Month: June 2015 (Page 3 of 4)

Social and institutional networks exist both in the past and in the present. Currently, we are familiar with the concept of a ‘social network’ from the pervasiveness of websites such as Facebook. This network awareness has manifested itself in the research interests of younger generations of historians who are familiar and fluent in these technologies. For example, a majority of the participants at our GRAINES Summer School have discussed the role of networks of people, institutions, objects, and ideas in their research projects. The main question raised is how to visualize these networks, how to study these networks, and how to analyze these networks to gain new insights about our topics. Further, questions of the value of network analysis have been raised, and there is not a current consensus if the amount of effort and labour necessary to produce network visualizations and analysis is worth the current professional return allocated by academic evaluation metrics inside of history schools/departments and by funding agencies (e.g. evaluation of research, employment, career progression, etc.).

The diversity of Summer School sessions has identified future research questions and opportunities for the use of network reconstruction, analysis, and visualization in our own projects. Specifically, an interactive seminar about incorporating relational databases into our research and two unconference presentations about archival digitalization at the Austrian National Library and another about the use of prosepographies for analyzing social relations and network properties.

These questions have been beneficial for helping to identify that there is currently a need for the standardization of network scholarship, techniques, and methodologies in History. For my own PhD project, this means that it is necessary to concisely outline any network techniques and data used for my thesis. Perhaps more importantly, it is necessary to articulate why incorporating networks within a historical study is beneficial to the overall argument and research findings of an individual project. It is also equally necessary to acknowledge limitations of these newer techniques. While network visualizations are aesthetically pleasing and are able to convey complex connections between data points, it is possible to sometimes have ‘data overload’ and not be able to process either the meaning or benefit of incorporating network analysis in our studies.

Perhaps as a first step for achieving a unified framework for the historical study and mapping of networks in historical scholarship, it is necessary for technology-literate historians (many of whom are from our generation) to articulate in collected volumes or chapters in a larger work how we incorporate networks in our own research, and provide examples of analysis results (and benefits) alongside visualizations. From here, it would be possible to propose a unified framework by creating a common network vocabulary and toolbox of available network analysis techniques.

An additional problem is that network analysis scholarship exists in many disciplines outside of history. This includes sociology, economics, physics, and computer science. Without exploring these other fields, a unified network framework will not be achievable. Historians could gain to benefit from studying and mastering these alternative disciplinary techniques, and fusing them with our own methodologies to create new types of research output. It is also worth noting that historians have much to contribute to this multidisciplinary network scholarship. Our understanding of complex social networks, institutional connectivity, and the flow of objects/ideas/capital are well suited for placement within a ‘network paradigm’ of research. Historians can add qualitative narrative to traditionally quantitative metrics used by sociologists and economists who study the same subject. This interdisciplinary collaboration would require flexibility within academia for younger scholars to explore and contribute to scholarship beyond their own discipline.

To conclude, it is beneficial for communities of historians to come together and discuss the pros and cons of using networks in historical scholarship. Without discussing our methodologies, it is impossible to advance and further develop the network tools we hope to have available for use in future research. It is worth noting that data analysis and computing are useful techniques that will need to be further incorporated into the historical toolkit to advance network scholarship in history (and perhaps create interactive web applications to complement our current manuscript-style projects).

Discussions over the past three days have mentioned a separation between horizontal and vertical networks. As Saunier argued, with so much emphasis on equal histories, it seems that horizontal networks are a better way to do transnational history: in the case of the Alps, travellers were connected to each other, socialising in particular hubs (Geneva, Chamonix, Interlaken…) and meeting key relations on their journey. This aspect is by all means crucial: it emphasises how structured travelling in the Alps could be at that time, and how the knowledge of what the Alps were and where they lay was spread.

However, our recent debates showed that we also need to consider vertical – or hierarchical – networks. These networks correspond to relationships that are not socially, economically, politically, or intellectually equal. Slavery networks, for instance, could not be complete without integrating slaves themselves in relationship to their owners.

This point could dramatically sharpen my analysis of travel networks in the Alps. Travellers, who were generally wealthy and educated, were in constant interaction with travel guides, innkeepers, hosts, priests, and locals in general. Those interactions were key, as they influenced the way travellers would describe their Alpine experience in their travelogues. For example, travel guides were very important in order to cross passes safely, know the surroundings, speak the local language and dialect. When those guides were helpful and knowledgeable, travellers often positively depicted those valleys and recommended these guides to their readers. If the guides turned out to be reluctant to help and to facilitate their experience, this negatively impacted the descriptions of the entire region. On the other hand, people and institutions above our travellers were as important: local elites sponsoring travellers were crucial to keep their tours flourishing and were gateways to new experiences.

