<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18813"> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">Last input on this (for the moment)</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">From the BCG </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV>Genealogy is the study of families in genetic and historical context. Within that framework, it is the study of the people who compose a family and the relationships among them. At the individual level, it is biography, because we must reconstruct each individual life in order to separate each person’s identity from that of others bearing the same name. Beyond this, many researchers also find that genealogy is a study of communities because kinship networks have long been the threads that create the fabric of each community’s social life, politics, and economy.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">One place where I see an theoretical/academic scope in the sense that I've been trying to describe could in the area that begins with the words "Beyond this" in the quote above.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">Larry (who now gets back to actual work...)</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>