Social Network Analysis of the League of Nations' Intellectual Cooperation, an Historical Distant Reading

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State: Public
Version: Final published version
Serval ID
serval:BIB_6937B5E75297
Type
Inproceedings: an article in a conference proceedings.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Social Network Analysis of the League of Nations' Intellectual Cooperation, an Historical Distant Reading
Title of the conference
DH Benelux
Author(s)
Grandjean Martin
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2016
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Language
english
Abstract
Founded in 1922 by the League of Nations on the observation that the pacification of Europe may pass through a better collaboration between scientific elites, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) is responsible for coordinating the restructuration of knowledge circulation. Bringing together leading researchers at the height of their career, as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or George Hale, chaired by Henri Bergson, the Committee weaves a complex network between transnational scientific institutions and societies, congresses and individuals (Pernet 2014). This paper proposes an analysis of the work and functioning of the organization between 1919 and 1927 by setting up a database containing metadata of thousands of documents contained in the ICIC funds (United Nations Archives, Geneva). Visualized as a network of 3.200 people (tens of thousands of relationships), this work provides a new understanding of the internal organization of the Intellectual Cooperation, as well as completely new insights about its relations with the rest of the scientific and diplomatic world. In particular, we will show the necessity to compare the "micro" structure of relationships as mapped by the archive with the "macro" formal structure of the institution: does the thousands of documents, in a distant reading approach (Moretti 2013), confirm the internal organization of the League of Nations or do they show individuals/communities that bypass the official hierarchy?
Keywords
Archives, Social Network Analysis, Digital Humanities
Create date
25/08/2016 12:57
Last modification date
20/08/2019 14:24
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