Nina G. Jablonski

We expose it, cover it, paint it, tattoo it, scar it, and pierce it. Our intimate connection with the world, skin protects us while advertising our health, our identity, and our individuality. This dazzling synthetic overview, written with a poetic touch and taking many intriguing side excursions, is a complete guidebook to the pliable covering that makes us who we are. Skin: A Natural History celebrates the evolution of three unique attributes of human skin: its naked sweatiness, its distinctive sepia rainbow of colors, and its remarkable range of decorations. Jablonski begins with a look at skin's structure and functions and then tours its three-hundred-million-year evolution, delving into such topics as the importance of touch and how the skin reflects and affects emotions. She examines the modern human obsession with age-related changes in skin, especially wrinkles. She then turns to skin as a canvas for self-expression, exploring our use of cosmetics, body paint, tattooing, and scarification. Skin: A Natural History places the rich cultural canvas of skin within its broader biological context for the first time, and the result is a tremendously engaging look at ourselves.

A Natural History

Skin

Living Color is the first book to investigate the social history of skin color from prehistory to the present, showing how our body’s most visible trait influences our social interactions in profound and complex ways. In a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Nina G. Jablonski begins with the biology and evolution of skin pigmentation, explaining how skin color changed as humans moved around the globe. She explores the relationship between melanin pigment and sunlight, and examines the consequences of rapid migrations, vacations, and other lifestyle choices that can create mismatches between our skin color and our environment. Richly illustrated, this book explains why skin color has come to be a biological trait with great social meaning— a product of evolution perceived by culture. It considers how we form impressions of others, how we create and use stereotypes, how negative stereotypes about dark skin developed and have played out through history—including being a basis for the transatlantic slave trade. Offering examples of how attitudes about skin color differ in the U.S., Brazil, India, and South Africa, Jablonski suggests that a knowledge of the evolution and social importance of skin color can help eliminate color-based discrimination and racism.

The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color

Living Color

This unique volume provides a comprehensive and up-to-date examination of all aspects of the biology of the Old World monkey genus, Theropithecus, which evolved alongside our human ancestors. This genus is represented today by only one rare species. The authors explore the fossil history and evolution of the genus, its biogeography, comparative evolutionary biology and anatomy, and the behavior and socioecology of the living and extinct representatives of the genus. The parallels between the evolution of Theropithecus and early hominids are discussed. There are also two chapters of particular significance that describe how an innovative and exciting approach to the modeling of the causes of species extinction can be used with great success. This highly multidisciplinary approach provides a rare and insightful account of the evolutionary biology of this fascinating and once highly successful group of primates.

The Rise and Fall of a Primate Genus

Theropithecus

The STIAS research theme on Being Human Today explores the interrelated questions: What does it mean to be human? And: What is the nature of the world in which we aspire to be human? In the context of post-apartheid South Africa race and racism remain key references in both these questions. Why is this so, considering that the biological basis of race thinking has been refuted? Templates of race and racialism remain at the core of state policy in South Africa, periodic gross incidents of racism surface in public, and notions of the existence of races remain central to everyday thinking and discourse. This book is the result of the work of a group of leading thinkers and their in-depth conversations at STIAS during the winter of 2015 on the effects of race. Convened by evolutionary anthropologist Nina Jablonski and sociologist Gerhard Mare, the group included Njabulo Ndebele, Chabani Manganyi, Barney Pityana, Crain Soudien, Goeran Therborn, Mikael Hjerm, Zimitri Erasmus and George Chaplin. The group reconvened annually through 2017. This is the first in a series of planned publications on the their work.

The Effects of Race

Gerhard Mar‚

The STIAS research theme on Being Human Today explores the interrelated questions: What does it mean to be human? And: What is the nature of the world in which we aspire to be human? In the context of post-apartheid South Africa race and racism remain key references in both these questions. Why is this so, considering that the biological basis of race thinking has been refuted? Templates of race and racialism remain at the core of state policy in South Africa, periodic gross incidents of racism surface in public, and notions of the existence of races remain central to everyday thinking and discourse. This book is the result of the work of a group of leading thinkers and their in-depth conversations at STIAS during the winter of 2015 on the effects of race. Convened by evolutionary anthropologist Nina Jablonski and sociologist Gerhard Mar‚, the group included Njabulo Ndebele, Chabani Manganyi, Barney Pityana, Crain Soudien, G”ran Therborn, Mikael Hjerm, Zimitri Erasmus and George Chaplin. The group reconvened annually through 2017. This is the first in a series of planned publications on the their work.

"producing a nicely bound and printed book, with excellently reproduced illustrations, including colour photographs the publishers' recommended price is more than fair".International Zoo News, 1998"This book is an excellent addition to the conservation biology literature and will be a valuable reference for all university libraries I highly recommend this book to all those who are concerned about the conservation and management of highly endangered Asian primates".Journal of Mammalogy, 1999

Nina G. Jablonski

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