John A. Bunce

Assistant Curator, South American Ethnology

Assistant Professor, Richard Gilder Graduate School

Email:
jbunceSPAMFILTER@amnh.org
Phone:
212 769-5897
Download Curriculum Vitae

Education

  • University of California, Davis, Ph.D., Anthropology, 2009
  • University of California, Davis, M.A., Anthropology, 2004
  • Bates College, B.S., Biology, 2004

Research Interests

I’m interested in how inter-ethnic interaction and structural inequality affect both cultural change and health. To look at this, I have conducted long-term ethnographic and quantitative fieldwork with Indigenous Matsigenka and neighboring Mestizo communities in Amazonian Peru since 2010.

I adapt Bayesian statistical methods to analyze data from new field interview designs, and draw on this empirical work to develop ethnographically-informed theoretical mathematical models of  cultural dynamics, especially in the context of ethnic boundaries between disempowered minorities and a powerful majority. One goal of this work is to better understand how Indigenous communities can sustain valued cultural forms while engaging in desired interactions with the larger societies of which they are a part.

My colleagues and I also develop mathematical models of the metabolic and allometric processes underlying cross-cultural variation in childhood growth. Our goal is to develop better tools to identify and address growth- and nutrition-related health challenges of concern to Indigenous communities, while taking into account the diversity of human body forms and notions of well-being.

Prior to working with people, I studied the ecology and genetics of color vision in South American monkeys.

Links:

Personal webpage: https://jabunce.wordpress.com/

Division of Anthropology: https://www.amnh.org/research/anthropology

Publications

(Selected)

Bunce, JA and R McElreath (2023) Ethnicity and cultural dynamics. In: J. Tehrani, J. Kendal, and R. Kendal, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution. Oxford University Press, pgs C58P1–C58P151.

Ross, CT, . . ., JA Bunce, et al. (2023) Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 120(22): e2220124120.

Revilla-Minaya, C and JA Bunce (2022) Una experiencia contemporánea matsigenka de una epidemia local (A contemporary Matsigenka experience with a local epidemic). In: E. Fabiano and O. Espinosa, eds., Las Enfermedades que Llegan de Lejos: Los Pueblos Amazónicos del Perú Frente las Epidemias de Ayer y la Pandemia de Hoy (Diseases That Come From Afar: Amazonian Peoples of Peru in the Face of Past Epidemics and the Current Pandemic), pgs 449-458. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Bunce, JA (2021) Cultural diversity in unequal societies sustained through cross-cultural competence and identity valuation. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8:238.

Bunce, JA (2020) Field evidence for two paths to cross-cultural competence: Implications  dynamics. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2(e3):1-16.

Broesch, T, . . . , JA Bunce, et al. (2020). Navigating cross-cultural research: Methodological and ethical considerations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287: 20201245.

Bunce, JA and R McElreath (2018) Sustainability of minority culture when inter-ethnic interaction is profitable. Nature Human Behaviour 2:205-212.

Ross, CT, . . . , JA Bunce, et al. (2018) Greater wealth inequality, less polygyny: Rethinking the polygyny threshold model. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 15(144): 0180035.

Bunce, JA and R McElreath (2017) Inter-ethnic interaction, strategic bargaining power, and the dynamics of cultural norms: A field study in an Amazonian population. Human Nature 28(4):434–456.

Teaching Experience

Teaching appointments

  • Assistant Professor, Division of Anthropology and Richard Gilder Graduate School, American Museum of Natural History, starting March 2024
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, 2015-2016
  • Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, 2012
  • Visiting Professor, Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology, Western Kentucky University, 2010.
  • Associate-In (Course Instructor), Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, 2008

Courses taught

  • Complex Problems of Humanity: Controversies in Human Adaptation, 2015-2016
  • Biocultural Medical Anthropology, 2016
  • Introduction to Bioanthropology, 2015
  • Introduction to Biological Anthropology, 2012
  • Primate Ecology and Behavior, 2010
  • Human Evolutionary Biology, 2008