There is an extent to which these singular connections are proper networks. They can be seen as individual experiences taken over time. Having said that, there are essential nodes which take this to a more structured dimension: travellers were connected through the travelogues they wrote, published, and read. Hotels, intellectual circles, journeys by coach, common travel guides were all opportunities for those individual journeys to become interconnected. Therefore, it is even more important to make sure that both the horizontal and vertical networks will be analysed in order to more fully portray the travelling phenomenon in the Alps.

Over the last three days, the Interconnected Conference and Unconference workshops placed an emphasis on several aspects of the digital humanities. Roberto Sala’s talk demonstrated the relevance of constructing relational databases in order to accurately trace networks. Konrad Lawson’s session on ‘Mapping’ stressed the importance of using maps effectively to represent transnational aspects of research. Traditional efforts to map the many histories of whaling have mirrored three historiographical perspectives to the subject: local history, national history and economic history. While each has its place, the result has neglected virtually all networks of interaction within this historical phenomenon. I desire to integrate the digital humanities into my project on 19^th-century Dundee whaling so that I may map transmaritime whaling networks and transfers of knowledge.

However, mapping networks doesn’t come without its challenges. In some ways, GIS complicates the mapping of transnational issues. According to Ian Gregory’s article, ‘A Map is Just a Bad Graph: Why Spatial Statistics are Important to Historical GIS’ [Anne Kelly Knowles (ed), Placing History (Redlands, CA, 2008)], GIS can rarely present complex, multivariate maps that can be viewed by readers in an understandable way. Instead, GIS and its databases are best suited to support thematic univariate maps (such as chloropleths). Gail Langran suggests represented data relies on three components: space, time and theme (124). In this sense, most data themes and the space to which they are connected are largely derived from administrative zones tied to national systems. A paradox seems to exist here since GIS mapping databases rely on zones determined by the nation-state (and of course, these zones can shift with time) while the very nature of transnational topics defies the boundaries and spaces of these nation-based structures. Furthermore, transnational themes work complexly through space whether through correspondence, digital communications, the movement of goods and people or even direct meetings between people. For this reason, Ian Gregory advocates adding a spatial statistics dimension to GIS mapping as a viable work around for historians working across borders (126f). With regard to my topic, yet another challenge manifests itself with regard to chloropleth mapping in maritime environments. Whaling ships typically operated in peripheral, unregulated, and even unmapped regions, spaces that did not easily fall into nationally-defined administrative zones. For practical purposes, it would be easier to map whaling operations and contacts with points rather than in zones.

Here, Konrad Lawson and Roberto Sala have made important suggestions for incorporating relational databases and mapping into my transmaritime project. Maps are not always the best solution for representing networks. Sala suggests utilizing data tables (so long as the data does not skew reality), and Lawson includes other dynamic tools such as point-line charts. Instead of mapping the seasonal stop on whaling itineraries, a point-line chart strips away distractors and enables the project to prominently emphasize Dundee as the hub of numerous whaling networks that extend across a number industrial, economic and intellectual fields.

We have posted our ideas. We have pitched the proposed unconference sessions to each other in a series of one minute “lightning talks” and the votes (4 per person) are in! Here is the set-up for the Unconference:

Here is the vote – Unconference ahead!

Early AM Offers 

#1 for 9.15am Konrad Lawson – Maps that Communicate

A discussion session that focuses on thinking about the use of maps in historical scholarship. Beyond the basic map for identification, the, “Here is the geographical area or country that this article or section discusses,” map, what are some of the more or less effective ways to use maps to complement a historical argument? When is it better to use a map than plain tabular expression of data? Or some other visualisation? What are some things to avoid in creating or using maps? How should our texts engage with included maps? When geographically visualising flows or networks, what works and what doesn’t? If this session is chosen, I’ll bring two or three maps that do I think do this well, or not well, and encourage participants to (optionally) bring a map of their own choice for discussion. The goal is to exchange ideas about good practices.

#2 for 9.15am Martin Schaller – Hand-on Session on Digitised Sources

More and more memory institutions are digitizing their holdings and making them freely available. Simultaneously border transcending initiatives like DARIAH  or CLARIN  are working on infrastructures to provide digital tools for researchers in the humanities.
I would like to propose a collaborative hands-on session, in which we will have a look at multinational, multilingual digital source collections (like European Newspapers at The European Library or available collections in research.europeana.eu) and the technical challenges and limitations that influence our work with the available material. However I would like to propose to apply an historian’s point of view in order to critically examine the material’s usability for high-quality historical research. Thus the guiding questions will be: Do we, as historians, really need to become programmers, as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie famously claimed in 1968? Does the available data live up to the quality of “analogue sources” in terms of reliability and contextualization? In which way can we use digitized sources to help our research or in other words which tools are we missing? As a base for discussion I would like to propose the following reading: Ian Milligan, Mining the ‘Internet Graveyard’: Rethinking the Historians’ Toolkit, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 23, 2012.

