a trip to flatland: mapping or modeling in the social sciences
TRANSCRIPT
A trip to Flatland
oron mapping and modeling in social sciences
Tommaso Venturini
Flatland, Edwin Abbott Abbott, 1884
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)
1 Level Stand-Point
Latour, B., Jensen, P., Venturini, T. et al.‘The Whole is Always Smaller Than Its Parts’ A Digital Test of Gabriel Tarde’s Monads.British Journal of Sociology 63(4)
The emergent society Thomas Hobbes, 1651The Leviathan
Sui generis social facts
The collective self is not a simple epiphenomenon of its morphologic base, precisely as the individual self is not a simple efflorescence of the nervous system.
For the collective self to appear, a sui generis synthesis of individual self has to be produced. This synthesis creates a world of feelings, ideas, images that, once come to life, follow their own laws.
Emile Durkheim, 1912Le formes élémentaires
de la vie religieuse
Sui generis social facts?
Emile Durkheim VS Gabriel Tarde
Against emergence
Let us suppose for a moment that one of our human States, composed not of a few thousand but of a few quadrillions or quintillions of men, hermetically sealed and inaccessible as individuals (like China, but infinitely more populous still, and more closed) was known to us only by the data of its statisticians, whose figures, made up of very large numbers, recurred with extreme regularity.
When a political or social revolution, which would be revealed to us by an abrupt enlargement or diminution of some of these numbers, took place in this State, we might well be certain that we would be observing a fact caused by individual ideas and passions, but we would resist the temptation to become lost in superfluous conjectures on the nature of these impenetrable causes even though they alone were the real ones, and the wisest option would appear to us to explain as best we could the unusual numbers by ingenious comparisons with clever manipulations of the normal numbers.
Tarde, 1893Monadologie et sociologie
Follow the White Rabbitwhy controversy mapping (and digital methods)
will change everything you know about sociology
Tommaso Venturini
The methodological strabismusof social sciences
Photo credit – tarout_sun via Flickr - ©
The quali/quantitative divide
rich data, small populationsqualitative methods (telephoto)
quantitative methods (wide angle)large populations, poor data
The Gulliver complex of social sciences
Gulliver's TravelsJonathan Swift, 1726
Sui generis social facts?
Emile Durkheim VS Gabriel Tarde
Sui generis social facts!
Emile Durkheim VS Gabriel Tarde
Simulating the emergenceof macro from micro Theraulaz & Bonabeau (1999)
A brief history of stigmergyArtificial Life, 5, 97–116
Thomas C. Schelling , 1969 Models of Segregation
Simulate how global-macro-social structures emerge from local-micro-individual interactions
Simulating the emergenceof macro from micro
Thomas C. Schelling , 1969 Models of Segregation
Simulate how global-macro-social structures emerge from local-micro-individual interactions
While ignoring the work done by mayors, municipalities, civic associations, planning acts, public utilities, urban mafias…
Simulating the emergenceof macro from micro
The media as an object of study
Photo credit – Brandon Doran via Flickr - ©
The media as carbon paper
Chris Harrison, 2004Internet connections
From digitaltraceability…
Virtual Society thus, is not a thing of the future,
it’s the materialisation, the traceability of
society. It renders visible because of the
obsessive necessity of materialising information
into cables, into data.
Latour, B. 1998“Thought Experiments in Social Science:
from the Social Contract to Virtual Society”
… to digitalmethods
The Internet is employed as a site of research for
far more than just online culture.
The issue no longer is how much of society and
culture is online, but rather how to diagnose
cultural change and societal conditions with the
Internet.
The conceptual point of departure for the
research program is the recognition that the
Internet is not only an object of study, but also a
source.
Rogers, R. 2009The End of the Virtual: Digital Methods.
Amsterdam University Press.
Digital methodsand large populations
Paul Butler, 2010Visualizing Friendships
Digital methodsand rich data
AOL user 711391 search historywww.minimovies.org/documentaires/view/ilovealaska
Large populationsand rich data
Google Fluwww.google.org/flutrends
Large populationsand rich data
Google Fluwww.google.org/flutrends
Large populationsand rich data
Google Fluwww.google.org/flutrends
Zooming in and out Top 50 US blogsBen Fry, 2006
http://nymag.com/news/media/15972/
Datascapes navigationhttp://pulseweb.cortext.net/tubes/
Alice sociology Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll, 1865
Galam S., Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data: The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza Physica A 389(17)
« Using a one-person-one-argument principle, the model implements an opinion shift via small group discussions monitored by local majority rules » (p. 12)
From simulating…
… to mappinghttp://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/11/27/visualizing-the-east-anglia-climate-research-unit-leaked-email-network/
médialab quali-quantitative methods
The monads
Each element, hitherto conceived as a point, now becomes an indefinitely enlarged sphere of action… and all these interpenetrating spheres are so many domains proper to each element, so many distinct though intermixed spaces, perhaps, which we wrongly take to be a single unique space. The centre of each sphere is a point, which is uniquely defined by its properties, but in the end a point like any other; and besides, since activity is the very essence of the elements, each of them exists in its entirety in the place where it acts (pp. 26-27).
Tarde, 1893Monadologie et sociologie
Where are the structures?Where is the langage?
Where are the structures?Where is the langage?
Red : referencesBlue : institutionsGreen : keywords
1. Structures and individualacts on the same level
REFERENCE
Turing AM, 1952, Phil. Trans. of
the Royal Society of Bio. Sciences
INSTITUTION(specialized)
Blackett Lab. ImperialCollege
KEYWORD
Magnetic properties
INSTITUTION(non-specialized)
Ecole Polytechnique de
Zurich
2. The difference between parts and wholes is just a question of zoom
What I did not say(caveats)
I did not say…
• that collective existence and Google are the
same- consider all digital traces not just the easiest
- keep doing qualitative research
• that we can get rid of theory- more data means more cleaning (information/noise)
- data are never just data (whose data is my data?)
• that individual and collective actors are the same
Emergence as magic(models as simulation)
Emergence as origami(models as maps)
tommasoventurini.it
To read more about thisLatour, B., Jensen, P., Venturini, T., Grauwin, S., & Boullier, D.
‘The Whole is Always Smaller Than Its Parts’ A Digital Test of Gabriel Tarde’s Monads.
British Journal of Sociology 63(4)