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What might/should/must/can we look at to develop a cogent Story about social evolution in/on this actual landscape over the last 80 years? This is sort of a thought experiment, contrived to gauge the efficacy (and aequacy) of
as patterners of
What do I think about that... Don't Get Me Started, as they say. Or Do, perhaps. Because, in my guise as Anthropologist, I insist on the inclusion of Culture as a patterner, and thus open multiple cans of worms
This landscape is well-known territory for both David and me. We know lots of stories about past and present, we have opinions and ignorances and assumptions and versions, and we're accomplished readers of patterns in many form factors (quantitative, and qualitative too). And you can start anywhere.
As an example, begin with the reputation of Hortonville ca. 1972, when I first set foot in the territory (54 years ago) as a 'social evolution' datapoint. Reconstruct who lived where and what they did and what they were [considered to be] like. Advance year by year, note the alterations and consider their consequences......and of course quickly realize that the arbitrary boundaries of the rectangle curtail a wider landscape that the 10km² is a component of, which we readily recognize as The Valley... and thus we widen the perspective to a region thus defined. And we ask the question again, for the larger territory: what has been the process of social evolution across the 80 years between the aerial mosaic of 1945 and the present?When we were looking for a house to rent, several Wolfville people said something to the effect of "there's a house in Hortonville, but you wouldn't want to live there..." But Providence intervened and we landed at Horton Landing... and the rest is Narrative, and it still continues to unfold.Another place one might begin to gauge 'social evolution' in the 80 years is with the Local Big Man geography. When we arrived in the Valley, the cast of characters included ? Chase (deceased, whose estate was being overseen by Glenn Ells), Sterling, June Fuller... men who had managed their way to wealth and prominence within the Region in the post-WWII era, via apples, eggs, broiler chickens. Look again 25 years later and the Big Man landscape is altered, and Dutch surnames have proliferated. Look at the present and what do we find? Empirical question...
...and while we're looking for rational behaviour, we might consider the individual calculus that has a person choose/decide to stay or to migrate elsewhere —permanently, or temporarily. Is it feasible to aggregate the rational behaviour of 9 Curry siblings ...or of the various Crowells? We are immediately entangled in Stories. Consider as a data stream the obituaries in local newspapers (which list current locations of children and siblings)
Thus we're prompted to consider the constituents of evolution, and perhaps decide that the trajectory is not necessarily linear, let alone Onward and Upward.