Description
This book presents a state-of-the-art picture of advances in social network research for economic, business, and financial historians. It showcases recent advances in the methodology and application of social network analysis to historical research and draws out the unique benefits for economic history and related fields.
Social network analysis is increasingly understood to be an important part of historical research, allowing researchers to balance qualitative investigation with rigorous quantitative techniques. Through a global set of case studies spanning ancient, medieval, early modern and modern history, this edited volume demonstrates the interpretative potential of various SNA approaches to different sets of historical data. The chapters contribute to methodological understanding of SNA in economic history, as well as showing through the case studies how network analysis can decode complex social and economic interactions over time, making visible those relational patterns that were invisible to contemporary historical actors. This cutting-edge resource will be appeal widely to academics in economic, business and financial history, as well as statistics researchers and social scientists looking to strengthen their quantitative research skills.
Introduction.- Part I Thinking in Networks: Approaches to Economic, Business, and Financial History.- Decoding Complex Socio-Economic Interactions in History through Social Network Analysis.- Improving Business History through Social Network Analysis and data.- Webs of Money: Social Network Analysis and Financial History.- Network-Based Bibliometric Analysis in Economic History.- Part II Connecting the Past: Case-Based Approaches to Networks in Economic History.- II.1 Threads of Antiquity: Economic and Cultural Networks Across the Mediterranean.- Trade and Cultural Transmission in lived spaces from central Italy from the Final Bronze Age to the Archaic Period (1100-500 BC): an Exploratory Network Analysis.- Exploring pottery distributions and regional economies through network analysis and GIS: Kalapodi and its region in the Roman period as a case study.- Maritime Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Quantitative Analysis of Shipwreck Data from the Hellenistic Period through Late Antiquity (4th Century BCE 7th Century CE).- II.2 Forging Markets: Credit, Networks, and Intermediation in Pre-Modern Europe.- Credit Networks in the 14th-century rural countryside of Tyrol. Importance and Functioning.- Forced Loans and Lenders Networks in Seville: Coercion, Credit, and the Origins of a Proto-Financial Market (1523-1563) .- Relational Capital, Weak Ties, and Economic Intermediation. The Global Network built by Jerónimo de Cataño (1536-1589).- High Finance Networks in Renaissance Florence.-
Maria Carmela Schisani is Professor of Economic History at the University of Naples Federico II. She is affiliated researcher with the ISEM and ISMed institutes of the National Research Council (CNR). Her research interests focus mainly on financial and business history. She also specializes in network analysis applied to historical economic and financial data. She is author of several publications, some of them in high-impact international scientific journals such as Cliometrica, European Review of Economic History and Business History. Giuseppe De Luca is Professor of Economic History at the University of Milan and holds a PhD in Economic and Social History from the Bocconi University. He is Honorary Professor at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, and Associate to the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe (ISEM). His research explores the relationship between finance and economic growth from the medieval to modern periods. He specializes in informal credit networks, the role of notaries and religious organizations in lending, and the development of infrastructure and healthcare system financing in Europe over time. Giancarlo Ragozini is Professor of Social Statistics at the Department of Political Science, University of Naples Federico II. His research interests range from statistical methods for social network analysis to computational statistics and multivariate methods for data analysis, sport analytics, quantitative history, life course studies. He is author of over 150 publications (72 in Scopus), many of them in high-impact international scientific journals such as Social Network, Network Science, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Cliometrica, European Review of Economic History and Business History. Paolo Cimadomo is Researcher at the Italian National Research Council (CNR), temporary lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Basilicata (Italy), and research fellow at the University of Haifa (Israel). His main interests involve the social, economic, and environmental history and archaeology of the Roman and Late Roman Eastern Mediterranean. He is also interested in Computer Science for the Humanities and the development of tools or services for archaeological and historical data ingestion and integration.
