[Pen-l] complexity of society [was: Excellent article on Jared Diamond and the New Yorker

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

raghu wrote:
> .. is it nevertheless
> not true that industrial societies are orders of magnitude bigger,
> more interconnected and more complex than tribal cultures? In the same
> way that a large factory is more complex than a garage workshop.

In reading Raymond Firth's classic (1957) anthropological study, "We
the Tikopia," I was impressed with how complex their society was in
terms of kinship relations and the like. I'd guess that the difference
between "us" and "them" is more a matter of technology than complexity
_per se_. (In simple terms, we were able to conquer them, but they
couldn't conquer us.)

-- 
Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine
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