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诸君在为CBDB工作。两年前Bol来介绍CBDB的时候，提到了一个古怪的词——Prosopography，我记得当时的翻译是“聚集传记学”，现在也许叫“集体传记学”，不是很清楚。当时Bol提到，CBDB就是Prosopography理念的产物。那么，什么是Prosopography？ 其最初的提出者，是这样解释的： "'Prosopography' is the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The method employed is to establish a universe to be studied, and then to ask a set of uniform questions – about birth and death, marriage and family, social origins and inherited economic position, place of residence, education, amount and source of personal wealth, occupation, religion, experience of office and so on. The various types of information about the individuals in the universe are then juxtaposed and combined, and are examined for significant variables. They are tested both for internal correlations and for correlations with other forms of behaviour or action.” -----From Lawrence Stone, 'Prosopography', in F. Gilbert and S. Graubard eds., Historical Studies Today (New York, 1972); rpt. of Lawrence Stone, "Prosopography," Daedalus 100.1 (1971): 46-71 下面是Wikipedia上的解释。 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopography 将来，CBDB会有自己的网站，这些都会出现在CBDB的网站上。考虑到大家无法上Wiki，我把文字拷贝在下方。可留意的是，Prosopography不是一种新的方法论，而是20世纪70年代就有了，被应用于欧美史研究中，中间经历了衰落，到90年代又有所复兴——随着电脑技术的发展，特别是数据库软件的发展。这大概就是Hartwell开始这一计划的背景。 ProsopographyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn historical studies, prosopography is an investigation of the common background characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives. Prosopography is an increasingly important approach within historical research. Prosopographical research has the aim of learning about patterns of relationships and activities through the study of collective biography, and proceeds by collecting and analysing statistically relevant quantities of biographical data about a well-defined group of individuals. A uniform set of criteria needs to be applied to the group in order to achieve meaningful results. The term is a popular one, and the concept is easily inflated. History of prosopographyLawrence Stone brought the term to general attention in an explanatory article in 1971.[1] The word is drawn from the figure prosopoeia in classical rhetoric, introduced by Quintilian, in which an absent or imagined person is figured forth -- the "face created" as the Greek suggests -- in words, as if present. It is apparent that a certain mass of data is required for prosopography.[2] The collection of data underlies the creation of a prosopography, and in contemporary research this is usually in the form of an electronic database. However, data-assembly by itself should not be seen as the goal of prosopographical research; rather, the objective is to understand relationships by analysing the data. As leading prosopographer Katherine Keats-Rohan puts it:
In this sense prosopography is clearly related to, but distinct from, both biography and genealogy. Whilst biography and prosopography overlap, and prosopography is interested in the details of individuals' lives, a prosopography is more than the plural of biography. A prosopography is not just any collection of biographies - the lives must have sufficient in common for relationships and connections to be uncovered. Genealogy, as practiced by family historians, has as its goal the reconstruction of familial relationships, and as such, well conducted genealogical research may form the basis of a prosopography, but the goals of prosopographical research are much wider. The nature of prosopographical research has developed over time. In his 1971 essay, Lawrence Stone discussed an 'older' form of prosopography which was principally concerned with well-known social elites, many of whom were already well-known historical figures. Their genealogies were well-researched, and social webs and kinship linking could be traced, allowing a prosopography of a 'power elite' to emerge. Prominent examples which Stone drew upon were the work of Charles Beard and Sir Lewis Namier. Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) offered an explanation of the form and content of the U.S. Constitution by looking at the class background and economic interests of the Founding Fathers. Sir Lewis Namier produced an equally influential study of the eighteenth century British House of Commons, and inspired a circle of historians whom Stone lightly termed "Namier Inc." Stone contrasted this older prosopography with what in 1971 was the newer form of quantitative prosopography, whose concern was with much wider populations including, particularly, 'ordinary people'. An example of this kind of work, published slightly later, is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's pioneering work of microhistory, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (1978), which developed a picture of patterns of kinship and heresy, daily and seasonal routine in a small Occitan village, the last pocket of Cathars, over a thirty-year period from 1294 to 1324. Stone anticipated that this new form of prosopography would become dominant as part of a growing wave of Social Science History, but this promise was not immediately realised, as prosopography and other associated forms of social science and quantitative history went into a period of decline during the 1980s. In the 1990s, however, perhaps because of developments in computing, and particularly in database software, prosopography experienced a revival and is now clearly established as an important approach in historical research. Other examples of prosopographical researchBarbara Harvey's Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience (1993) is a prosopography that draws a group picture of monastic life, centered on the aggregate experience of the monks of Westminster Abbey. It explores some major themes of daily life— corporate and personal charity, diet, sickness and mortality, servants— in a mosaic formed of documentary flashes of momentary insight into a multitude of obscure lives that can never be pieced together into individual biographies. Sociologist Michael Erben has also explored the use of prosopography to investigate what might be called a 'street biography' in "A Preliminary Prosopography of the Victorian Street", Auto/Biography Vol 4, 2/3, (1996). Sourced mainly from census records, the data used included not only the demography but also the spatial classifications, occupations, and domestic arrangements of a street in Victorian Oxford. This material forms what Erben describes as an Unaffiliated or Disinterested Group, i.e. spatial locale may be all inhabitants had in common, unlike the Intentional Groups, with explicit shared interests, of more traditional prosopography. The work shows that such Unaffiliated Groups can yield much information on subjects such as social mobility in a given place and time. Notes
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