jQuery selectors select from the document. How do I select from somewhere else other than root? Say I want to select some children from an html object.

For this

function dothis(obj)
{
     $j("#tabs").removeClass();
     $j("#tabs>ul").removeClass();
     $j("#tabs>ul>li>a").each(function()
     {
         var tabNum = $j(this).attr("href").replace("#", "");
         var tabContent = $j("div[id=" + tabNum + "]");
         tabContent.removeClass();
         $(tabContent).before("<br><h1>" +$j(this).text() + "</h1>\n" );
     });
     $j("#tabs>ul").each(function()
     {
         $j(this).empty();//remove Ul links on top

     });
}

I want to reference the selectors from an html Object (obj) i passed into as argument, instead of selecting from document.

Sorry I'm pretty new to jQuery.