USES OF NETWORK TOOLS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL RESEARCH

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803963.008

7 - USES OF NETWORK TOOLS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Roger V. Gould

Edited by

James Mahoney and

Dietrich Rueschemeyer

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Roger V. Gould: Affiliation:
Yale University
James Mahoney: Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Dietrich Rueschemeyer: Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island

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Summary

On first principles, one would not expect a strong elective affinity between network analysis and historical sociology. Socialscientists who are drawn to structural analysis typically have a taste for abstraction and formalization and see themselves as engaged in a scientific enterprise. Those drawn to history, even if they are not professional historians, are more attracted to particularity and substance, and are (nowadays) more likely to see their projects as humanistic rather thans cientific. In such circumstances, one ought to expect little research applying algebraic or graph-theoretic network methods to historical data.

Quantitatively speaking, this expectation seems to be correct: small as the network analysis community is, the historical network community is smaller still – whether expressed as a proportion of social science history or as a proportion of the network analysis community. Yet I would suggest, at the risk of being accused of self-promotion, that the contribution of network-oriented historical research is more substantial than its quantity alone might suggest. And I would claim, further, that the disproportionate interest of historical network research is more than a matter of novelty or surprise (as it might be, for instance, when the American Sociological Association conference session featuring a jazz ensemble drains people out of the paper sessions nearby). I would suggest, instead, that the enterprise of employing structural analysis in historical research is a particularly fruitful way to generate new insights and questions and to reframe or resolve old ones.

Type: Chapter
Information: Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences , pp. 241 - 269

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803963.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

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