Unconference – Casting votes British-style (civilised)

Late AM Offers 

#1 for 11.15 Matt Ylitalo & Madeleine Dungy – Research Symposium

A session for participants to share and engage each other directly about their own current research projects in an open discussion.

#2 for 11.15am Martin Schaller, Petru Szedlaczek, Pablo Sau, Matthaeus Feigk – The Exploration of Appropriate Methods in Analysing Knowledge Transfers

This proposal suggests the exploration of appropriate methods in analyzing knowledge transfers. Simple biographies of agents involved in knowledge transfers seem not to be enough. Instead, a combination of perspectives could work. Might linking prosopography with networks reveal how groups reify over large areas? Or one should first define a group from an analytical perspective and then visualize the networks formed by different actors facing common challenges? Genealogy clearly impacts elites’ original socialization. But what motivates elites to connect professionally? One possible understanding of prosopography is offered by the Modern History Research Unit of the University of Oxford. In this reading, prosopography is a perspective that focuses on four established methods: biography, onomastics, genealogy and sociography (or how groups form). To what extent could this take on actors and networks provide a comprehensive framework for research dealing with knowledge transfer? In order to apply the prosopographic-network approach, one can concentrate for instance on one particular scientific community in Russia in the early 19th century. The University of Dorpat in Livonia is 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. At the same time, different networks – e.g. family, profession – influence the life-path, socializing and choices of individuals. How can one reconcile different layers of networks impacting the same agent? What is the hierarchy of competing networks and how is it connected to the overarching research question?

Afternoon Pair Writing

For the afternoon, keep thinking about a partner with whom you wish to team-up for the pair writing writing session.

The pair writing (based on an idea elaborated here) works in a similar way with the day one writing exercise. This time the theme for the pair writing exercise is: how did the summer school inform your own research? You will get 15 minutes to talk to your partner and think about an outline. You then get 30 minutes to write down your thoughts as a “driver” while your “observer” intervenes occasionally with suggestions, critique, or corrections. They can help you with new ideas should you get stuck. In a final 10 minutes you look over what you have written, make any final edits, and post the resulting written extracts on our website here. After a break, we will switch “drivers” and reverse the roles.

Practicing Pair Writing (end of day 1)

                This workshop is about making connections. We started wondering what could bring us together since our research interests may seem far away from one another. Pascale works on the spatial construction in anarchist thought in the late 19^th century and Esther deals with expulsions of migrants in East Africa in the 1960s. Today’s readings and presentations made us think about our ways of conceptualizing Europe in a transnational perspective.

                While reading Raj and Saunier, we noticed (but did not have time to discuss) that the authors come from different traditions and display different perspectives. Saunier’s approach to transnational history remains more centered on Europe as he is trying to recast the narrative of European integration, whereas Kapil Raj’s background is in imperial science production. As a result, “Europe” occupies a crucial but slightly different place in both accounts. Saunier is interested in how Europe emerged as “the result of connected circulatory regimes, which have eventually crystallized into a construct that has received a growing attention in the modern age, where it became the object of dedicated political and cultural engineering”. Raj on the other hand convincingly shows that these circulatory regimes involved in the construction of something perceived as “European” such as science had ramifications extending well beyond the geographical unit of the European continent. However, both authors use the notions of circulation, exchange, and contact to break up the dichotomy between the West and the rest, the center and the periphery and the boundaries of national narratives.

                In our respective projects, the spectre of Europe looms large. In Esther’s work, non-European actors, such as the Ugandan government, are concerned with imperial populations, which they see as being a part of Europe (Indian minorities). Defining which groups belong to British imperial legacy becomes a key conflict between the former metropolis and the former colony. Imperial circulations of population come to an end with the rise of Ugandan nationalism, which generates a last and final movement of population, the expulsion of Indians from Uganda (1972). Pascale works on the collaboration between two anarchist-scientists, one from the center of Europe (France) and another from the periphery (Russia). Through their common political interest and their shared experience of exile and marginalisation, they debated political and scientific matters on eye level and created a common vision of the world. While Europe is still presented as the most “advanced” region of the globe, their knowledge of the extra-European world allows them to engage critically with imperialism and racism.

From the “outside”, extra-European spaces , as well as from the “inside”, the territoriality and idea of “Europe” seems to have been shaped by circulation of people and streams of thought that crossed national – and eventually continental – boundaries.

