Month: June 2015 (Page 2 of 4)

Applying to the Summer School GRAINES I haven’t been very clear about how to make network analysis useful for my PhD-thesis. The idea of including, on a small scale, a transnational perspective even came shortly before my journey to St. Andrews.

My PhD-subject surveys the social movement of unemployed persons in Switzerland since the 1970s. The aim is to reconstruct the building of a social group during welfare state and labour society transformations.

I think I profited in a very indirect, but nevertheless helpful, way from the summer school for my thesis. First of all, it was a very good English exercise. Then, it was interesting to see which methods other PhD-Students and researchers apply, and how they present it to a public. It widened my sight, as the empiric subject differed a lot from my research focus. At the same time this caused a problem in the sense, that I couldn’t directly link the presentations and workshops with my project. So I would have hoped for more theoretical approaches to network analysis, rather than empiric presentations on transnational history.

Still, I think with more distance, and I feel that this process is starting already, the inputs help me to ask myself other important questions regarding my thesis. For instance the very interesting presentation on neoliberal networks and the discussion afterwards brought to my mind, that in general in the period “after the boom” (Manteuffel, Lutz) the political alternatives to neoliberalism are seen as nationalist. So maybe it is important to show with my example the trial of movements to “internationalise” (Bourdieu) political claims and alternatives. Of course they were marginal, punctual and still lack of organisation comparing with a neoliberal economic regime. Through the attendance of GRAINES Summer School maybe I will even include a stronger transnational emphasis, in order to show, that movements actually did cross political borders. So there was a third way between neoliberal internationalisms and “left” or “right” nationalism.

Also the more technical workshop about creating data on Tuesday and the discussions on the unconference day clarified for me how I want to apply a network analysis. So I decided, to use network analysis as a simplifying tool to show interconnections between organisations, which in turn formed a movement. So for me, it’s a descriptive manner to reduce complexity and at the same time show complexity.

To conclude, the GRAINES Summer School is like a Scotch whisky: Sometimes you enjoy it, sometimes it gives you a headache, sometimes you don’t want to take another sip, sometimes you can’t stop with it.

As one aspect of my recently started PhD thesis “Mapping an Empire. Territorialization, Cartography and Scientific Transfer in Tsarist Russia (1797-1919)” I research networks of European astronomers and mechanics to understand, how geodetic (which forms the mathematical foundations of geography) and astronomic methods and instruments found its way to the Russian Empire, which spaces could be mapped, and what the Russian progress could contribute to the European scientific development.

Three major questions relevant here are:
1) How the Russians obtained the knowledge
2) How they applied the knowledge they obtained
3) What could they  achieve with this knowledge

Permanent transnational exchanges between a great number of experts enabled the progress and standardization of cartography as a key tool for territorialization of European and colonial space in the 19th century. In order to reconstruct how those scientific ideas and objects had migrated and developed it is necessary to analyse who (1) submitted what (2) in what quality (3) to whom (4) and also how and when this happened. Finding a suitable narrative to arrange the complex connections is a challenge. The sources allow us to reconstruct a network by means of correspondence, published reports, diaries, institutional memberships,  and in some cases family connections.

But also groups in between Russia were crusial for the transfer. For example, the University of Dorpat in Livonia could be presented as central to group formation among Russian astronomers. Looking at names reveals their Baltic origin. Genealogy reflects family ambitions in sons following fathers’ professional track. Finally, sociography shows how local relationships translate into imperial professional networks.

I want to focus on the first question raised above. The key challenge seems to be determining the quality of connections between European networks of scientists. As we know this specialised knowledge in the 19th century emerged from small groups of actors. Ideally, a historian would be able to identify the hierarchies or nature of influence and the contributions between the members. I would like to reconstruct the orientation of these flows. However, it is almost impossible to find the evidence which clearly manifests these particular kinds of influence or relative contribution.

Switching to Konrad:

Martin has made clear to me that he finds a significant contradiction between what he finds as the key research question and what he is capable of accomplishing given the limitation of the sources. Indeed, this is by no means unique to Martin’s project. On the one hand, as he points out, ideally, one would be able to zoom out and consider the broader relationships between the network, identify relative influences and hierarchies, as he puts it, and establish a general evaluation of contributions as such.

