THE CONNECTION BETWEEN culture and economics is a fascinating one. Staying alive is much easier to do as a group than alone. Interweaving functions, connecting roles and sharing the benefits of teamwork; all these are the building blocks of society. And of culture.
I chase and hunt, you skin and cook; I watch the door, you watch the young ones; I do the laundry, you sweep the floor. Sometimes we switch roles. Diversifying functions clearly makes for efficiency and bonding. By mastering different skills, our abilities become organically resilient and collaborative.
Culture derives from the languages, rituals and habits that we cultivate in order to function in this basic economy. These traits constitute our identity, stimulate our concepts about the world and congeal into our value system.
This economic-cultural ecosystem can be very immobile, as with agricultural villages or cities; quite itinerant, like those of fisherfolk; or highly mobile, as seen among the horsemen of the Eurasian Steppes.
But just how itinerant can culture be?
What if mobility involves a small group of people moving with haste into an alien ecosystem? How well can their economic-cultural system travel? Does it have resilience? How adaptive is it?
