Universality and Diversity in Story and Song

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and the School of Information

How do cultural products compare across human societies? Do genuine cultural universals exist? 

In this talk, I will share results from two large-scale comparative projects — the Natural History of Song (NHS) and Anansi — that investigate global patterns in music and storytelling, respectively. For NHS, I will present evidence of form-function regularities in song and of behavioral contexts that appear universally associated with music (e.g., healing, dance, lullaby). For Anansi, I will preview findings on how modern Western stories diverge from narratives told around the world and throughout history, and on the behavioral contexts in which people have told stories across cultures. I will discuss the diverse methodologies we have employed, including the challenges of using LLMS to annotate unconventional texts. 

Finally, I will show how long-term fieldwork with a single society — in this case, Northern Aché foragers in Paraguay — can complicate conclusions drawn from comparative projects, illustrating the value of combining large-scale comparative research with fine-grained ethnographic research.

The Cultural Analytics Series is a series of lunchtime talks and workshops highlighting research that focuses on the data-driven analysis of cultural phenomena.