Granularity in Action: Graphing sources for social history

Abstract

This working paper describes a pipeline for turning historical sources into structured data organised around the principle of foregrounding action as the basic and constitutive unit of analysis. It is rooted in a desire for pipelines that suit a granular approach to social history. The pipeline rests on the principles developed in the GRAM-framework (Graph of Roles and Actions Model), but leverages a range of machine learning tools to allow for an automated, skeletal graphing of actions. Ideally, such auto-GRAMS would integrate with close readings, including extensive manual graphing. Finally, we provide an example of how this approach might work in practice by graphing actions of pretending across four separate archival collections, relating to runaways and itinerants in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Denmark.