Robert SCHWARTZ, Mount Holyoke College, United States
This presentation reports results from a study into change and persistence in rural France at the turn of the 20th century as described by peripatetic geographer Ardouin Dumazet. Over two decades Dumazet travelled to all parts of the country, everywhere noting local and regional particularities. His descriptions range from wet-nursing in the Nivernais, to the olive groves and replanted vineyards of Beziers, to cheese making in Lower Normandy. Traveling mainly by train he noted the local effects of the expanding rail network, of expanding postal service, and of the shifts in peasant agriculture to crops such as saffron and hops at a time when cereal farming was declining in the face of international competition and falling prices. Examining these three local developments—rail transport, postal service, and market gardening—will be the object of this study. To carry it forward is a challenge because of the vastness of the information contained in some 75 volumes published from 1893 to 1920. Two tools used to meet the challenge are computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDA or text mining) and historical GIS.
Mots clés : geo-history|France|change time and space|Voyage en Frace|text mining and GIS
A105084RS