Research
I am currently working on the analysis of networks of
spiritual kin in 17th and 18th century communities in
Portugal. Spiritual kin is a bond that is mainly contracted
between godfathers, godmothers and a child's parents
through baptism. The main point of my research is that the
choice of godfathers and godmothers expresses the
perception of the relative social position of the people
involved. One always chooses as godfather or godmother of a
child people considered of equal or superior social rank.
This simple fact allows us to reconstruct an image of
social structure put together from the combined perception
of thousands of people. The result provides a wealth of
information on social structure and acutally allows the
production of tri-dimensional representations.
A partial reconstruction of the spiritual kin network.
Principal components are colored.
Sample files, still need validation of certain
nodes and identifications (you need a vrml client like
Cortona):
-
Soure (partial)
-
Eiras (by Ana Isabel Ribeiro)
