Books by Jack (University of Cambridge) Goody

Professor Goody's research in West Africa resulted in finding an alternative way of thinking about 'traditional' societies.

In Myth, Ritual and the Oral Goody returns to the themes of myth, orality and literacy. Combining classic papers with recent work, this volume brings together some of the most important essays written on these themes in the past half century, representative of a lifetime of critical engagement and research.

In these insightful papers, first published in 1973, two leading authorities make a wide-ranging review of ideas and materials on bridewealth and dowry. The authors analyse the two institutions in the contexts of Africa, with its preponderance of bridewealth, and South Asia, where dowry is the commoner institution.

Jack Goody's book explores the history of social anthropology in the interwar years. It focuses on key practitioners, such as Malinowski and Fortes, and explores how far ideological approaches adopted by social anthropologists were defined by institutions, particularly in response to colonialism.

Jack Goody builds on his own work to extend his influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of western historical writing, and the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love.

This work assesses the impact of writing on human societies, both in the Ancient Near East and in contemporary Africa, and highlights some general features of social systems that have been influenced by this major change in the mode of communication.

In this series of essays Jack Goody examines the complex relationship between oral and literate modes of communication. A substantial corpus of anthropological, historical and linguistic evidence is produced in support of his findings, which complement his recently published study The Logic of Writings and the Organization of Society.

Examines development of domestic institutions, the family, marriage, conjugal roles, in relation to changes in the mode of productive activity, specifically the change from hoe to plough agriculture. In contrasts Africa, on the one hand, to Asia and Europe, on the other.

Around 300 A.D. European patterns of marriage and kinship were turned on their head. What had previously been the norm - marriage to close kin - became the new taboo. The same applied to adoption, the obligation of a man to marry his brother's widow and a number of other central practices. With these changes Christian Europe broke radically from its own past and established practices which diverged markedly from those of the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. In this highly original and far-reaching work Jack Goody argues that from the fourth century there developed in the northern Mediterranean a distinctive but not undifferentiated kinship system, whose growth can be attributed to the role of the Church in acquiring property formerly held by domestic groups. He suggests that the early Church, faced with the need to provide for people who had left their kin to devote themselves to the life of the Church, regulated the rules of marriage so that wealth could be channelled away from the family and into the Church. Thus the Church became an 'interitor', acquiring vast tracts of property through the alienation of familial rights. At the same time, the structure of domestic life was changed dramatically, the Church placing more emphasis on individual wishes, on conjugality, and on spiritual rather than natural kinship. Tracing the consequences of this change through to the present day, Jack Goody challenges some fundamental assumptions about the making of western society, and provides an alternative focus for future study of the European family, kinship structures and marriage patterns. The questions he raises will provoke much interest and discussion amongst anthropologists, sociologists and historians.

The preparation, serving and eating of food are common features of all human societies, and have been the focus of study for numerous anthropologists - from Sir James Frazer onwards - from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. It is in the context of this previous anthropological work that Jack Goody sets his own observations on cooking in West Africa. He criticises those approaches which overlook the comparative historical dimension of culinary, and other, cultural differences that emerge in class societies, both of which elements he particularly emphasises in this book. The central question that Professor Goody addresses here is why a differentiated 'haute cuisine' has not emerged in Africa, as it has in other parts of the world. His account of cooking in West Africa is followed by a survey of the culinary practices of the major Eurasian societies throughout history - ranging from Ancient Egypt, Imperial Rome and medieval China to early modern Europe - in which he relates the differences in food preparation and consumption emerging in these societies to differences in their socio-economic structures, specifically in modes of production and communication. He concludes with an examination of the world-wide rise of 'industrial food' and its impact on Third World societies, showing that the ability of the latter to resist cultural domination in food, as in other things, is related to the nature of their pre-existing socio-economic structures. The arguments presented here will interest all social scientists and historians concerned with cultural history and social theory.

Distinguished social scientist Jack Goody addresses a core historical question: does the European Renaissance deserve its status at the heart of our notions of modernity? Goody scrutinises the European model in relation to parallel renaissances that have taken place in other cultural areas, emphasising what Europe owed to non-European influences.

Jack Goody challenges Eurocentric assumptions about the backwardness of cultural and intellectual development in Asia. His wide-ranging and provocative book presents a more balanced approach to Eastern and Western history and society.

An examination of kinship practice in Asia which continues the comparative survey of pre-industrial family formation undertaken in "The Development of Family and Marriage in Europe". The author suggests that kinship practice in Asia has much in common with parts of pre-industrial Europe.