While walking with P on my lunch break we were discussing the various geographically localized narratives which have become so popular at least since the 80s, the detective novel set in Japan or the American Southwest, the autobiographical Bildungsroman set in this or that developing country, and how, for the most part, genre characteristics play much more of a role in shaping the narratives than local conditions. I expressed concern that this might create the impression of universal epistemic or life processes, Peretz agreed strongly & said that he has long had similar reservations about multiculturalism generally. He insists that things must be very different in different places, since even in the same place things consistently fail to be self-similar. When we got home, he started drawing diagrams on a whiteboard, but I can't understand them & really need to get back to work.