Even if this were a twenty first century project with an abundance of sources, the epistimological challenges of definitively determining an ‘originary’ influence or hierarchical influences may ultimately be insurmountable. However, having discussed this with him in detail, it seems there is a more modest, perhaps smaller scale approach, that from a historical research perspective can yield valuable insights.

Given that he has relatively rich information on certain key individuals, a more micro oriented approach that considers the relationship between a few agents will offer more qualitative insight than the more ambitious goals he initially set out for himself.

Switching to Martin:

Perhaps the solution here is not necessarily a strictly microhistorical approach, but rather to, by focusing on the entirety of the realm of relations and networks of a single individual, we can grasp, at the macro level, one possible configuration of the network as a whole. This could form a template that one can test, moving in and moving out to determine the plausibility and the representativeness of this as a case.

Again, I should emphasise that this task, that is, exploring the hierarchies of influence and contributions within the network, is but one of my several questions and in reality my main task is focused on the mapmaking process itself.

All that we have discussed above is merely the first step in what is ultimately the goal: it is likely that we will initially find a rather well recognised process of difussion from West to East, while this project is hoping to evaluate the ways in which the Russians agents transform this narrative of linear difussion into one of circulation. In other words, I’m interested in the contribution of the Russian actors back on the Western scientists. They adopted and they applied, and after a certain period, they contributed, by for instance, by building one the largest observatories in Europe in 1839 well equipped with the best instruments to be found in Europe. This was the material basis for scientific progress not just for Russia but for astronomy as a science.

As a parting comment, let me note one interesting observation. Our session pointed out the seeming contradiction in interests between empires, merchants, and traders as agents, while we learned that this does not necessarily have to be the case, even in a mercantalist context. Similarly, this observation may be relevant to the case of interimperial astronomical networks. Astronomers leading the main observatories of a Europe with empires battling each other in war, maintained connections and interactions with eachother despite the conflict. For example, we find this in the case of the Crimean War of the mid-19th century. If I knew more about the quality or intimacy of these connection then I might make a contribution to understanding the impact of imperial discord on scientific development or, indeed, whether it had any at all.

The Cold War was an ideological struggle between two superpowers. The important part of this conflict was a sport rivalry. Politicians on the both side of the Iron Curtain used sport and sportsmen for their political goals and propaganda. They wanted to prove that their political system is better than opponent´s. According the communist ideology the victories of the Soviet hockey team proved that their system is better than the opposing one. In United States there was a similar approach. For the American political representation victories were promoting American way of life and the strength of liberal democracy. Ice-Hockey arenas became important places where ideologies were competing.

This rivalry was usually seen in diplomatic context. However, I do not want to focus on the diplomatic perspective. My goal is to use hockey players as the actors of this struggle. Very important part of my research is the analysis of the trans-group relations between players from the both side of the Iron Curtain. We can see a clear links between players from opposing blocs, who were meeting each other during the international competitions. It gives me a new perspective how to analyze sport rivalry during the Cold War.

As an example: when the Czechoslovak national team came to US, the players were seen by politicians and press as a part of the communist bloc, as ideological warriors and some kind of an enemy. According the memoirs and diaries of the players, reality was very different. Relations between players were mostly positive. They usually said that ‘they are just boys as us’. All of them loved the game and when they entered the arena, they were just playing ice-hockey and after the match could shake a hand of the opponent without ideological prejudices.

I can use transnational methods in my project to analyze the raise of ideology from the perspective of the sportsmen as the Actor rather than politician.

The conference has been very inspiring for me. I enjoyed getting an overview over the different research projects of the participants. We had very fruitful discussions and were able to discuss important research problems. I really appreciated the workshop about databases. Getting to know how relational databases are structured, helped me to get a deeper understanding of my chosen categories. The Unconference was something very new for me, I liked it though. The discussions covered concrete problems of our research and led us to inspiring ways of thinking.

I want to add some points of critique though. My phd-project is much more about networks of different actors and the transnational aspect plays just a marginal role, I couldn`t relate so much to the discussion of transatlantic exchanges in particular. Yet, there are some transnational influences, especially on a discursive level. Scientific discussions about the pedagogic aspects of outplacement took place on a transnational level. But here the exchange mostly concerned Germany and Switzerland and wasn`t linked to a wider geographical area. Hence, my critique would be that the conference emphasized transnational history over networks, which may not necessarily be transnational in nature. I wish that the theoretical and methodological part of network analysis would have been discussed more. In particular, I would have liked to address the temporal aspect of historical network analysis. I would have benefitted from a workshop on how you can visualize networks with a network tool. That would have been very helpful for my research project.

