The Craft of Elite Prosopography

Jacob Aagaard Lunding; Christoph Houman Ellersgaard; Anton Grau Larsen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-45175-2_5

The Craft of Elite Prosopography

Jacob Aagaard Lunding^*, Christoph Houman Ellersgaard, Anton Grau Larsen

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review

Abstract

Prosopograhies, or collective biographies offer a systematic approach to collecting data and describing elite groups. To really reap the fruits of this approach it is important that the definition of the elite group in question is based on a solid theoretical and empirical specification of boundaries. We suggest avoiding only relying on official categories and develop a relation approach to defining elite populations. Furthermore, we argue that well-defined elite populations should be analysed through relational methods, such as Multiple Correspondence Analysis, Social Network Analysis and Sequence Analysis. We argue that these methods offers ‘descriptive assemblages’ that allow scholars to do an empirically sound and visually convincing cartography of power structures. We provide an overview of possible data sources for prosopographical data and discuss how well suited the data sources are for the three abovementioned forms of relation methods. We also provide examples of the specific way of structuring data on attributes, social relations and states, which are most compatible with the three methods.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Researching Elites and Power : Theory, Methods, Analyses
Editors	Francois Denord, Mikael Palme, Bertrand Réau
Number of pages	14
Publisher	Springer
Publication date	2020
Pages	57-70
ISBN (Print)	978-3-030-45174-5, 978-3-030-45177-6
ISBN (Electronic)	978-3-030-45175-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45175-2_5
Publication status	Published - 2020

Series	Methodos Series
Number	16

Bibliographical note

This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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10.1007/978-3-030-45175-2_5Licence: CC BY

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abstract = "Prosopograhies, or collective biographies offer a systematic approach to collecting data and describing elite groups. To really reap the fruits of this approach it is important that the definition of the elite group in question is based on a solid theoretical and empirical specification of boundaries. We suggest avoiding only relying on official categories and develop a relation approach to defining elite populations. Furthermore, we argue that well-defined elite populations should be analysed through relational methods, such as Multiple Correspondence Analysis, Social Network Analysis and Sequence Analysis. We argue that these methods offers {\textquoteleft}descriptive assemblages{\textquoteright} that allow scholars to do an empirically sound and visually convincing cartography of power structures. We provide an overview of possible data sources for prosopographical data and discuss how well suited the data sources are for the three abovementioned forms of relation methods. We also provide examples of the specific way of structuring data on attributes, social relations and states, which are most compatible with the three methods.",

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The Craft of Elite Prosopography. / Lunding, Jacob Aagaard; Ellersgaard, Christoph Houman; Larsen, Anton Grau.

Researching Elites and Power: Theory, Methods, Analyses. ed. / Francois Denord; Mikael Palme; Bertrand Réau. Springer, 2020. p. 57-70 (Methodos Series; No. 16).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review

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The Craft of Elite Prosopography

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