About this item

America is in the midst of a genealogy boom. In the last thirty years the number of Americans who said they were "very interested" in family history jumped from 29% to 87%. Online genealogy sites like Ancestry.com went from being a small genealogical research website into a NASDAQ-listed corporation with more than two million subscribers. In Roots Quest, sociologist Jackie Hogan digs into this genealogy boom to ask why we are so interested in our family history. She goes beyond simple demographics - retiring baby boomers with more time on their hands - to show that the surging popularity of genealogy is in part a response to some of the large-scale social changes transforming our lives, such as the increasingly virtual nature of social life, and the sense of rootlessness these transformations provoke. Roots Quest explores the way our increasingly rootless society fuels the quest for authenticity, for deep history, and for an elemental sense of belonging - for roots.



About the Author

Jackie Hogan

Jackie Hogan is the Chair of Sociology at Bradley University in Illinois, the "Land of Lincoln." She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and the 2009 book Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood. With graduate degrees in both Anthropology (University of Iowa) and Sociology (University of Tasmania, Australia) , and research interests in the US, UK, Australia and Japan, Hogan crosses both disciplinary and national boundaries in her work. In addition to her ongoing research on national identity, she teaches a range of courses on social inequality and non-Western cultures. She is the Chair of the Asian Studies Program, the founder of the university's Body Project (http://thebodyproject.bradley.edu) , and an enthusiastic participant in the University's Study Abroad Program.



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