Explaining Geographical Variations in English Rural Infant Mortality Decline Using Place-Centered Reading

Making effective use of digital texts is one of the major challenges facing the humanities. This article explores a novel method of using a large corpus of British newspapers to help explain why three neighboring rural districts in England showed very different patterns of infant mortality decline i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Historical methods Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 128 - 140
Main Authors:	Hastings, Sarah Genevieve, Gregory, Ian, Atkinson, Paul
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Washington Routledge 03-07-2015 Taylor & Francis Inc
Subjects:	corpora Demography Geographic information systems Historical analysis historical GIS Infant mortality local government Research methodology Rural areas England
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Making effective use of digital texts is one of the major challenges facing the humanities. This article explores a novel method of using a large corpus of British newspapers to help explain why three neighboring rural districts in England showed very different patterns of infant mortality decline in the second half of the nineteenth century. Quantitative analysis does not reveal any major differences between these districts that might explain this. Repeatedly querying the corpus using different combinations of search terms and place-names, the authors show significant differences in the quality of local government between these districts. They argue that place-centered reading, as they term this approach, can be used to help explain patterns found using conventional quantitative geographical information systems (GIS) approaches.
ISSN:	0161-5440 1940-1906
DOI:	10.1080/01615440.2014.995390