In response to a recent query by participants of an NEH-sponsored Network Analysis Workshop, I've begun to do some preliminary thinking about the interpretive assumptions that underlay the visualization of social networks and the process of translating historical information into quantifiable social-network "data". In recent years, a number of scholars have begun writing about the recent push in the humanities to collate and visualize "data," a movement that potentially raises all kinds of ideological problems owing to the too easy adoption of seemingly objective methodologies developed in scientific and social-scientific disciplines. Notable among these scholars is Johanna Drucker, who in the essay "Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display" argues for a humanistic (e.g., interpretive and observer-dependent) approach to the collection and display of data. Indeed, Drucker prefers to use the term "capta" to highlight the very constructed nature of the information so often treated as "realistic" representation and yet which is actually the product of (oftentimes) troubling ideological assumptions. She goes on to offer concrete suggestions for how one might rethink the standard tools for quantifying and displaying information (e.g., bar graphs, pie charts, timelines etc.) in ways that highlight, rather than hide, the constructed nature of data and the epistemological assumptions that bring it into being.
Drucker's call for a more imaginative and critically-minded engagement with data visualization is important and necessary, even if it provokes confusion and befuddlement at the thought of how we might tailor visualizations to reflect the variegated nature of reality and the multiple positions from which it can be viewed. (Of what use are such visualizations to those who need to share information efficiently and in ways that allow for ready comparison?). Regardless, I do think it vital that we think about what gets lost (and what exactly we gain) in the process of creating our "captasets" and turning them into material for abstract statistical and visual analysis. If, as Lev Manovich asserts, "we throw away 99% of what is specific about each object to represent only 1% in the hope of revealing patterns across this 1%," then it behooves all of us who do SNA work to consider what it is we are retaining when we abstract edges and nodes from rich social data and whether or not that 1% is meaningful as a way of rethinking the other 99%.
For my own project, I've given considerable thought to what interpretive assumptions underlay the ways in which I'm both collecting and organizing information on modernist poetic networks in Japan. Perhaps the biggest assumption (or reduction) I'm forced to make in order to work with such information is to treat all submissions to poetry journals as essentially equal in value. This is regardless of their content, style, length, original time of writing, manner of publication (i.e., was it printed or mimeographed?), place of publication, and potential for diffusion. I have thrown out, in other words, nearly all of the information that would allow us to assess these objects as written artifacts rooted in highly specialized and context-dependent fields of discursive production. All that remains is the reality of one individual having had his or her name attached to one piece of printed matter in one particular journal at a particular time.
Another large assumption I make is that the appearance of submissions in the same poetry journal constitutes a meaningful connection between the authors of those submissions. In many cases this makes good sense, as journals were often the product of small coteries of poets who banded together for the express purpose of making public their stylistically and/or ideologically similar poems and ideas. To appear in the same journal was thus a statement of allegiance to those who shared in one's aesthetic or political ideals. In other cases, however, it is easy to imagine that sharing space in a journal meant very little to the poet's involved and that it may have signaled anything but a shared sensibility. Some may have treated the fact as mere happenstance (whether fortuitous or not), and we cannot rule out that some journals created space for widely divergent and differing viewpoints. Such detail, however, is impossible to capture at scales of sufficient magnitude, and thus one has to settle for treating all simultaneous appearances as representative of a singular association between two poets, whether that association be based on collaboration, antagonism, or coincidence, and whether it be an association experienced by the poets themselves or simply recorded as archival fact.
What I have to come to terms with, then, and I'll end on this point, is that the very manner by which I'm constructing an analyzable database of information produces its own set of meanings that may or may not correspond to the meanings produced by more traditional and more linguistically attentive (or should we say micro-oriented?) methodologies. At issue here, ultimately, is the meaning of "relation" itself.
Drucker's call for a more imaginative and critically-minded engagement with data visualization is important and necessary, even if it provokes confusion and befuddlement at the thought of how we might tailor visualizations to reflect the variegated nature of reality and the multiple positions from which it can be viewed. (Of what use are such visualizations to those who need to share information efficiently and in ways that allow for ready comparison?). Regardless, I do think it vital that we think about what gets lost (and what exactly we gain) in the process of creating our "captasets" and turning them into material for abstract statistical and visual analysis. If, as Lev Manovich asserts, "we throw away 99% of what is specific about each object to represent only 1% in the hope of revealing patterns across this 1%," then it behooves all of us who do SNA work to consider what it is we are retaining when we abstract edges and nodes from rich social data and whether or not that 1% is meaningful as a way of rethinking the other 99%.
For my own project, I've given considerable thought to what interpretive assumptions underlay the ways in which I'm both collecting and organizing information on modernist poetic networks in Japan. Perhaps the biggest assumption (or reduction) I'm forced to make in order to work with such information is to treat all submissions to poetry journals as essentially equal in value. This is regardless of their content, style, length, original time of writing, manner of publication (i.e., was it printed or mimeographed?), place of publication, and potential for diffusion. I have thrown out, in other words, nearly all of the information that would allow us to assess these objects as written artifacts rooted in highly specialized and context-dependent fields of discursive production. All that remains is the reality of one individual having had his or her name attached to one piece of printed matter in one particular journal at a particular time.
Another large assumption I make is that the appearance of submissions in the same poetry journal constitutes a meaningful connection between the authors of those submissions. In many cases this makes good sense, as journals were often the product of small coteries of poets who banded together for the express purpose of making public their stylistically and/or ideologically similar poems and ideas. To appear in the same journal was thus a statement of allegiance to those who shared in one's aesthetic or political ideals. In other cases, however, it is easy to imagine that sharing space in a journal meant very little to the poet's involved and that it may have signaled anything but a shared sensibility. Some may have treated the fact as mere happenstance (whether fortuitous or not), and we cannot rule out that some journals created space for widely divergent and differing viewpoints. Such detail, however, is impossible to capture at scales of sufficient magnitude, and thus one has to settle for treating all simultaneous appearances as representative of a singular association between two poets, whether that association be based on collaboration, antagonism, or coincidence, and whether it be an association experienced by the poets themselves or simply recorded as archival fact.
What I have to come to terms with, then, and I'll end on this point, is that the very manner by which I'm constructing an analyzable database of information produces its own set of meanings that may or may not correspond to the meanings produced by more traditional and more linguistically attentive (or should we say micro-oriented?) methodologies. At issue here, ultimately, is the meaning of "relation" itself.
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