Our Blood: The Social Experience of Heritas
Michael M. Bell · Loka Ashwood · Jay Orne
May 2026 · University of Chicago Press
Ebook
240
Pages
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infoThis book will become available on May 18, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
Who are we, where do we come from, and why does it matter?
From whom do I come? Our Blood describes the central importance of our sense not just of our heritage, but our embodied heritage: that our past is in our bodies and runs in our blood, and that our embodied past is central to our futures. Deeply felt heritas, as Michael M. Bell, Loka Ashwood, and Jay Orne call it, can be a source of great love and kindness for one another. But it can also be a beautiful horror, the source of some of our greatest hate and meanness towards one another. We think of our embodied heritage as natural and historical facts, beyond our choice, and therefore free of manipulation for social gain. We think of it as spirited presences in our bodies that we did not choose. We think of its origins as external to us, whether we are talking about family, class, caste, places, things, ethnoraciality, or our professions. We think of it as legitimate and rightful, therefore. But we do choose. We do select. Bell, Ashwood, and Orne argue that greater awareness of heritas’s social origins and social selectivity can help us cultivate a wider sense of mutual care and ease the divisiveness of our time. Ultimately, Our Blood asks us all to consider heritas, and in doing so, to perhaps even reconsider our very selves.
From whom do I come? Our Blood describes the central importance of our sense not just of our heritage, but our embodied heritage: that our past is in our bodies and runs in our blood, and that our embodied past is central to our futures. Deeply felt heritas, as Michael M. Bell, Loka Ashwood, and Jay Orne call it, can be a source of great love and kindness for one another. But it can also be a beautiful horror, the source of some of our greatest hate and meanness towards one another. We think of our embodied heritage as natural and historical facts, beyond our choice, and therefore free of manipulation for social gain. We think of it as spirited presences in our bodies that we did not choose. We think of its origins as external to us, whether we are talking about family, class, caste, places, things, ethnoraciality, or our professions. We think of it as legitimate and rightful, therefore. But we do choose. We do select. Bell, Ashwood, and Orne argue that greater awareness of heritas’s social origins and social selectivity can help us cultivate a wider sense of mutual care and ease the divisiveness of our time. Ultimately, Our Blood asks us all to consider heritas, and in doing so, to perhaps even reconsider our very selves.
About the author
Michael M. Bell is chair and the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent books are City of the Good: Nature, Religion, and the Ancient Search for What Is Right, The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology, and the 6th edition of Invitation to Environmental Sociology. Loka Ashwood is professor of community and environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of For-Profit Democracy: Why the Government is Losing the Trust of Rural America and coauthor of the sixth edition of An Invitation to Environmental Sociology. She is a recipient of a prestigious 2024 MacArthur Fellowship. Jay Orne is a research scientist and prevention/harm reduction manager at the Aliveness Project, a center for people living with and at risk for HIV in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are the author of Boystown: Sex and Community in Chicago and coauthor of Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork: A Multilogical Approach.
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