Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 397.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2000 06:56:04 +0100
From: Ken Litkowski <ken@clres.com>
Subject: Re: 14.0391 sociological reflections & the social
sciences inhumanities computing
I would definitely second Willard's comments on the importance of the
sociological perspective in humanities. As a non-humanities layperson,
I would think in the first instance that the subject matter of
humanities is an examination of how the operation of human society
proceeds, while sociology attempts to study that operation from an
analytical viewpoint.
In the second place, as a computationalist, one of the things I have
implemented and worked with is content analysis, which I have seen
applied to both literature (e.g., Hamlet) and "sociological" data (e.g.,
transcripts of perspectives of nursing home patients, operators, and
administrators). Thus, methods (and software) are available from the
sociology community that can be applied as well to humanist studies.
(And, BTW, they rely on words - the "primitives" of society - and my
thing.)
--
Ken Litkowski TEL.: 301-482-0237
CL Research EMAIL: ken@clres.com
9208 Gue Road
Damascus, MD 20872-1025 USA Home Page: http://www.clres.com
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