studies are quite disconnected from the rest of interdisciplinary applications of network science and that this prevent this field from fully exploiting the potential of such methods. Our goal is to give hints about which are the interesting questions that archeological applications put on the table of network scientists. We suggest that such questions need to be translated into formal terms in order to be properly addressed within the framework of interdisciplinary collaborations. At this aim, a computational experiment is devised as an illustrative example of how simple models can help the cause.

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“…Network perspectives in archaeology have become more popular recently (Mills 2017), accompanied by a similar trend in historical research (e.g. Lemercier 2015, Düring 2016, Prignano et al 2017, Rollinger et al 2017, but these perspectives are quite varied. The following section discusses some of the implications of network thinking in archaeology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Storied Lines: Network Perspectives on Land Use in Early Modern Iceland

Pálsson¹

2018

Norwegian Archaeological Review

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It is a truism nowadays to say that an archaeological site is embedded in extensive networks of relations. Connectivity has played a role in archaeological thinking for a considerable amount of time, and the adoption by archaeologists of both theoretical and methodological frameworks centring connectivity has become widespread. One such example is network analysis, which has seen a significant surge in interest within the field over the past two decades. Archaeological network analysis is far from a mature science, however, and the character of the archaeological record tends to yield networks with richly contextualised nodes connected by ties that, in stark contrast, are often based on very limited evidence for connectivity. Furthermore, archaeological networks are often accompanied by limited discussion about the implications for a connection between two sites interpreted through a commonality in material culture. In particular, the use of historical records to contextualise the interactions between sites remains somewhat uncommon. This paper takes an archaeo-historical network perspective by characterising land-use practices in early modern Iceland by mapping property records describing relations of ownership, resource claims and social obligations alongside comprehensive field archaeological surveys as extensive networks of interdependence between the known farmstead sites occupied at the time. This approach shows that these vibrant networks, documented both spatially and historically, regularly show signs of emergent properties. As these intersite relations begin to exert their own agency, the networks are cut, and the network lines begin to bundle up in knots and entanglements. The study, therefore, does not aim to quantify the presented networks using formal network analysis, but to use the networks as a starting point to investigate the properties that emerge as people aim to enact and materialise networks of property rights, resource claims and exchange.

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Formal network methods in history: Why and how?

Cited by 21 publications

References 39 publications

El Análisis de Redes como herramienta para los historiadores

El Análisis de Redes como herramienta para los historiadores

Wiring the Past: A Network Science Perspective on the Challenge of Archeological Similarity Networks

Storied Lines: Network Perspectives on Land Use in Early Modern Iceland

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