Panel Description:
In recent years, there has been a growing body of scholarship employing social network analysis within Chinese history, resulting in the publication of several special journal issues and edited volumes. This panel contributes to this burgeoning trend by presenting a diverse array of graduate student projects that use social network analysis to explore various aspects of Chinese history. These projects range from examining ninth-century court politics and late imperial economic activities to exploring early twentieth-century women’s groups and beyond.
Conceptualizing the network as a graph-theoretical model, the papers in this panel use networks to represent a broad spectrum of historical phenomena. Some contributions use networks to map interpersonal connections, including those among court officials, Confucian scholars, and self-styled recluses of social acclaim. Some employ networks to model the hierarchical structure of periodic rural markets and their spatial relationships. Others use two-mode networks to investigate more abstract forms of relationships, such as that between the type of an economic transaction (e.g., sale or pawn) and the involved property.
With innovative conceptualizations of “networks,” each tailored to the respective subject of inquiry, these scholarly endeavors demonstrate the fresh insights that historians glean from formal, quantitative analyses of structured historical data. Wang et al. revisits factional conflict in the ninth-century court and explores the interplay between factional membership and each official’s descent and career. Using clustering algorithms on a case study of Chen Jiru (1558–1639), Chen et al. investigate the phenomenon of “renowned recluses in the cities” ( shanren) in relation to the late Ming publishing industry. Turning to intellectual networks in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), Zhu et al. show the presence of an academic community in the Lower Yangtze, but question the traditional wisdom that views evidential research as its defining characteristic. The works of Lang et al. and Luo et al. turn from China’s social and political elite to rural economic activities. Lang and her collaborators investigate the complex relationship between kinship and property rights in late imperial China (ca. 1400–1900), whereas Luo et al. weave the insights in G. William Skinner’s central-place theory with empirical evidence from late Qing and Republican local gazetteers, unveiling the spatial-hierarchical structure of rural markets. The last paper (and the only single-authored paper), by Yao Tong, delves into China’s modern transition in the twentieth century and women’s activism. Combining GIS and social network analysis, it explores the evolution and impact of women’s groups, uncovering the key female actors and their agency in China’s social transformation.
Additionally, the papers in this panel underscore the global and interdisciplinary nature of collaborative research in the digital humanities. Originating from the 2023 International Summer Institute on Digital Humanities, jointly organized by Peking University, Harvard, and Princeton, all but one of these papers each emerge from collaborative efforts of graduate students, male and female, representing diverse disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., history, art history, information science, media studies, etc.) and hailing from various universities across the globe.
Paper 1: Revisiting Factional Conflict in the Ninth-Century Court of China’s Tang Dynasty: A Social Network Approach
The prolonged factional strife led by two grand councilors Niu Sengru (779–848) and Li Deyu (787–849), known as the “Niu-Li Factional Conflict” ( Niu Li dangzheng), was one of the most important political events in ninth-century China and has sparked scholarly debate for centuries. In an earlier study, Tonami Mamoru 礪波護 thoroughly investigated the members of the two factions and produced a list of 63 officials. Building on Tonami’s work, this study revisits the topic using the method of social network analysis. We have reconstructed a network based on interpersonal connections among the sixty-three faction members, supplemented by data on their regional origins, official careers, kinship, marriage, teacher-disciple, and patron-client relationships. We explore the relationship between the structural properties of this network, signifying the split between the two factions, and each official’s individual characteristics, such as his family background, place of origin, and career patterns. Using community detection and other algorithms, we reveal the impact of factional struggle on the circulation of officials. in addition to elucidating the formation, evolution, and eventual dissolution of political factions, this study also makes methodological contributions on how to compare historical networks of different sizes using overall network metrics as well as specific node attributes.
Paper 2: Agency of the Recluses in Late Ming China: A Social Network Analysis Perspective
Emblematic of the elite culture in late Ming China (ca. 1500–1644) were neither the squires nor prominent court officials, but the “recluses in the city,” such as those who called themselves shanren 山人 (Miyazaki Ichisada, 1993). While they did not always hold office, these shanren (literally the “mountain men”) gained fame from a wide audience beyond the group of scholar-officials, who “had traditionally defined fame and overseen the written records” (Jamie Greenbaum, 2007). Existing research has established a close affinity between the shanren phenomenon and the late Ming publishing industry, but the nature of this affinity and its variability across space remain unexplored.
This study uses social network analysis to investigate how these shanren, leading lives away from the political center and widely dispersed, nevertheless formed a distinctive social category and fashioned a shared identity. To explain this phenomenon, we construct a network of shanren based on their intellectual and social ties and investigate the spatial distribution of late Ming publishers. We then explore the overlaps and divergences between clusters of shanren and those of publishers. Inspired by Bordieu’s claim that all great history is structural history, this study aims to illuminate the structural environment of the shanren phenomenon (Bourdieu, 1996). It argues that the shanren were actors who made “themselves the agents of normative constraints that limit their own political capacity” (Ivan Ermakoff, 2010). While not serving in government, they shaped moral values that could be endorsed by—and thus constrained the actions—of political actors.
