[Reader-list] ways of life...contd.

[Ishwar]

I'm new here, having been pointed to this list by a good friend.
Considering my science background, please excuse my profound lack of
understanding of social sciences, or if I'm leading the conversation astray.

Trying
to understand the interaction in a heterogeneous society is an
interesting and could prove very daunting. What's the level of
heterogeneity that we're trying to deal with. In this example, is the
level of heterogeneity
1. The aborigines
2. The settlers, or

1. The aborigines who've not yet integrated with the current Canadian society
2. The aborigines who haven't yet integrated with the current Canadian society
3. Consumerist settlers with a high standard of living
4. Producer settlers who exploit the environment
5. Native and settled nature activists, or

1. The poor aborigines who've integrated with the current Canadian society
2. The integrated middle-class aborigines
3. The rich integrated middle-class aborigines
4. and so on, you get the picture.

And there're cases in which a person can belong equally well to multiple categories. 
Or some classification that I've completely missed.

Every
subsequent level of heterogeneity brings in more classes, conflicts and
interactions, and as a reductio as absurdum, the best understanding
comes forth when each person is thought of as a heterogeneous
entity.And unless one does this, one makes a same mistakes as assuming
homogeneity, only on a smaller scale.

To draw an example from
science(I have no idea if it's relevant or not), while the
gravitational interaction between two bodies is very clearly
understood, the moment you bring in a third body, the equations become
much much more complex, and becomes impossible study. Hence people club
body A and body B into a body C with a centre of gravity of A and B.
This is loss of information, but it makes it possible to understand the
system, instead of getting lost in the details and failing to
understand it completely.


Apologies if this such analogies
don't fit(people are a little more complex than bodies under gravity
:P), but will a meaningful study be feasible at all at such levels of
heterogeneity?



--
Ishwar

Just another resurrected Neozoic Archosaur comics.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojosaurus/sets/72157600257724083/