Monkey’s Uncle

The Misunderstanding of the Anthropology Culture Wars

anthropology
Stanford
science
I am anthropologist—both by training and by subjective identity—and I am unhappy, bordering on despairing, about the current state of my field. In addition to being an…
Aug 15, 2026
James Holland Jones

Human Behavioral Ecology and Cultural Evolution for Sustainability: A Primer

human ecology
human behavioral ecology
cultural evolution
EBS
sustainability
This is the next in my series of saved Canvas discussions from our Human Ecology seminar, Fall of 2025. This one is rather less narrative than the others so far. In this…
Jul 30, 2026
James Holland Jones

“Positivist”: Unpacking the Epithet

anthropology
EBS
philosophy
science
This is the next in my series of saved Canvas discussions from our Human Ecology seminar, Fall of 2025. It’s actually three thematic posts from the discussion board (which…
Jul 29, 2026
James Holland Jones

Tribute to Robert McC. Netting

anthropology
EBS
sustainability
subsistence
human ecology
agriculture
collective action
Last Fall quarter, I co-taught a new graduate seminar on human ecology with Xavier Basurto. Human ecology is the first course in the graduate core sequence for Environmental…
Jul 29, 2026
James Holland Jones

What We Should Seek in EBS Colleagues

EBS
Doerr School
Stanford
sustainability
social science
human ecology
The Department of Environmental Social Sciences, within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, is running a junior-faculty search this year in Environmental Behavioral…
Jul 27, 2026
James Holland Jones
 

An Alternate Courseload for the Game of Life

education
climate change
economics
sociology
literature
biology
statistics
It’s Stanford’s commencement weekend and this got me to thinking about an old blog post I wrote. I’ve managed to recover the post using the Wayback Machine and have edited…
Jun 14, 2026
James Holland Jones

Meng’s Big Data Paradox and the Recent Twitter Poll

statistics
American politics
big data
I decided to do a cocktail-napkin calculation this morning, as one does. Since Elon Musk bought the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter in October of 2022, there…
Aug 24, 2024
James Holland Jones

Termination Shock

CliFi
climate change
Adaptation
I just re-read Neal Stephenson’s Climate-Fiction novel, Termination Shock. I read this the moment it was published in 2021 and enjoyed it immensely. Having recently finished…
May 7, 2024
James Holland Jones

AABA 2024

anthropology
anti-racism
TESCREAL
I am recently back from the annual meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (AABA). Back in my first blogging period, I always liked to do meeting…
Apr 1, 2024
James Holland Jones

Thinking About Uncertainty

uncertainty
adaptation
ESS185
I have been pretty obsessed with risk for a while now. My interest in formal risk management was piqued when I began thinking about life-history strategies for variable…
Jan 20, 2024
James Holland Jones

Novels (Mostly CliFi) from 2023, Cozy and Otherwise

CliFi
narrative
I managed to read 28 novels in 2023. Most of these were climate fiction since that remains a teaching (and possibly research) interest.
Jan 9, 2024
James Holland Jones

Kim Stanley Robinson, reading from his novel *New York 2140* at The Interval, May 9 2017.

Imagining Adaptive Societies

CliFi
climate change
This winter, I once again have the great fortune of co-teaching with Margaret Levi and Paula Moya our class entitled Imagining Adaptive Societies. In this class, we explore…
Jan 1, 2024
James Holland Jones

Plotting Notes for Adaptation Class

R
adaptation
ESS185
I will be teaching my class, Earth System Science 185: Adaptation, again this winter quarter. One of the stated learning outcomes for this class is to be able to “interpret…
Dec 31, 2023
James Holland Jones

Monkey’s Uncle Reprise

news
scicomm
I started writing my blog, Monkey’s Uncle, back in 2008. My wife had major surgery and I was a bit distracted from the task of academic writing. I thought that having a blog…
Dec 30, 2023
James Holland Jones
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