Narrative as data: Linguistic and statistical tools for the quantitative study of historical events

International Review of Social History

Volumn 43, Issue 6, 1998, Pages 81-104

  Franzosi, Roberto ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032283651     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s002085900011510x     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Braudel, Fernand, On History (Chicago, 1980). A collection of essays of reflections upon history by one of the great historians of the twentieth century.
2. Cicourel, Aaron V., Method and Measurement in Sociology (New York, 1964). A truly insightful book. The chapter on "Measurement and Mathematics" is brilliant. I would make it required reading in any graduate training.
3. DeFelice, Renzo, Le interpretazioni del Fascismo (Bari, 1995; 1st pub. 1969). An overview of various interpretations of fascism. Social science models do not fare well in the eyes of this great historian of Italian fascism.
4. Elton, G.R., "Two Kinds of History", in Robert William Fogel and G.R. Elton, Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History (New Haven, 1983), pp. 71-121. A debate between two great historians - G.R. Elton, a traditional, narrative historian, and Robert Fogel, the "cliometrician". A "must" for any one interested in the terms of the debate between narrative history and "scientific" history.
5. Emirbayer, Mustafa and Jeff Goodwin, "Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency", American Journal of Sociology, 99, 6 (1994), pp. 1411-1454. An investigation into the recent explosion of network models and into the relationship between network models and agency.
6. Franzosi, Roberto, "The Press as a Source of Socio-Historical Data: Issues in the Methodology of Data Collection from Newspapers", Historical Methods, 20, 1 (1987), pp. 5-16. An investigation into the validity of newspapers as sources of sociohistorical data and a discussion of coding scheme design for the collection of those data.
7. Franzosi, Roberto, "From Words to Numbers: A Generalized and Linguistics-Based Coding Procedure for Collecting Event-Data from Newspapers", in Clifford Clogg (ed.), Sociological Methodology, vol. 19 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 263-298. The first step in the author's journey "from words to numbers". Traces the background of semantic grammars and develops a grammar most appropriate for the study of conflict events.
8. Franzosi, Roberto, "Strategies for the Prevention, Detection and Correction of Measurement Error in Data Collected from Textual Sources", Sociological Methods and Research, 18, 4 (1990), pp. 442-47. An investigation into the possible sources of errors when coding narrative data with the help of a computer-based semantic grammar.
9. Franzosi, Roberto, "Computer-Assisted Coding of Textual Data: An Application to Semantic Text Grammars", Sociological Methods and Research, 19, 2 (1990), pp. 224-256. The author highlights the characteristics that a software for the collection of narrative data on the basis of a grammar should have.
10. Franzosi, Roberto, "From Words to Numbers: A Set Theory Framework for the Collection, Organization, and Analysis of Narrative Data", in Peter Marsden (ed.), Sociological Methodology, vol. 24 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 105-136. The final step in going "from words to numbers". And set theory provides the link.
11. Franzosi, Roberto, The Puzzle of Strikes. Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy (Cambridge, 1995). An attempt to solve the puzzle of Italian strikes in light of economic institutional, organizational and political factors. Brings in a great deal of both quantitative and qualitative evidence. A scathing critique of mindless quantitative approaches to historical processes through "doing it".
12. Franzosi, Roberto, "Mobilization and Counter-Mobilization Processes: From the Red Years (1919-20) to the Black Years (1921-22) in Italy. A New Methodological Approach to the Study of Narrative Data" in John Mohr and Roberto Franzosi (eds), New Directions in Formalization and Historical Analysis, a special issue of Theory and Society, 26, 2-3 (1997). The first substantive results of the author's long journey "from words to numbers".
13. Franzosi, Roberto, "Narrative Analysis, or . . . Why (and How) Sociologists Should Be Interested in Narrative", in John Hagan (ed.), Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 24 (Palo Alto, 1998). An analysis of narrative focused on the linguists' contribution but with an eye to the sociologist. A very provocative piece.
14. Franzosi, Roberto, From Words to Numbers: Narrative as Data (Cambridge, forthcoming). A long journey across time and a number of disciplines as the author tackles the problem of narrative as a source of data for quantitative analysis. An investigation into the methodological, epistemological and ontological aspects of this enterprise with much breaking of academic canons.
15. Griffin, Larry, "Narrative, Event-Structure Analysis, and Causal Interpretation in Historical Sociology", American Journal of Sociology, 98, 5 (1993), pp. 1094-1133. A very detailed and careful investigation in the structure of a short narrative on the basis of structural properties of narrative and using ETHNO as an aid.
16. Lipset, Seymour Martin. Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore, 1981; 1st pub. 1959). A classic that deals with many aspects of politics, including fascism.
17. Markoff, John, The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants Lords, and Legislators in the French Revolution (University Park, PA, 1996). Twenty years in the making, this is a book that was well worth waiting for. Approaches issues of historical explanations with an incredible wealth of historical evidence (including content analysis of the Cahiers de doleances). Well done!
18. Markoff, John, Gilbert Shapiro and Sasha Weitman, "Toward the Integration of Content Analysis and General Methodology", in David R. Heise (ed.), Sociological Methodology (Oxford, 1974), pp. 1-58. A plea for a linguistic approach to content analysis that delivers more than previous pleas and less than hoped for.
19. McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge, 1996). The latest reader in a "growth industry".
20. Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, 1966). Many argue that modern historical sociology started from here.
21. Mousnier, Roland, Peasant Uprisings in Seventeenth-Century France, Russia, and China (New York, 1972). A narrative account by a French historian of the peasants' rebellions of the seventeenth century.
22. Tilly, Charles, "State-Incited Violence 1900-1999", Political Power and Social Theory, 9 (1995), pp. 161-225. There are some advantages in having monopoly control over the means of violence. Not surprisingly, it is the state that is the most violent social actor.
23. Wasserman, Stanley and Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis. Methods and Applications (Cambridge, 1994). A clear and thorough exposition of network models. Successive chapters get progressively more difficult without mathematics.