Working definition
Religious institutions and lineages are networks of people, offices, places, resources, credentials, and remembered succession. Their claims can organize continuity while also reflecting power, reform, rupture, gender, class, colonial history, and competition; the graph therefore separates self-description from external evidence.
Questions this method asks
- Who grants authority and access?
- How is succession documented?
- Whose voices are absent or subordinated?
Evidence inputs
- Institutional records and lineage claims
- Biographical and legal evidence
- Community testimony and counter-histories
Method
- Model typed relationships with dates and sources.
- Distinguish claimed from independently documented succession.
- Record exclusions and rival authorities.
What it can establish
- Documented institutional relationships
- Competing authority and transmission claims
What it cannot establish
- Spiritual attainment from office
- Unbroken succession without evidence
Interpretive risks
- Reifying official structures
- Erasing informal or marginalized practice
Mathematical connection
Formal structure without validity transfer
Lineage and institution graph
Represent claimed succession, documented contact, office, patronage, exclusion, and reform as distinct edge types.
Inputs
- People and institutions
- Typed sourced relationships
- Time intervals
Outputs
- Versioned network
- Claim/evidence distinctions
- Visible gaps and rival paths
Limit: Centrality, continuity, or network position does not measure holiness, attainment, legitimacy, or moral worth.
Methodology sources
- [1]Ethical Principles for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage · UNESCO
Establishes: Community-centered principles concerning participation, consent, customary access, diversity, dynamic change, respect, and the right of communities to assess the value of their own living heritage.
Boundary: Respect for communities is not uncritical endorsement, and external research does not acquire authority to rank sacred value. Human-rights, consent, safety, and evidence standards still apply.
- [2]Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage · UNESCO
Establishes: An international framework recognizing living practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills, rituals, oral traditions, and their continuing recreation and transmission by communities, groups, and individuals.
Boundary: Heritage recognition concerns cultural continuity, participation, and safeguarding. It neither validates every proposition associated with a practice nor freezes a changing tradition into one authoritative form.
Direct answer
- Religious institutions and lineages are networks of people, offices, places, resources, credentials, and remembered succession. Their claims can organize continuity while also reflecting power, reform, rupture, gender, class, colonial history, and competition; the graph therefore separates self-description from external evidence.
Mechanism and method
- Model typed relationships with dates and sources.
- Distinguish claimed from independently documented succession.
- Record exclusions and rival authorities.
What is measured
- Institutional records and lineage claims
- Biographical and legal evidence
- Community testimony and counter-histories
Limitations
- Reifying official structures
- Erasing informal or marginalized practice
What this does not establish
- Spiritual attainment from office
- Unbroken succession without evidence
Bridge: Lineage and institution graph
- Represent claimed succession, documented contact, office, patronage, exclusion, and reform as distinct edge types.
- Input: People and institutions
- Input: Typed sourced relationships
- Input: Time intervals
- Output: Versioned network
- Output: Claim/evidence distinctions
- Output: Visible gaps and rival paths
- Limit: Centrality, continuity, or network position does not measure holiness, attainment, legitimacy, or moral worth.