Approaches to the Study of the Siberian City’s Social Structure at the Turn of the 20th Century (With Reference to Barnaul Parish Register Books)

Abstract

The article examines one of the main tendencies characteristic of modern historicodemographic research and related to the study of social processes on the basis of historical sources on population. This paper aims to study the way social information was registered in Siberian parish register books as well as possible approaches to the social structure reconstruction study with the example of Barnaul population of the late 19th century. The source base of the research is parish registers of four Barnaul parishes. Additionally, the authors use clerical statements and one-day census data of 1895. The employment of sociological and computer science methods allows historical demography to actively “intrude” into social history. The practical part of the work deals with the study of latent parish register information about individuals’ social standing. The authors use approbated techniques to withdraw information from parish registers and further process these data as well as draw conclusions. The sociooccupational information of Barnaul parish registers of the late 19th century has been coded on the basis of the HISCO. The analysis of social structure based on stratification and class approaches has been carried out. The article emphasises the great value of parish registers for studies in the framework of social history.

Keywords

• социальная история
• компьютерные технологии в исторических исследованиях
• базы данных
• метрические книги
• профессиональная структура населения
• статус.