Dr. Richard Mcelreath (University of California - Davis) will use this Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research to conduct preliminary research in the Faroe Islands to refine context-specific measures of cultural diversity. These measures are needed in order to describe patterns of variation to test different theoretical models of cultural dynamics underlying how human beings learn and adapt to new conditions. The Faroe Islands present a natural experiment in cultural diversification. The people of the Faroe are ethnically homogenous but internally diverse, exhibiting variation among both villages and islands. Accurately sampling this diversity at the individual level, in addition to individual social networks, will allow for the testing of different dynamic models of cultural processes. Exploratory domains of variation to be sampled on this project include dialect, political beliefs, ecological beliefs, and health-relevant beliefs.
Over two months of field research, the researcher will conduct initial sampling, translation, and validation of interview and dialect recording. The initial samples will allow estimation of amounts of variation, which will help determine later larger sampling strategies. In addition, individual two-degree social networks will be collected, to characterize the immediate social influences of each informant. Dialect variation will be characterized with vowel formants.
Whether in the Faroe Islands or elsewhere, the dynamics of cultural diversity depend in part on how individuals learn and how society is structured. Learning strategies influence the acquisition of new information and beliefs, biasing from whom people learn and how social and individual experience interact. Social structure, at the small scale, influences the diversity of behavior that is presented to each individual, and, at the large scale, it influences rates of mixing among diverse local cultures. Theories that combine different kinds of learning and social structure can produce a wide array of cultural dynamics. Making these models empirically relevant requires estimates of the strengths of different learning biases and demographic rates. This research will contribute to a broadly relevant body of theory, showing how it can be applied to specific ethnographic contexts.
