On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>> the homogeneity of scandinavian society
>
> I think that homogeneity is largely a myth. I calculated the heterogeneity
> coefficient for different countries for one of my research projects - which
> is conceptually similar to Gini index and represents the probability that two
> randomly selected individuals will belong to two different social-linguistic
> or religious groups.
>
> Sociolinguistic heterogeneity for Sweden is 0.35 - not as much as for India
> (0.65) or Pakistan (0.71) but more than Ireland (0.03), Japan (0.02), South
> Korea (0.002), Mexico (0.14) or for that matter the US (0.25). The same
> index for Finland is 0.13 and for Norway 0.07).
Could you go into the details a littles on this index a little more, Wojtek? Or maybe provide a URL? Because on the face of it, some of these comparisons seem impossible. Mexico surely has a larger proportion of people who only speak indigenous dialects than Sweden. And the US would seem on its face to have a much vaster diversity of both religions and first languages. Some I'm curious how actual languages and bilinquality were made into social-linguistic groups, and how religious differences were aggregated.
Michael