From Words to Numbers (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences, #22): Narrative, Data, and Social Science Book

	List of tables	xiii
	List of figures	xv
	Acknowledgments	xvii
	Before
	The Ant and the Cicada	1
	"It Takes Two to Tango": In Search of the Actor	3
	The Lemon and the Grapefruit	4
	Of Journeys and Alchemies	5
	"The Law of Genre"	8
	"Methodological Pestilence"	11
	An Antiquarian in a Modern World	14
	Breaking the Law	18
	Of Prefaces and Introductions: Guidebook for the Journey	20
Part I	From Words to Numbers: A Journey
	Prologue	27
Chapter 1	"In the Beginning Was the Word"	29
	"In the Beginning Was the Word"	29
	Content Analysis: "Objective, Systematic, and Quantitative"	32
	From Event Counts to Event Characteristics	35
	Turning to Linguistics for Help	40
	Syntax Grammar	41
	Semantic Text Grammar	43
	Psychologists' Story Grammars	45
	A Story Grammar for Sociohistorical Research	47
	Examples of Coding	52
	Running into Problems with Story Grammars	54
	Narrative Discourse	55
	What Have We Gained?	59
Chapter 2	Ars Memoriae	62
	The Artificial Art of Memory: The Old and the New	62
	Database Design for a Story Grammar	66
	Computer-Assisted Content Analysis	69
	Basic Features of the Software	70
	Some Lessons from Cognitive Psychology	72
	Reliability versus Efficiency	73
	On Sampling: More on Reliability versus Efficiency	73
	And More Lessons from Linguistics: Text Schemata	74
	Data Verification	76
	Navigating a Relational Database	79
	Toy Examples and "Real" Data: The Test of Large Data Sets	81
	From the "Red Years" to the "Black Years" (Italy, 1919-1922)	82
	Simple Counts Tell Complex Stories	82
	Stitching the Thread	89
	Further Advantages of Story Grammars	91
	Scientists' Bitter Fate	92
Chapter 3	"Everything Is Number"	98
	"Friends of Friends": Grammars and Network Models	98
	Mobilization and Countermobilization Processes (1919-1922): Shifting Networks of Interaction	100
	"Everything Is Number"	109
	Of Thin Threads and Other Threads	113
	And Yet, What Do We Know?	118
	In the Linguists' Tool Bag: Theta Theory	122
	Of Beauty (and Science)	124
	Journeys	131
	"A March it Was"	131
	Pilgrims on the Road	132
	Voyages of Discovery	138
	Ways of Seeing	142
	Silence and Emphasis	147
	"Journeys ... Magic Caskets Full of Dreamlike Promises"	154
Part II	Looking Back: What's in the Numbers?
	Prologue	157
Chapter 4	The Word and the World	161
	Founding Fathers and Disciplinary Mottos	161
	The "Science of Sociology"	161
	"Wie es eigentlich gewesen"	164
	The Newspaper "Black Box"	167
	Why, Then, Newspapers? Social Scientists' Line of Defense	171
	Opening the Box: Behind the Surface of Our 1919-1922 Data	173
	Silence and Emphasis Revisited	175
	How to Go about Validating Data: A Decalogue of Rules	177
	Further Rules: Selecting the Newspaper(s)	180
	Barking up the Wrong Tree: Reliability versus Validity	180
	Data: "Given" or Constructed?	183
	Content and Form	187
Chapter 5	"A Worlde of Wordes"	193
	Back to the Linguist's World	193
	Stories	194
	An Oxford Story	194
	A Children's Story	195
	The Moral of the Stories: "Where Is Anna Giulia?"	196
	"The Body and its Shadow": Play, Aesthetics, and Language Games	199
	The Language of Science	202
	Poetry and Science	207
	Heart and Mind	211
	Dialoghi Italiani	214
	Confessions of an Ass	216
	Content Analysis Myths (Back to Silence and Emphasis)	219
	Debunking the Myths: What Is Meaning?	222
	True Believers	226
	Modern Alchemists: What We Do with the Numbers	229
	What's to Be Done? Alchemists' Recommendations to the Novice	232
Chapter 6	Journeys' Ends	237
