We see many social phenomena that we have names for - mentorship, bias, parenting, corruption, leadership, racism, teaching, oppression, benevolence, bullying, nurturing, ... One can think of asymmetry as a basic underlying structure that allows / facilitates these social behaviors / phenomena. Then, we can model asymmetry and realize that each of these phenomena, rather being binary (present or not), is on a spectrum with more or less asymmetry. And how much does asymmetry contribute to the spectrum of behaviors? Experience with other models indicates that what looks like a very simple underlying structure can generate complex behaviors.
I recently finished a Digital Humanities online course through the Santa Fe Institute. One of the patterns that was mentioned was that parsing the digital corpora for insights led to rather binary analyses of the presence or absence of some attribute, e.g., bias.
My sense is that the field of digital humanities could benefit greatly by starting with a structural hypothesis and then searching the corpora to validate / invalidate that hypothesis. And my sense is that could lead to a much more nuanced, balanced, and causal understanding of the phenomena in question.
Take for example the phenomena of bullying. An hypothesis one could use was that there is an asymmetry between the two (or more) parties involved. This asymmetry could be physical size, social status, follower group size, psycho-social energy, .... One can then model this asymmetry and see that there is a spectrum to the level of bullying. It is not just a binary yes / no situation. This could then lead to better remediation strategies on a case by case basis.
Note that is approach is based on a systems thinking model that notes the following structure of systems, and of social systems in particular. Events can be part of a pattern which is generated from a systemic structure which in terms of human systems is based on mental models which themselves are generated from a vision / perspective of who / what / where / how / when we are and are part of.
