Genealogy and Social Status in the Enlightenment
Edited by Stéphane Jettot and Jean-Paul Zuñiga
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2021:08
The Age of Enlightenment has formerly been defined as hostile to the values of ancestry and genealogy. However, the transdisciplinary approach adopted by this book allows us to consider genealogy as a long lasting social practice and a form of reasoning, a language and a tool expressing social relations and establishing hierarchies throughout the 18th century.
- A stimulating approach that aims to cover different fields of knowledge (literature, cultural studies, government science, history of science) which are often separated.
- Provides a new perspective on an old debate of nature vs. nurture.
- An openly interdisciplinary book, mixing historical, philosophical and literary approaches as an epistemological contribution to the reflection on genealogy.
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Stéphane Jettot is Assistant Professor at Sorbonne University. His research focuses on several subjects related to the British Isles in the 17th and 18th centuries. His first book considered the importance of the London Parliament in Late Stuarts diplomacy (Représenter le Roi ou la Nation? Les parlementaires dans la diplomatie anglaise. (1660-1702), Sorbonne UP, 2012). Together with other European scholars, he has explored the relation between genealogies and collective memories in various publications, notably S. Jettot, The Genealogical Enterprise: Social Practices and Collective Imagination in Europe (15th-20th century) with Marie Lezowski, Peter Lang, 2016.
Jean-Paul Zuñiga is a professor of History at EHESS, Paris, where he specializes in Spanish Imperial history. His research first focused on Spanish migration to colonial America and on the meaning of notions such as blood, lineage and “race” in an imperial context. He currently works on urban workers in Hispanic America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.