"Know, Believe, Act" Stories

Since “myth” has negative connotations for most of us (“stupid, false things other people believe”), I’ve started talking about socially significant stories instead – that is, stories that everyone in a group knows; that many believe; and that some act upon.

Tech/Myth Project Snapshot – October 2020

I gave a snapshot summary of the Tech/Myth project back in July. Here’s an update; it outlines the current assumptions and activities of the project, and provides some background to the current effort of analyzing tech in terms of character.

Narrowing down narrative

I concluded my post ‘Shiller’s Narratives: AEA 2017’ by suggesting that many people use the term narrative too widely, and gave a list of concepts that Shiller and others sweep up under the term ‘narrative’.  I’ve found encouragement in Galen Strawson’s essay ‘On the use of the notion of narrative in ethics and psychology,’ in The Natural Method: Essays in Honor of Owen Flanagan, (MIT Press, 2020; link is to a slightly expanded version).

Coronavirus stories

COVID-19 is a convenient source of widely shared stories that people are using to make sense of something important. They've help me think about what I mean by 'stories'.

Shiller’s Narratives: EconTalk 2020

Russ Roberts chatted with Bob Shiller about his book Narrative Economics on the EconTalk podcast in February 2020. (What looks like a complete transcript is available on the podcast page under “Audio Highlights.”)

Shiller’s Narratives: AEA 2017

Robert Shiller’s 2017 AEA presidential address helped me understand what he means by narratives ("Narrative Economics," NBER Working Paper 23075). He explicitly includes explanations, and implicitly includes beliefs and descriptions; I think is far too broad. It looks like he’d count any concept as a narrative.

Narrative in economics: Shiller’s stories

I was excited by the title of Robert Shiller’s new book Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events (2019), but disappointed to find that he defines “narrative” much more widely than the stories I'm looking for, and was hoping to find. Overall, though, I think his meaning is close to my interest in myths: stories spread by word-of-mouth that shape how society imagines itself.