Paper 3: Network Perspectives on the Evolution of Intellectual Communities: A Study of the Lower Yangtze Academic Community in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912)
Since the nineteenth century, the evolution and development of academic groups in the Lower Yangtze region of the Qing Dynasty have been a significant area of focus for researchers of Chinese history. Traditional historiography, constrained by the scope of materials and the scholars' academic capacities, has often been limited to examining the academic development of the Lower Yangtze region from an academic method perspective. Benefiting from the increasingly significant role of quantitative methods in historical research, this study examines the classical question, "Does the Lower Yangtze academic community exist?" from a social network perspective. Utilizing cluster analysis through K-means and Louvain algorithms, the study classifies the relationships among scholars documented in Qing ru xue’an 清儒學案, a 208-chapter history of Qing philosophy compiled in the early twentieth century, to investigate the existence, academic nature, and internal structure of the scholarly community in the Qing Dynasty's Lower Yangtze region. The findings reveal that the Lower Yangtze academic community indeed existed, but not solely within the confines of evidential research ( kaozheng) as traditionally believed. The academic interactions spanned beyond single schools of thought, forming a complex network of neo-Confucianism and evidential research. This exploration under the lens of social networking provides a fresh understanding of the characteristics and evolution of the Qing Dynasty's Lower Yangtze academic community and its role in the history of Chinese thought, confirming the value of cluster methods in uncovering historical scholarly communities.
Paper 4: Guanxi Society or Contractual Society: Economic Strategies of Peasants in Late Imperial China
Scholars studying the deeds and contracts have argued that personal connections ( guanxi) had a significant impact on the establishment and exercise of land property rights in late imperial China as well as on the economic strategies that peasants adopted in property transactions. Instead of engaging in close reading of individual documents, this study employs digital humanities approaches to analyze the deeds and contracts from Yongtai County, located in China’s Fujian Province. The impressive number of these documents as well as their comprehensive nature offers great potential for unveiling patterns in the economic behavior of peasants through large-scale data analysis. This study focuses approximately 1,200 deeds from Jitou Village in Yongtai County. First, using Chi-squared test, we discover that whether the two parties of a transaction were relatives, by blood or marriage, had a profound impact on the type of the transaction they chose to enter into. Non-kin, for example, were more likely to conduct a “final sale” of a property and make agreements on “transferring tax-paying rights,” presumably because the buyer had stronger incentives to secure his ownership right. Second, employing the methods of social network analysis, we show that the type of a transaction is correlated with the type of property involved in that transaction. For instance, the sale of a toilet is always a one-time deal, while landed properties were available for redemption unless they were part of a “final sale.”
Paper 5: Marketing Networks in Central Shandong in the Late Qing and Republican Era
Periodic markets played a crucial role in building connections between rural communities in late Qing and Republican China (19 th–20 th centuries). Local gazetteers from this period provide detailed descriptions of these markets, such as schedules and participating villages and townships. Using these descriptions, this study explores the relationship between these markets with the aid of digital tools. In his seminal work, G. William Skinner proposed an influential model that offers theoretical insights into the spatial hierarchy of rural markets in China, encompassing various tiers that each varied greatly in their periodicity and geographical reach and played distinct roles in the economic organization of the region. Inspired by Skinner’s insights, this study uses market schedules to reconstruct the structure of rural markets in fifteen counties located in the central part of Shandong province. Assuming that markets meeting on the same dates (“competing markets”) served different rural communities while those meeting on different dates (“complementary markets”) could potentially draw participants from the same rural community, this study uses the methods of network and spatial analysis to identify the hierarchical levels that different markets occupied in the spatial hierarchy and explore the similarities and differences between marketing structures in different areas of central Shandong. It unveils the notable parallels in the marketing structures of the four counties of Changshan, Zouping, Zhangqiu, and Qidong, apparently attributable to the shared influence from the nearby township of Zhoucun.
Paper 6: Breaking the Ground: The Emergence of Women’s Groups in the Public and Political Spheres, 1875–1913: Perspectives from GIS Presentation and Social Network Analysis
This study, spanning a critical 38-year period from the late Qing dynasty to the early Republican era, employs digital humanities tools, including GIS and social network analysis, to explore the evolution and influence of women’s groups in China. Focusing on their roles in public and political spheres, the present study illuminates how the evolution of these groups was emblematic of broader historical movements, such as anti-imperialism, women’s rights, social reform, and philanthropy during this transitional period. Following the abortion of the 1898 Reform, a diverse range of women’s groups emerged. These groups actively participated in military, educational, and social domains, signifying a marked shift in women’s engagement in public life. Despite their often ephemeral existence, these groups represented a noteworthy ideological transformation in society. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of 166 women’s groups, utilizing structured data to explore the relationships and spatial distributions of these entities. It specifically examines the roles of 381 group founders and participants and reveals the geographical spread of these groups and their correlation with the emergence of girls’ schools. Network analysis unveils the role of key figures, such as Shen Peizhen, Xie Changda, Tang Qunying, Zhang Zhujun, and Qiu Jin, who acted as connectors between groups, and GIS analysis provides insights into spatial trends. The combination of these innovative approaches enhances our understanding of the historical importance and lasting impact of women’s groups in early twentieth-century China, highlighting their pivotal role in shaping societal change and advancing women’s issues during this transformative era.