1800s
1900s
20th century
A01=Nadia Abu El-Haj
academic
analysis
anthropology
Author_Nadia Abu El-Haj
biological
Category=JBSR
Category=NHTG
conclusions
contemporary
cultural
culture
data
education
epistemology
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
genealogy
genetic
geographic
heredity
historical
history
hypothesis
identity
interdisciplinary
jewish
judaism
locales
migration
modern
nature
political
politics
religion
religious studies
research
scholarly
science
self esteem
social
sociology
study
Product details
- ISBN 9780226154701
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 08 May 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The Genealogical Science analyzes the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history. A biological discipline that relies on genetic data in order to reconstruct the geographic origins of contemporary populations - their histories of migration and genealogical connections to other present-day groups - this historical science is garnering ever more credibility and social reach, in large part due to a growing industry in ancestry testing. In this book, Nadia Abu El-Haj examines genetic history's working assumptions about culture and nature, identity and biology, and the individual and the collective. Through the example of the study of Jewish origins, she explores novel cultural and political practices that are emerging as genetic history's claims and "facts" circulate in the public domain and illustrates how this historical science is intrinsically entangled with cultural imaginations and political commitments.
Chronicling late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century understandings of race, nature, and culture, she identifies continuities and shifts in scientific claims, institutional contexts, and political worlds in order to show how the meanings of biological difference have changed over time. Through her focus on Jewish origins, she also analyzes genetic history as the latest iteration of a cultural and political practice now over a century old.
Nadia Abu El-Haj is professor of anthropology at Barnard College of Columbia University. She is the author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
