John Bunce

University of California, Davis, Anthropology, Department Member

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Webpage: http://jabunce.wordpress.com/

I'm an evolutionary anthropologist and research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

My current interests (2009-present) center on processes of cultural change in people. I study how the distributions of norms within ethnic groups change as interaction between members of different groups increases. I use agent-based evolutionary models, as well as ethnographic and experimental field methods to examine these ideas in indigenous Matsigenka communities as well as Mestizo communities in and around Manu National Park, in Amazonian Peru. An important objective of this project is to better understand how the unique cultural characteristics of the Matsigenka are changing (or being maintained) as they begin to engage more fully in the global market-oriented socio-economic system. In 2010-2011 I spent seven months in the Matsigenka community of Tayakome inside Manu National Park. At the request of the community, while working there, I teach weekly English classes to children and adults, geared toward facilitating greater participation in the community-owned ecotourism lodge Casa Matsiguenka.

In 2012-2014 I'm conducting 19 months of fieldwork in Tayakome as well as the neighboring Mestizo community of Boca Manu. In 2014 I'll return to UC Davis to work on evolutionary models of cultural change in these study populations with Richard McElreath, and other human behavioral ecology folks at UCD. A brief description of my project can be found here: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1227152&WT.z_pims_id=5388

I've also spent several years studying the evolution of color vision in Neotropical monkeys, with the objective of identifying the selective advantage(s) of trichromatic color vision (the type of color vision that most humans and some other primates have, but other placental mammals don't). My dissertation reseach (under Lynne Isbell, UC Davis) included field work (2003-2006) at the Estacion Biologica de Cocha Cashu (http://www.duke.edu/~manu/index.html) in Manu National Park, Peru, studying the foraging ecology of the small titi monkey Callicebus brunneus, as well as several years in David Glenn Smith's Molecular Anthropology Laboratory at UC Davis (http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/fzdgsmit), sequencing the opsin genes responsible for the polymorphic color vision of these monkeys.

In 2011 I collaborated with Norbert Ross (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/anthro/faculty/) of Vanderbilt University and Jonathan Maupin (http://shesc.asu.edu/maupin) of Arizona State University on a project examining perceptions of illness and the perceived effectiveness of home remedies and curanderos among Mexican immigrants in Nashville, Tennessee.
Supervisors: Richard McElreath (postdoc advisor), Lynne Isbell (Ph.D. advisor), and Shyril O'Steen (undergraduate advisor)
Address: web: jabunce.wordpress.com

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Western educational environment drives Indigenous cultural dynamics in Amazonia

SocArXiv, 2023

The education of Indigenous children in non-Indigenous (e.g., "Western") school environments is a... more The education of Indigenous children in non-Indigenous (e.g., "Western") school environments is at the forefront of debates about the sustainability and loss of valued Indigenous cultural traits and identities, though systematic study of the topic is rare. Here, using longitudinal structured interviews and participant observation among Indigenous Matsigenka children attending Mestizo-run secondary schools in the Peruvian Amazon, we provide the first empirical evidence of the magnitude of the shift in students' cultural norms toward those of their teachers, particularly in intensively-supervised boarding school environments. We highlight several mechanisms that may mediate this effect, and a potential short-term strategy to enhance the maintenance of cultural norms valued by Indigenous peoples exercising their right to Western-style education.
This is a preprint on SocArXiv (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/g2xjy)

Causal models of human growth and their estimation using temporally sparse data

by Catalina I Fernández and John Bunce

bioRxiv, 2022

Existing models of human growth provide little insight into the mechanisms responsible for inter-... more Existing models of human growth provide little insight into the mechanisms responsible for inter-individual and inter-population variation in children's growth trajectories. Building on general theories linking growth to metabolic rates, we develop causal parametric models of height and weight growth incorporating a novel representation of human body allometry and a phase-partitioned representation of ontogeny. These models permit separation of metabolic causes of growth variation, potentially influenced by diet and disease, from allometric factors, potentially under strong genetic control. We estimate model parameters using a Bayesian multilevel statistical design applied to temporally-dense height and weight measurements of U.S. children, and temporally-sparse measurements of Indigenous Amazonian children. This facilitates a comparison of the metabolic and allometric contributions to observed cross-cultural variation in the growth trajectories of the two populations. These theoretical growth models constitute an initial step toward a better understanding of the causes of growth variation in our species, while potentially guiding the development of appropriate, and desired, healthcare interventions in societies confronting growth-related health challenges. (This is a preprint available on bioRxiv here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.10.511559v1)

Ethnicity and cultural dynamics

SocArXiv, 2022

Much cultural variation in humans is structured by ethnic identity, which entails perceptions of ... more Much cultural variation in humans is structured by ethnic identity, which entails perceptions of covariance between easily observable markers, difficult-to-observe norms, and, often, (potentially mythical) ancestry. The dynamics of ethnic identity entail changes in the distributions of these perceptions in a population over time. Here, we review the scope of ethnicity, the adaptive nature of ethnic psychology, the dynamics of ethnic perceptions, the consequences of ethnicity for other cultural dynamics, and challenges for future research. (This is a preprint available on SocArXiv here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/jr7u5/)

Una experiencia contemporánea matsigenka de una epidemia local (A contemporary Matsigenka experience with a local epidemic)

Las Enfermedades que Llegan de Lejos: Los Pueblos Amazónicos del Perú Frente a las Epidemias del Pasado y a la COVID-19 (Diseases That Come From Afar: Amazonian Peoples of Peru in the Face of Past Epidemics and of COVID-19), 2022

John Bunce

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