Esther Ginestet

Pascale Siegrist

We have 7 proposals for the Unconference for the final day, Wednesay 10 June. This is looking good but we welcome submissions until latest 2pm today – post lunch time. This afternoon, following the workshop by Fabricio Prado, we will start preparing by

Unconference Ideas

-Round of Lightning Talks (max 2) by those who proposed workshops, reading groups, contributions

-Voting for Unconference Programme (each participant has four votes)

-Arrange setting and venues

-Konrad and Bernhard will sit down with the proposers and discuss potential set-ups

Tonight two alternative ways to enjoy and explore Scotland and the Kingdom of Fife.

Whisky Tasting

Either join our Luvians Whisky tasting, from Lowlands to Highlands, 8pm in Luvians Cafe, Market Street 84. See here:

Whisky Tasting – Luvians Cafe, Market Street 84

Fish and Chips in the Coastal Village of Anstruther

Or join our local boy Konrad Lawson on the way out to the beautiful coastal village of Anstruther in the East Neuk region (the “Cinque Terre” of Scotland) with the award-winning local Fish’n Chips Shop, the “Anstruther Fish Bar” or one of the several excellent nearby competitors. To join this excursion, meet at the St Andrews Bus Station at 18.05. Bus no. 62 leaves 18.10pm from St Andrews Bus Station to Anstruther (the bus continues to Edinburgh). A roundtrip ticket to Anstruther is less than £8. So if you wish to hop on the bus with Konrad, be at the station for 6.05pm. Konrad will direct you to the bus back, which departs hourly: bus no. 95. The bus ride itself is a beautiful scenic ride along the coast, including the villages of Crail and Kingsbarns)

Enjoy:

Fish’n Chippies – Starting Locally

In Jakob Vogel’s talk the focus was strongly on networks evolving around the trade, collection and systematization of minerals. What relates his talk to my own research interest is, that those researchers collected their minerals during travels. There is an interesting parallel between Jakob Vogel’s mineralogists and the ‘casual’ travellers I am researching. Although the former group had a professional interest in the minerals and thus in mining mines, mines were also popular tourist attractions to any traveller in the Habsburg Empire.

This poses new questions: While it is clear, why professional mineralogist where visiting mines it’s not as obvious why they developed into tourist attractions. What are the notions, expectations and reasons for travellers for visiting mines? One aspect could be the ‘Industrial Revolution’. British travellers were very much aware of the implications of mines for progress and development and they were perceived as a necessary means to advance. But on the other hand Jakob Vogel is very much focused on the 18^th century and it need to be clarified if mines also attracted travellers in this period. If this proves to be the case the Industrial Revolution contributes only partially to mines as a tourist attraction.

Martin Schaller

The project of ‘the database of the published books in the early modern era’ that Andrew Pettigrew presented could mean a contribution also to my work ‘The Left-wing terrorism in Italy and Germany in the 1970s.’ The German and Italian extra-parliamentary movements were influenced by each other, and it would be interesting to find out which books were translated from one language to another. Such a database would raise several questions. Which authors were translated? What was the number of circulation of those authors? In which cities were they published?

Professor Andrew Pettegree – Transnational History of Early Modern News

The influence of specific authors would thus be in a certain way quantifiable. This approach would also raise a number of issues. The number of the books circulating is in the 20^th century immense and it would be difficult to put them all in the database. Therefore, the criteria would have to be set for cataloging the books. But in this way we would have to pre-define the books chosen for the database and thus limiting the contribution. The high mobility and the availability of the books would also make it difficult to find out how many people really read specific books.

Mikulas Pesta

Discussing scales, Europe and interconnectedness

We believe that scale is a defining factor when considering networks. All three of us are working on interconnections that may be defined as networks, but are nonetheless very different in terms of scale from one another. In scrutinising punk rock, Ondrej is exploring a scale shift from a closely connected group of people to a mass movement. Anna is mainly examining a very small personal network which at the same time is connected to a bigger shift in the understanding of relationships in general. Nikos is working on the connectivity between young people from West Germany, Greece and Britain. He examines transnational, small and loosely-knit groups, whose members simultaneously shared the feeling of common belonging to a broader “imagined community” of a transnational youth culture in the context of the “sexual revolution”.

The ways in which the networks each of us is exploring were constituted vary:

For Nikos, the above mentioned networks were based on travelling and “being elsewhere” from the place where these young people lived. The people that Ondrej is examining are drawn together by the enjoyment of the same music, looks and ideas. And in Anna’s case, the network is just formed through Lou Salome’s correspondents

So far, we have experimented with other concepts in our analyses. For example, Nikos has employed the concept of sociality. Anna considers the conceptual history of friendship as a specfic description of relationships. Since the notion of network can be conceptualised in various ways (see, for instance, Latour, Castells), we are interested in further exploring its compatibility with the other concepts we have already been using. We are also keen on examining further the possibilities of distinguishing between different kinds of networks and diverse links between their members.

Anna, Ondrej, Nikos