A pioneering scientist presents a mind-expanding account of the sociogenomics revolution, which promises to upend everything we know about human development.
Sociogenomics brings together advances in molecular genetics and traditional social and behavioral science. The key tool is the polygenic index, which allows us to analyze DNA to measure a child's genetic potential. Today, we can estimate a child's adult height, how far they will go in school, and their weight as an adult—all from a cheek swab, finger prick, or vial of saliva. Dalton Conley and other researchers are using this new science to shed light on the ways in which genes shape our world, influencing how each person both creates and responds to the environment around them. Conley reveals a world where children's DNA influences the nurture they extract from their parents; the genes of our schoolmates affect our likelihood of smoking as much as our own DNA does; and spouses' genes influence each other's moods and behaviors.
The Social Genome presents a nuanced, powerful perspective on individual potential and social dynamics and raises critical ethical questions about how we will navigate a future where we have access to far more genetic information than ever before.
Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable.
How many of us now work from home, our wireless economy allowing and encouraging us to work 24/7? How many of us talk to our children while scrolling through e-mails on our BlackBerrys? How many of us feel overextended, as we are challenged to play multiple roles - worker, boss, parent, spouse, friend, and client - all in the same instant? Dalton Conley, social scientist and writer, provides us with an X-ray view of our new social reality. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., Conley connects our daily experience with occasionally overlooked sociological changes: women's increasing participation in the labor force; rising economic inequality generating anxiety among successful professionals; the individualism of the modern era - the belief in self-actualization and expression - being replaced by the need to play different roles in the various realms of one's existence. In this groundbreaking book, Conley offers an essential understanding of how the technological, social, and economic changes that have reshaped our world are also reshaping our individual lives.
"This brilliant new book makes sense of how changes in the ways people work are affecting the ways families work. Conley writes with the grace of a novelist and the insight of a rigorous scholar." - Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman
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