Nationality American Role Anthropologist | Name Jonathan Marks Occupation Anthropologist | |
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Organization Books English Pronunciation in Use El, English Pronunciation in Use, What It Means to Be 98, Why I Am Not a Scientist, The Alternative Introducti | ||
Jonathan M. Marks (born 1955) is an American biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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Early life and education
Born in 1955, Marks studied at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and took graduate degrees in genetics and anthropology from the University of Arizona, completing his doctorate in 1984.
Career
Marks did post-doctoral research in the genetics department at UC-Davis from 1984-1987, then taught at Yale for 10 years and Berkeley for 3, before settling in Charlotte where he is now a professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
Marks is skeptical of scientists’ understanding of genetics and how genes relate to individual humans or to human groups. He contends that genetic differences do not adequately describe the relationships between humans and chimpanzees because the two species are 98% similar genetically but very different physically and behaviorally.
Marks published works include many scholarly articles and essays. He is an outspoken critic of scientific racism, and has prominently argued against the idea that "race" is a natural category. In Marks's view, "race" is a negotiation between patterns of biological variation and patterns of perceived difference. He argues that race and human diversity are different subjects, and do not map on to one another well.
Marks has also served on the Board of Directors of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism, Nixon, Nevada.
In 2012, he received the First Citizens Bank Scholars Medal, honoring his career of intellectual inquiry.