5/4/2009
Eviatar Zerubavel, Sociology, Rutgers University
The Genealogical Imagination: A Case-Study in Cognitive Sociology
MONDAY, MAY 18
12:00 NOON
311 Condon Hall
Abstract: This presentation offers a cognitive sociological perspective on the way we organize ancestry, descent, and other (e.g., familial, ethnic,
national) forms of genealogical "relatedness" in our minds. Examining the conventional-normative as well as political context in which we construct in our collective imagination essentialized sociomental structures such as "bloodlines," "race," dynasties, and family trees, it highlights the way in which culture interacts with nature in the social organization of human memory.
Biography: Eviatar Zerubavel (Ph.D. in 1976 from the University of
Pennsylvania) is Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, where he has been teaching since 1988. He has served as the director of the sociology graduate programs at Columbia University, SUNY at Stony Brook, and is currently serving a fourth term at Rutgers. He also served as the Chair of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. He is the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship. |