Nevertheless, it was stimulating to broaden my horizons and learn something new about transnational history. Interestingly, although the subject areas were quite different, on a methodological-theoretical level, others are facing the same questions and problems as me.

Travellers of the 19^th century did not travel uninformed. Before actually getting on the way, they read, they talked, they looked (on maps for example). This means a certain preconception was formed already. Specific ideas about a region were formed before the region itself was entered. We find evidence for that in the different citations of authors in travel narratives. This feeds nicely into the general topic of the Summer School – Networks. In a sense the perceptions of a certain region were formed through circulation of texts. This means that narrative tropes or landscape symbolism travelled beyond borders.

For British travellers in the early 19^th century picturesque landscapes had a special appeal. Sometimes these were even the reasons why to visit a certain strip of land. It is of course rather complex what was meant by this term at the time and I am unable to point at the huge literature here. To simplify quite a lot, landscapes were perceived differently and the ‘picturesque’ decided what was seen as beautiful and interesting. Mountainous region had quite another appeal than a flat plain. Ruined castles were perceived differently than the architecture in larger cities or capitals.

We see thus that travellers perceptions were informed and shaped by the network they were involved.

The Bouligny family (1700-1830) was a family characterized by its trans-imperial relations among the French, Spanish, Ottoman and Swedish empires. Their social relations mixed diverse kind of links, giving place to different kind of networks which mixed in the same social institution, the family.

To research the Boulignys as a ‘global family’, I have been thinking and discussing about how to analyse the overlapping of networks. I realized that I should not think of them as differentiated layers but instead of this focus on precise moments in which these networks ‘clashed’ or contacted. For instance, if I want to understand how the Bouligny family worked as an entity in the global processes of commercialization and militarization during the 1750s to 1770s, it is a good idea to analyze those individuals who were at the same time in both networks, analyzing how this affected both spheres of the family.
From the unconference discussion about prosopography and networks, one of the main points which I get was that even though prosopography offers a huge amount of information, it is difficult to process it. Instead of analyzing complete network, it is better to have a general overview and then zoom in on specific actors and actions. Therefore, I will choose the intersection of the networks, with the aim of understanding the family as a complex active entity in global processes. This helps me to realize that reconstructing the Bouligny family’s networks is not an end in itself, but a tool to dig into my research question and primary sources.

Another thing that I will bring to my research after this summer school are the questions related with temporality and visualization. We have been dealing with diverse questions and discussions around how to work with short-term periods, but how to work with long-term periods such as the Bouligny family? For the moment, visualization is only a screenshot at a specific time and it does not help me to capture the evolution of my research. In relation with it, how important is visualization for my research? Visualization should not be a simple esthetical element but a tool for the research.

In conclusion, after this summer school, I intend to incorporate what I learned into the tools that I have already used in order to make more efficient my data base and my visualization software.

Pair Writing in Progress

Every event comes to an end – when they shouldn’t. The sun is still out, summer continues (a Scottish heat wave – if that is not an oxymoron), we are into Pair-Writing during the final afternoon and INTERCONNECTED is, sadly, coming to a close.

At the heart of our final session are the participants’ projects, sharing thoughts with a chosen partner, followed by writing and posting on our research, how INTERCONNECTED may have helped – or not.

From an organizers’s point of view, we hoped to have stimulated ideas in three different areas:

–socially, bringing people together and connecting them

–intellectually, sharing ideas around transnational, global history, the role, study, research around networks and connections (which one comes first- Hen or Egg, the Social or Intellectual?, or the next)

–professionally and pedagogically, inspire some thoughts on teaching, collaboration, sharing in a learning or class room environment (not only summer schools come to and end – also PhDs – be aware there may be teaching ahead…)

It has been a great pleasure and privilege to work and cooperate for a few days with a group of Polish, Czech, French, even some English, German (well, and the Swiss and Austrians), semi Norwegians, Greeks or Brazilians on topics ranging from cartographic knowledge in the Russian Empire, to the expulsion and classification of populations in post-independence in African countries, the Alps, communication in Habsburg Galicia or a fair in Lyon, conservative Punks or ice hockey on both sides of the dividing iron curtain – and in fact much more.

