Networks

Hartrich, Eliza (2022) Networks. In: Using Concepts in Medieval History. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 143-161. ISBN 978-3-030-77279-6

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Abstract

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has transformed the study of many fields of history over the last decade, with historians of the early modern and modern periods using computer-assisted modelling and visualisations to identify configurations of social relationships in the past and how they changed over time. For the most part, historians of late medieval England have not embraced these methodologies. Since the pioneering work of K.B. McFarlane 75 years ago, however, late medievalists have developed their own concept of networks rooted in 1960s observation-based social anthropology rather than twenty-first-century ‘big data’ sociology. It is a concept operating in opposition to ‘community’ and based on the assumption that informal social ties tend to concentrate power in the hands of the few. These connotations contrast with the concept of ‘networks’ as used in early modern and modern history, where it is often associated with decentralised, non-hierarchical, and long-distance relationships. Instead of thinking of SNA as a neutral statistical tool, we should perhaps consider ‘networks’ as a keyword whose meaning varies according to the academic context and is laden with the intellectual baggage peculiar to specific sub-disciplines.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	networks,social network analysis,sna,late medieval england,historiography,kb mcfarlane,social anthropology,community,networks,k.b. mcfarlane,social anthropology,historiography,late medieval england,community,social network analysis (sna),arts and humanities(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	28 Apr 2021 23:52
Last Modified:	08 Mar 2024 11:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/79896
DOI:	10.1007/978-3-030-77280-2_8

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