Over the last few years, there has been a steady increase in interest in once neglected social ties, especially godparenthood1 and, to a much lesser degree, marriage witnessing.2 Stimulated by new empirical studies that provided data of a kind unavailable in the past,3 international researchers began to realise that information about these ties, when collected systematically from the parish registers of baptisms and marriages, allows analysis of the inner — and most obscure — workings of past societies. Even more recently, the techniques of network analysis have been applied to data about godpar-enthood, bringing these studies yet closer to the core of current research in the social sciences.4
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© 2012 Guido Alfani
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Alfani, G. (2012). Immigrants and formalisation of social ties in Early Modern Italy: Ivrea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In: Alfani, G., Gourdon, V. (eds) Spiritual Kinship in Europe, 1500–1900. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230362703_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230362703_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34856-5
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