Ancestors and relatives : genealogy, identity, and community / Eviatar Zerubavel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zerubavel, Eviatar.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Genealogy--Social aspects.

Genealogy.

Genealogy--Psychological aspects.

Genealogy--Political aspects.

Families.

Kinship.

Heredity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 226 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Genealogy has long been one of humanity's greatest obsessions. But with the rise of genetics, and increasing media attention to it through programs like Who Do You Think You Are? and Faces of America, we are now told that genetic markers can definitively tell us who we are and where we came from. The problem, writes Eviatar Zerubavel, is that biology does not provide us with the full picture. After all, he asks, why do we consider Barack Obama black even though his mother was white? Why did the Nazis believe that unions of Germans and Jews would produce Jews rather than Germans?

Contents:

The genealogical imagination

Ancestry and descent

Lineage

Pedigree

Origins

Co-descent

Kinship

Community and identity

Nature and culture

Blood

Nature or culture?

The rules of genealogical lineation

The rules of genealogical delineation

The politics of descent

Stretching

Cutting and pasting

Clipping

Braiding

Lumping

Marginalizing

Splitting

Pruning

The genealogy of the future

Genealogical engineering

Integration

Segregation

Extinction

The future of genealogy.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on metadata supplied by the publisher and other sources.

ISBN:

9786613348869

9781283348867

1283348861

9780199773985

019977398X

OCLC:

761694751