In the 1896 Science paper titled “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology,” Franz Boas, famously known as the “father of American anthropology,” highlighted a revolutionary new school of thought gaining traction in the field. 

Rather than attributing similarities across cultures to historical connections or common origins, the new school proposed that such similarities arose from the “uniform working of the human mind.”   

“Human society has grown and developed everywhere in such a manner that its forms, its opinions and its actions have many fundamental traits in common,” Boas wrote. “This momentous discovery implies that laws exist which govern the development of society, that they are applicable to our society as well as to those of past times and of distant lands.”     

Nearly 130 years later, anthropologists are still trying to uncover the universal “laws that govern the growth of society.” It’s the pursuit of these answers that motivates Assistant Professor of Anthropology Manvir Singh.

“Historically, anthropology has been a field interested in big questions about humans. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we the way we are? There’s a real interest in the interplay between universality and diversity. What is universal about humans? And what are the patterns of diversity?” — Singh

In the Integrative Anthropology Lab at UC Davis, Singh combines evolutionary, cognitive and sociocultural methods and theory to tease apart the origins of human behavior and societies. Particularly, he’s interested in sociocultural traditions like shamanism, witchcraft, story and music, among other topics. 

“The central ambition of the lab is to reclaim some of the big questions that drove anthropology early on and explore the incredible intellectual scope of the field,” Singh said. “We want to embrace the value of evolutionary, sociocultural and cognitive approaches as diverse but complementary ways to understand humans.” 

Origins of an anthropologist

Though fascinated by anthropology from a young age, Singh didn’t formally study the subject during his undergraduate school days at Brown University. His course load was chock-full of classes concerning animal behavior, evolution and ecology. His undergraduate thesis was about burying beetles.

It wasn’t until he was a doctoral student at Harvard University that Singh’s research focus shifted. He met an older graduate student who was studying warfare among East African pastoralists. Singh was awed by the student’s stories about being in the field. Hearing them redirected his academic path. 

“I found myself drawn to anthropology because partly because of a curiosity and excitement about the incredibly interesting things that humans do all over the world. Anthropology is an opportunity to engage with the imaginative fluorescence of humanity, the legacy of humanity.” — Singh

Uncovering a global history

Today, Singh and members of the Integrative Anthropology Lab are focused on three long-term projects. 

One project, in collaboration with Harvard University, concerns building a global database of myths, legends and folktales. Named “Anansi” (after the West African trickster deity who brought literature to humanity), the database currently consists of more than 1,500 stories from 76 different cultures. A goal of the project is to uncover how narratives compare across human societies.   

Another project Singh co-directs is the Natural History of Song Discography, a project that collects 118 songs sung in over 75 languages from 30 world regions. Songs in the database reflect the social context of lullaby, love, dance and healing. Recent analysis of the collection implies that though music varies between cultures, it may be grounded in some underlying universal perceptual phenomena, one that transcends cultures. 

Singh is also conducting ongoing studies with the Mentawai, a forager-horticulturalist society located on the Indonesian island of Siberut. 

“Our fieldwork with the Mentawai currently aims to understand how people explain misfortune, whether that be through witchcraft, local spirits, or biomedical concepts like malaria,” Singh said. “How does the tendency to build explanations of misfortune help us understand the origins of religion or supernatural belief?”

This work dovetails with Singh’s long-running exploration of shamanism and its manifestations across societies.       

Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange

According to Singh, shamanism has been a feature of the earliest human religions and continues to recur across societies, even when divorced from religious practice. He’s currently writing a book about shamanism, which is set to be published by Knopf and Allen Lane in May 2025. 

“Humans regularly reconstruct shamanism because of its deep psychological appeal and because it is a compelling way of dealing with uncertainty,” Singh said. 

In societies around the world, shamans act as healers, commune with ancestors and guide community members, among other tasks and roles. Often, these feats are achieved via trance states that induce altered states of consciousness. Entheogens (psychoactive substances) or fasting may play a role in these rituals. 

“People seek to control the uncertainty in their lives, often by turning to individuals who diverge from ‘normal humanness’ and thus seem to have abilities that ‘normal humans’ do not,” Singh said. “There are analogs in secular society for this.” 

Money managers and tech CEOs are a couple of Singh’s primary examples of shamanism manifesting in contemporary American culture. He wrote about “The ‘Shamanification’ of the Tech CEO” in Wired, focusing on practices like charismatic performances, fasting or unique diets and sleep regimes. 

“Contemporary tech CEO culture involves some shamanic practices. It involves self-denial and various performances of otherness to convince potential clients and investors that these individuals can do things that normal humans can’t, that they can produce these unicorn companies.” — Singh

For Singh, intellectually exploring the various manifestations of shamanism across the globe is an avenue to access Boas’ “uniform working of the human mind” concept. It’s a way of exploring universality and diversity in the human experience. 

“I think many people are quick to see shamanism as an archaic tradition that is limited to far-off, remote societies,” Singh said. “But an important point, I think, is that many practices that we’re quick to label as exotic or primitive actually resonate in human societies everywhere.” 

“Shamanism embodies my interest in anthropology more generally,” he added. “Anthropology is all about making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” 

Learn more about Singh's work on his research website.