Re: [Crm-sig] Homework Issue 358: CRMsoc

[Martin Doerr]

Dear Francesco,

On 5/22/2018 10:10 AM, Francesco Beretta wrote:

Dear all,

Collecting materials in order to prepare a discussion and 
documentation about a CRM extension devoted to « capturing all social 
documentation. Its scope will be social norms and social life » 
(Minutes SIG Cologne 2018), I came across two issues which seem to me 
to be essential, and about which I would kindly ask you to have a 
discussion in the SIG.



I will first provide following examples out of historical research / 
social life.



A. Let assume we have to model following two states of affairs :

1.

Mr. X was in charge as a full professor of history at Lyon
University from date_1 to date_2

2.

Mr. X taught digital humanities and Python to students from date_1
to date_2

The first state of affairs is about the quality of a person, the 
second about his/her activity : he was charged to teach history but 
instead taught DH and a programming language.


The second state of affairs can be modeled as an activity


Yes, indeed


but what about the first one ? I wouldn’t speak about a state, which 
is confusing, but about a temporal restricted quality of a person. 
He/she was in possession of this quality but taught something else 
(activity). This phemenon can be understood in my opinion within the 
conceptual framework of E3_Condition_State if we enlarge the scope not 
only to « physical conditions » but also to social phenomena, in a new 
class called « Social quality » or similar.


If we regard that he had a contract, i.e., a legal status, then we could 
talk about all contractual relations as temporal entities. The professor 
has a relationship as professor with the University with an expectation 
of service provision. I would not talk about a quality, whereas being a 
child would be a temporary quality.


Sometimes, they seem to appear under "institutions", or "being 
"institutionalized" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution)

see also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage

Some sociologists may provide some insight.

I see in common, that these relationships are:
1) Socially or legally respected (they affect the behavior of other 
members of the society).

2) Associated with rights and obligations over their existence.
3) They come into being and end with an explicit act of declaration or 
indirectly through other publicly acknowledged events, such as via 
heritage at birth or death.
4) They are as such not observable. Only the social memory of the 
initializing event or document keeping establishes their on-going validity.


Would you agree with these characteristics?

We could talk about "institutionalized social relations", including 
employments, ownership, marriage, etc. as kinds of temporal entities.





B. A second example is about the ownership of property, e.g. a 
farmhouse, or of a firm, or many different of them at different time 
spans. Of course we could model all acquisitions and sales of these 
properties but not only historical sources often do not provide us 
with sufficient knowledge on how the property was accessed, but also, 
and primarily, the phenomenon we want to model for studying social 
life is property as such, it’s amount, it’s evolution, it’s influence 
on other aspects of social relationships. So the issue is how to model 
the phenomenon of property as such, and if property (as a power of 
disposal) is a phenomenon at all.



Considering these two examples, and recent discussions on the SIG list 
and meetings, and Martin’s prosal concerning /symogih.org/ examples, 
two issues are raised in my mind which would need some clarification 
and discussion.



1. Can possession of social qualities, or right of use/power of 
disposal, or similar kinds of aspects of social life, or event the 
state of mind or belief of someone, be considered as phenomena ? And 
therefore be modeled as /Temporal entities/ ? In the point of view of 
the study of social life, in my opinion, the answer would be positive.



Agreed.


2. About the recent discussions concerning timed relations, i.e. 
properties having limited validity in time : some of them, if related 
to social life (those concerning property or the possession of 
qualities), appear to me to be in fact social phenomena, therefore 
/Temporal entities/. They are relevant to social life and can be 
indirectly oberved (using sources).


See above, yes, through sources and memories. Being married may be 
signaled by a wedding ring.


By the way, historical events are also only indirectly observed and 
their temporal and spatial projection depends also on the breakdown we 
choose from an epistemological point of view (e.g. a historical 
process like a battle can be modelled as one complex activity or the 
process of the battle can be decomposed in all its stages, as distinct 
instances of activity).


Sure, the difference being that things like being owner is a passive 
thing, nothing really happens. The only question is, if actions 

[Crm-sig] Homework Issue 358: CRMsoc

[Francesco Beretta]

Dear all,

Collecting materials in order to prepare a discussion and documentation 
about a CRM extension devoted to « capturing all social documentation. 
Its scope will be social norms and social life » (Minutes SIG Cologne 
2018), I came across two issues which seem to me to be essential, and 
about which I would kindly ask you to have a discussion in the SIG.



I will first provide following examples out of historical research / 
social life.



A. Let assume we have to model following two states of affairs :

1.

   Mr. X was in charge as a full professor of history at Lyon
   University from date_1 to date_2

2.

   Mr. X taught digital humanities and Python to students from date_1
   to date_2

The first state of affairs is about the quality of a person, the second 
about his/her activity : he was charged to teach history but instead 
taught DH and a programming language.


The second state of affairs can be modeled as an activity but what about 
the first one ? I wouldn’t speak about a state, which is confusing, but 
about a temporal restricted quality of a person. He/she was in 
possession of this quality but taught something else (activity). This 
phemenon can be understood in my opinion within the conceptual framework 
of E3_Condition_State if we enlarge the scope not only to « physical 
conditions » but also to social phenomena, in a new class called 
« Social quality » or similar.



B. A second example is about the ownership of property, e.g. a 
farmhouse, or of a firm, or many different of them at different time 
spans. Of course we could model all acquisitions and sales of these 
properties but not only historical sources often do not provide us with 
sufficient knowledge on how the property was accessed, but also, and 
primarily, the phenomenon we want to model for studying social life is 
property as such, it’s amount, it’s evolution, it’s influence on other 
aspects of social relationships. So the issue is how to model the 
phenomenon of property as such, and if property (as a power of disposal) 
is a phenomenon at all.



Considering these two examples, and recent discussions on the SIG list 
and meetings, and Martin’s prosal concerning /symogih.org/ examples, two 
issues are raised in my mind which would need some clarification and 
discussion.



1. Can possession of social qualities, or right of use/power of 
disposal, or similar kinds of aspects of social life, or event the state 
of mind or belief of someone, be considered as phenomena ? And therefore 
be modeled as /Temporal entities/ ? In the point of view of the study of 
social life, in my opinion, the answer would be positive.


2. About the recent discussions concerning timed relations, i.e. 
properties having limited validity in time : some of them, if related to 
social life (those concerning property or the possession of qualities), 
appear to me to be in fact social phenomena, therefore /Temporal 
entities/. They are relevant to social life and can be indirectly 
oberved (using sources). By the way, historical events are also only 
indirectly observed and their temporal and spatial projection depends 
also on the breakdown we choose from an epistemological point of view 
(e.g. a historical process like a battle can be modelled as one complex 
activity or the process of the battle can be decomposed in all its 
stages, as distinct instances of activity).


These are the two issues I’d like to discuss in order to be able to 
collect and reorder materials and prepare a proposal of classes and 
properties concerning social norms and life.



All the best

Francesco Beretta




Chargé de recherche au CNRS,
Responsable du Pôle histoire numérique,
Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes

CNRS UMR 5190 LARHRA,
I.S.H.,
14, Avenue Berthelot
69363 LYON CEDEX 07
+ 33 (0)6 51 84 48 84

Le Pôle histoire numérique 
 du LARHRA

Le projet symogih.org 
Le projet dataforhistory.org 
SPARQL endpoint 
Portail de ressources géo-historiques GEO-LARHRA 

Portail de ressources textuelles 
 au format XML
Cours Outils numériques 
pour 
les historiens 

Publications