Review "An erudite treatise about how culture drives human cognition about near and remote relatives, Ancestors and Relatives offers lay and academic audiences alike a great read."--Science"The author examines how genealogical structures have been used to organize not only kinship, but also other domains ranging from Supreme Court justices to religions. Genealogy is 'first and foremost a way of thinking' and not simply a way to represent biological ancestor-descendantrelations."--CHOICE"In Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity, and Community, Eviatar Zerubavel, a sociologist at Rutgers, pulls back the curtain on the genealogical obsession. Genealogies, he argues, aren't the straightforward, objective accounts of our ancestries we often presume them to be. Instead,they're heavily curated social constructions, and are as much about our values as they are about the facts of who gave birth to whom."--The Boston Globe"Making the world seem strange is the first step to understanding it anew. Eviatar Zerubavel is a genius at doing this. Here he takes on kinship and shows us the profound, politically fraught, sometimes frightening, and often funny ways in which we take the biological fact that life createslife and fashion genealogy from it. This is a brilliant, witty, effortlessly well-informed book that anyone with ancestors or anyone who worries about ethnicity, race, and nationalism will read with pleasure and surprise."--Thomas Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley"While ancestors and relatives are genetically given, the genetics give us no clue how we should measure their relative importance to us. In this lively and well-written book, Eviatar Zerubavel avoids the aridity of technical kinship analysis and uses a personal perspective to show how humansfabricate, in the literal sense, their relatives, by a creative process of elimination and selection in the generation of rules. It is easily the most engaging introduction to kinship for the general reader that I have read, and a contribution in its own right to a wider understanding of our placein evolution."--Robin Fox, author of Kinship and Marriage and The Tribal Imagination"Kinship is a perennial staple-necessary but ordinarily dry as dust-of anthropology, sociology, and demography. In Ancestors and Relatives, Eviatar Zerubavel makes the topic new, bringing to it an encyclopedic knowledge and a powerful sociological imagination that brings to life the deeplysocial and cultural ways in which we talk about, imagine, and understand our ancestors and relations. Never has kinship been more interesting and never has it been as much fun."--Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University Read more About the Author Eviatar Zerubavel is the Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. He is the author of numerous books, most recently The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life and Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Read more
P**T
Disappointing, but well referenced!
First may I suggest that anybody who wants to read this book to get it in paperback or hardcover. The Kindle books is more than sixty percent footnote and reference material, and somewhat challenging to read in that format due to problems with text editing. I was annoyed that the book cost so much---and was mostly references. I think that the material was of some interest, but did small service to genetics, genealogy and the sociological problems of defining ourselves. We humans are looking for meaning, and finding out who our genetic ancestors were has become a satisfying hobby for some, a religious practice for many, and a health issue for an increasing number of human beings. This book suggests that seeking our ancestors is muddled by past and current race bias, community identities and a lot of misinformation, which is probably true to a certain extent. Modern genetics is increasing our ability to remove those issues from subjective interpretation. I found the material rather dry, and felt that the material in it has been explored in many other books. Sorry---wanted to like it after reading a review in Science...but just couldn't.
M**Y
Simply... Amazing.
I have been truly impressed with this book. From beginning to end, this book continues to drive logical, important, and needed information to the reader.
C**L
A Scholar's Reflections on Genealogy
In contrast to some reviewers, I very much enjoyed the first part of this book.... until it got too deeply into evolutionary theory, which I can read in more engaging ways from other sources.What I found so interesting were Zerubavel's reflections on what it means as humans that we pick and choose our ancestors, and what value genealogy has for people in the modern world, as well as in historical times. If you're just looking for a genealogy how-to or inspiring ideas on family, there are better books.But for some sustained scientific/cultural reflections on what it means to be a relative or in a lineage, this is a great book. It is brief, so if you have access to a public lib or uni lib, that would be a great way to get access.
P**X
Valuable synthesis
Admirably clear writing, witty, trenchant and deftly illustrated with erudition and an eye for the telling detail. This book offers a superb overview of kinship and why the question of belonging matters deeply to our species, refreshingly free of jargon and the sterile theorizing all too common in both anthropological and sociological treatments of the subject.
A**R
Sociology, not genealogy
Bear in mind that this review is written from the perspective of a genetic genealogist (I'm co-author with Megan Smolenyak of "Trace Your Roots with DNA"). Zerubavel is a sociologist, so the book is not aimed at this target audience in spite of the word "genealogy" in the subtitle. In fact, it doesn't characterize it very well: many of us are keen to learn more about all of our ancestral lines, not just the famous ones but also the ones who struggled just to survive and are equally responsible for our very existence. The book also points out the limitations of Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing, which follow only two of our ancestral lines, as if we weren't aware of them. They just happened to be the only tools available in the early days of genetic genealogy for biological reasons. The recent advent of autosomal DNA testing has changed the landscape considerably, but to be fair, Zerubavel was probably writing much of his book before this transpired.The book does have a number of interesting observations, with extensive citations. In fact, pages 133 to 226 are comprised of footnotes, bibliography, and index.
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