This is of course not where a summer school has to end. Ideally, this summer camp was not only on historical, transnational networks but ideally we should take away social and intellectual connections and foster them. Ideally, ideas will keep spinning and feeding back into our work at a later stage.

The webpage and the graines.interconnected@gmail.com will remain open and food for thoughts what to do at the next 4th GRAINES summer school in Cologne 2016 are more than welcome.

A huge welcome and thanks to all for coming and the willingness to discuss, share, discuss, expose yourself to an unconference and pair-writing.

Thank you on behalf of the Graines Team and the St Andrews crew – with special thanks to Tadek and Giada, you have been wonderful.

The German and Italian terrorist organizations in the 1970s did not work on their own; they were strongly interconnected. Numerous terrorist groups in Italy created in the late 1970s a functioning network of cooperation and the Germans coordinated their plans as well. These networks had their centers in the Italy and Germany respectively, but they had also lot of transnational links, thus connecting the networks into one.

The Summer school raised several important questions that could contribute to my research. The one I concerned myself most was the issue of the role of the individual within the group and within the network. The transnational terrorist connections could be observed not only as horizontal “geographical” network but also as a vertical network. The organizations had a hierarchy and the cells that were usually operating in several cities at the same time, so we could define a single organization as a vertical network of cells and individuals.

Dealing with the vertical and horizontal network at the same time raises the question, who were the actors in such network. Was the contact conducted on “official” inter-organizational level, or was the input of the individuals more important? If the contact occurred between the individuals, to what extent did it reflect the “official” ideology of the organizations, expressed in the manifestos and communiqués? These issues could bring a new perspective to the transnational terrorist network by helping us to avoid a top-down understanding of the way these groups operated.

Understanding of history evolved to transcend national narratives towards a transnational perspective. By taking into account realities and networks that go beyond national political systems and frameworks we not only learn about international and transnational networks, but also shed light on national developments that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Fabricio’s example of trade relations in the Southern Atlantic illustrates this point perfectly. A study of imperial relationships between the Spanish metropole and its colonies in South America omits the commercial exchanges which continuously took place. However, when the focus was shifted in the direction of the Portuguese empire, the ways in which colonial merchants kept trade alive were revealed and it became clear that the connection of peninsular Spain with its Viceroyalties in the Americas wasn’t lost, but rather found new channels to operate. It was through the agency of mobile individual actors that this shift was possible. Using established trade networks merchants were able to subvert war-time disruptions and limits of “national” imperial structures.

The use of personal networks, be they of a family, trading, religious or other nature, to foster such transcontinental relations is something I thought to be very insightful. I felt inspired by the ways by which individuals can transcend the boundaries of polities. I feel like this sort of relationship would have a strong impact on the migrant communities of the Southern Cone and the diasporas they form. It would be interesting to look into the connections these actors and communities maintain with their homeland and how these alternative transnational networks open up new possibilities beyond the traditional national narrative, the ways in which the networks they have in their “adopted” home interact with family and friendship networks in their place of origin and they become focal points of trans-group relationships, how they play an intermediate role between states and continents and themselves can be considered transnational actors.

My Ph-D-thesis deals with the Basel Mission as a case study for transnational religious networks and religious internationalism during the first world war period. The expectations I had for the summer school haven’t been met completely. I have to admit that I hoped for a more theoretical approach to the advantages and disadvantages of social network analysis and network theory. But as it turned out, nevertheless I really benefited from this years’ GRAINES summer school – just in some other (and probably even more important) aspects.

Interconnecting with the other participants revealed to me that most of my methodological and theoretical problems are actually common. In this respect the conversations with the supervisors and specific workshops were very helpful. Is it possible to analyse “multi”-networks or will this lead to a fraying of the research object and a Latourian “the-whole-world-is-a-network”-approach, in turn leading nowhere? Is there a problem at all or does one only need to find the courage to cut things off? While discussing these questions with the other participants, we decided to propose a workshop, which was chosen for the unconference day. The following questions were discussed: How to specify the intensity of certain connections within the groups and institutions one surveys? How to define a boundary of ones’ “network”? How to deal with multi-layered networks?

In all this questions mentioned above I’ve reached a state of stronger clarity. To sum up, the summer school was really productive.