Question for any anthropolgy/sociology types here - quanatified cultural profiles?
Daistallia 2104
11-08-2008, 18:30
I'm looking for a nice systematic way to describe cultures for one of my projects, and thought I'd ask ust on the off chance anyone might be able to suggest a semi-decent cultural profile/traits quantification. It doesn't have to be great or totally acurate, but I am looking for numbers.
Something like the political compass, but cultural and a bit more varied, would be right along the line of what I'm looking for.
Any suggestions?
The Smiling Frogs
11-08-2008, 19:57
A set of numbers that can break down any culture? Can't be done. It is hard enough for words much less numbers and I doubt there would be any way to do so that would not be biased against one culture or another.
Free Soviets
11-08-2008, 20:07
well, murdock's ethnographic atlas has lots of data that might be useful if you wanted to make it yourself
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/uncgi/Ethnoatlas/atlas.vopts
what exactly do you want to quantify?
Daistallia 2104
11-08-2008, 20:38
well, murdock's ethnographic atlas has lots of data that might be useful if you wanted to make it yourself
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/uncgi/Ethnoatlas/atlas.vopts
what exactly do you want to quantify?
I was thinking of an old pen and paper SF RPG (Traveller) that had a suppliment (Grand Census) that included a system for random cultural generation. It wasn't very realistic.
That link looks like a good starting point for some of it.
I was looking for something that gave a profile of such traits as prgressiveness/conservativeness are agression/passitivity. But that will help some.
Sarrowquand
13-08-2008, 17:08
Perhaps you could take some of the theory from the work of Charles Tilly and apply some numbers of your own choice?