The Decorated Body
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Across every culture and every era of human history, one universal truth endures: the body is a canvas. The Decorated Body by Robert Brain presents a sweeping anthropological survey of the myriad ways in which human beings have adorned, modified, and transformed their bodies — from the scarification rituals of West African tribes and the elaborate tattoo traditions of Polynesia, to the powdered wigs of European aristocracy and the painted faces of Amazonian peoples. Brain argues with compelling clarity that body decoration is never merely aesthetic; it is a profound language of identity, status, spirituality, and social belonging, spoken simultaneously across the globe's most disparate civilisations. Brain's scholarship is both rigorous and richly accessible, drawing on decades of fieldwork and a vast archive of anthropological research to illustrate how the skin serves as the first and most intimate site of cultural expression. The work dismantles the Western assumption that natural beauty is unadorned, revealing instead that the impulse to decorate the body is among the most fundamentally human of all instincts. Accompanied by a striking collection of photographic imagery, this landmark text remains an essential and thought-provoking read for anyone who has ever wondered what it truly means to present oneself to the world.
Author: Robert Brain
Format: Hardback
Published: 1979, Harper & Row Publishers
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Across every culture and every era of human history, one universal truth endures: the body is a canvas. The Decorated Body by Robert Brain presents a sweeping anthropological survey of the myriad ways in which human beings have adorned, modified, and transformed their bodies — from the scarification rituals of West African tribes and the elaborate tattoo traditions of Polynesia, to the powdered wigs of European aristocracy and the painted faces of Amazonian peoples. Brain argues with compelling clarity that body decoration is never merely aesthetic; it is a profound language of identity, status, spirituality, and social belonging, spoken simultaneously across the globe's most disparate civilisations. Brain's scholarship is both rigorous and richly accessible, drawing on decades of fieldwork and a vast archive of anthropological research to illustrate how the skin serves as the first and most intimate site of cultural expression. The work dismantles the Western assumption that natural beauty is unadorned, revealing instead that the impulse to decorate the body is among the most fundamentally human of all instincts. Accompanied by a striking collection of photographic imagery, this landmark text remains an essential and thought-provoking read for anyone who has ever wondered what it truly means to present oneself to the world.