Fascinanting. I posted an extract in the post Hardened-Commons Protocols for Indigenous Knowledge Integration.
The only thing I missed is a reference to the scale; I was shouting in my head “Dumbar number” the whole article :).
It also has a bit of “noble savage” flavour, but I think it’s mostly justified in this specific context.
The last reference that came to my mind is the Babble Hypothesis: “the people who talk more are more likely to be considered leaders by the people around them”, I don’t have any good link, so here it’s the google search.