Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Wurpts, Bernd
• von Keyserlingk-Rehbein, Linda
• Kerschbaumer, Florian
• Stark, Martin
• Düring, Marten

Titel

The value of network analysis in historical sociology: economic and social relations in medieval Lübeck 1

Ist Teil von

• The Power of Networks, 2020, p.56-84

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this paper, it is claimed that social network analysis is an innovation that should be taken up by historians and historically oriented social scientists. Important features of organization could be missed (or gotten wrong) if scholars are not taking a network perspective. The paper starts with a discussion of features and benefits of social network research in an historical economic context. It continues with short summaries of best practice studies from historical analytical sociology and includes multiple examples of important shifts in research perspective that distinguish network research from traditional approaches. These examples are complemented by the author’s own work related to the medieval Hansa, Hanse or Hanseatic League. The article offers an original empirical study of medieval Hansa trade that uncovers similarities in trade partner selection in Northern and Southern Europe during the Late Middle Ages. Assortativity analyses and Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) are applied to one of the oldest systematic trade records from medieval Lübeck and inquiries reveal striking similarities to micro-level structures observed in medieval Genoa. The paper concludes with further historical, sociological and methodological reflections and suggestions for ways to get started with new research projects in historical networks more generally. The network perspective offers a promising approach to better understand the interrelation between economy and society. Economic history is a particularly obvious field for social network analysis because the economy produces many types of suitable data. Relational data are produced in the work process but usually not thought of as network data. Entire text corpora can be turned into computer readable data, and all types of networks may be extracted from these automatically, depending on the qualities of written documentation. Social network analysis is a particularly suitable methodology for the analysis of exchange or transaction data in general and for studying relational processes like those related to flows of trade goods. While descriptions and visualizations may be one step in analysis, particularly at the exploratory stage, many network studies go further and point to specific effects particular network structures or relational processes have on various economic outcomes of interest.