	Sta Viator	237
	From Words to Numbers	238
	From Thin Explanations to "Thick Descriptions"?	238
	From Variables to Actors	240
	From Synchronic to Diachronic Time	242
	From Statistical Causality to Narrative Sequences	243
	From Structures to Events	245
	Unexpected Crossings	247
	Sociology Meets History	248
	The Centrality of the Verb (Linguistics and Sociology)	252
	Sociology as the Study of Social Relations	255
	Georg Simmel (1858-1918): "The Stranger in the Academy"	256
	Von Wiese's "Specificum Sociologicum"	260
	Simmel's Cash Among the Heirs	263
	"Fatti Maschi, Parole Femmine"	264
	The Feminist Critique	266
	Memorabilia	270
	Tales of Measurement	274
	Tales of Horror	274
	Tales of Pressure	276
	Social Science Tales	279
	Wars of Words	282
	What Have We Lost?	285
	"Garcon, l'addition!" Counting What?	287
	Classification and the Numbers	288
	Classification in Practice: The Secret of Secrets	293
	The Words (and the Worlds) of Science and Metaphor	295
	Tales of Time and Space	298
	Faust and His World: What Was in the Beginning?	301
	And After
	"So Long as We Get Somewhere"	309
	Poupinel and His World: In the Beginning Was Meaning	312
	On the Road, Again	315
	"Know Thyself": Notes on Reflexive Sociology	318
	Origin and Originality: Limits to Innovation	324
	"Murmure Againste Me"	328
	Farewell to the Reader	332
	Appendix	339
	Notes	343
	References	399
	Index	445
	List of Tables
1.1.	Rough number of published studies based on content analysis (five-year intervals, 1921-1950)
2.1.	A relational database representation of a story grammar
2.2.	The skeleton triplets of the Romeo lockout lockout article in relational format
2.3.	Frequency distribution of articles, disputes, and triplets in the 1919-1922 database
2.4.	Frequency distribution of actors (subjects and objects) in 1919 (number of disputes)
2.5.	Frequency distribution of most common actors (number of disputes)
2.6.	Frequency distribution of actions in 1919 (number of disputes)
2.7.	Frequency distribution of most common actions (number of disputes)
2.8.	Frequency distribution of most common demands (number of disputes)
2.9.	Frequency distribution of the most common actions performed by workers (number of disputes)
2.10.	Frequency distribution of the actor "Fascists" (number of disputes)
2.11.	Frequency distribution of the actions performed by Fascists (number of disputes)
2.12.	Frequency distribution of the actors with whom Fascists "clash" (number of disputes)
3.1.	Factor analysis of eighteen types of collective actions in the 1919-1922 database
3.2.	Factor analysis of eighteen types of collective actions in the 1919-1922 database (rotated factor matrix)
3.3.	Least-squares estimates of a regression model of fascist violence
4.1.	Distribution of disputes from Il Lavoro by location of occurrence
	List of Figures
2.1.	Van Dijk's schema of news discourse	75
2.2.	Plot of the yearly number of strikers (1879-1922)	83
2.3.	Plot of the monthly number of strikers (1919-1922)	83
3.1.	Network graphs for the relations of conflict and facilitation for the Romeo Factory Lockout article from Il Lavoro	101
3.2.	Network graphs for the sphere of action of communication	102
3.3.	Network graphs for the sphere of action of request	103
3.4.	Network graphs for the sphere of action of conflict	104
3.5.	Network graphs for the sphere of action of violence	105
3.6.	Network graphs for the sphere of action of control	107
3.7.	Network graphs for the sphere of action of facilitation	108
4.1.	Plots of the monthly number of triplets with workers or Fascists as subjects or objects	175