Jack Goody - Böcker

Creative Lives and Works: Raymond Firth, Audrey Richards, Lucy Mair, Meyer Fortes and Edmund Leach is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England’s leading social anthropologists and historians, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of 40 years, the five conversations in this volume, are part of a larger set of interviews that cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences, the sciences to the performing and visual arts. The current volume on five of England’s foremost social anthropologists is the second in the series of several such books. These conversations and talks are interlaced with rich ethnography and interpretations of distant civilizations and the very real practices that enable these tribal societies and cultures to thrive. There are several teaching moments in these engaging conversations which are further enriched by detailed personal experiences that each of the five shares. Sir Raymond Firth gives us an insight into his Polynesian experience, while Audrey Richards and Lucy Mair recall their days in the African hinterland. Meyer Fortes’s account of his tribal study, yet again in the African subcontinent, is mesmeric, while Sir Edmund Leach’s Southeast Asian encounters are just as enthralling. Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection gives one a flavour of how tribal societies live and work. The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in learning about tribal societies and cultures, and those interested in History, Culture Studies, but also to those curious to gather knowledge about other cultures.Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Creative Lives and Works: Adrian C. Mayer, M.N. Srinivas, André Béteille and Johnathan Parry is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England’s leading social anthropologists and historians, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of 40 years, the four conversations in this volume, are part of a larger set of interviews that cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences, the sciences to the performing and visual arts. The current volume, on four of the world’s foremost social anthropologists and sociologists, who have been closely associated with the British anthropological tradition, is the third in the series of several such books. These conversations focus primarily on fieldwork experience in India and how new dimensions and interpretations were added to the discipline of sociology and social anthropology as more and more primitive cultures and ancient civilizations were studied. This book brings out the diversity of the Indian subcontinent and its people through its engaging conversations and occasional anecdotes. Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection gives one a flavour of the many different cultures that coexist in a vast country like India, often with no knowledge of each other’s existence while de-jargonizing complex sociological concepts. The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in the subject of Sociology, Social Anthropology and Ethnography, but also those with an avid interest in History, Culture Studies as well as those with an interest in learning about other societies. Please note: This title is co-published with Social Science Press, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Deliberately considering relevant theories put forward by earlier writers and examining them in the light of the research for this particular book, the author spent over 100 days attending funeral ceremonies and he attended 25 burial services.First published in 1962.

Against the background of the problems involved in the comparative study of human society, the essays in this book show the comparative ideal in practice, which combines elements from both sociology and anthropology.In each essay, specific problems are treated in a way which tests theory against evidence, to replace assertion by demonstration.Topics covered include:· Incest and Adultery· Double descent systems· Inheritance, social change and the boundary problem· Marriage policy· The circulation of women and children in northern Ghana· Indo-European kinship.First published in 1969.

Against the background of the problems involved in the comparative study of human society, the essays in this book show the comparative ideal in practice, which combines elements from both sociology and anthropology.In each essay, specific problems are treated in a way which tests theory against evidence, to replace assertion by demonstration.Topics covered include:· Incest and Adultery· Double descent systems· Inheritance, social change and the boundary problem· Marriage policy· The circulation of women and children in northern Ghana· Indo-European kinship.First published in 1969.

Emrys Peters studied the Bedouin of Libya for more than thirty years. The handful of articles published during his lifetime were widely admired and are still essential reading for anthropologists. He left further significant papers unpublished at his death, and the editors have drawn on these for half of this collection, which brings together his major writings on the Bedouin. These seminal essays are not only of ethnographic interest. All Peters' work is informed by a rigorous theoretical intelligence, and his analysis of power in Bedouin society has fascinated many discerning social scientists.

Social scientists, when making their studies of the structure of family groups, have often observed the current situation of a particular group of families and drawn conclusions from that static picture. Valuable as many of these conclusions may be, they are incomplete because they overlook the important fact that the structure of the family changes. These changes can be fitted into a developmental cycle in which the family or group changes in composition from its original two members to a larger group and finally two again. This book, originally published in 1958, is introduced by a substantial essay and reviews the papers collected here and discusses the theoretical background and implications of the use of the concept of the developmental cycle. The papers each demonstrate how the changing structure of the domestic group may be seen to explain otherwise obscure elements of the particular society.

Bridewealth and dowry have certain obvious similarities in that they both involve the transmission of property at marriage, the usual interpretation suggesting that what distinguishes them is the direction in which the property travels - in the case of bridewealth, from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin, and in the case of dowry, vice versa. The authors of these 1973 papers criticise this interpretation as oversimplified, and analyse the two institutions in the contexts of Africa, with its preponderance of bridewealth, and South Asia, where dowry is the commoner institution. Dr Goody seeks to explain these geographical differences in terms of the basic structure of the societies and the rules governing the inheritance of property. Dr Tambiah considers these institutions in India, Ceylon and Burma as two kinds of property transfer, examining Indian juridical concepts, and relating these to the concepts and practices of Ceylon and Burma.

In Myth, Ritual and the Oral Jack Goody, one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists, returns to the related themes of myth, orality and literacy, subjects that have long been a touchstone in anthropological thinking. Combining classic papers with recent unpublished 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 characteristically clear and accessible style, Jack Goody addresses fundamental conceptual schemes underpinning modern anthropology, providing potent critiques of current theoretical trends. Drawing upon his highly influential work on the LoDagaa myth of the Bagre, Goody challenges structuralist and functionalist interpretations of oral 'literature', stressing the issues of variation, imagination and creativity, and the problems of methodology and analysis. These insightful, and at times provocative, essays will stimulate fresh debate and prove invaluable to students and teachers of social anthropology.

It is now well over a hundred years since the birth of Lenin. If his writings are to have the relevance for contemporary political action, it is necessary that they be understood within the specific historical context in which they arose. It is such an understanding that David Lane provides in this book. Dr Lane addresses four distinct, though related, topics: Lenin's analysis of revolution; Leninism as an ideology legitimating the Russian Revolution; a detached analysis of the revolutionary process; and the relevance of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for social and political change. He begins by showing that, studied thematically, the various parts of Lenin's thinking are complementary in providing an analysis of capitalism and the justification for socialist revolution. The book is a short, concise, detached, yet sympathetic account of Lenin's thinking on revolution, its implications for the rise of Stalinism and its significance for the model of socialism as developed in the USSR. It will appeal to sociologists, political scientists and historians interested in Leninism, Stalinism and revolutionary theory, as well as to others concerned with the theories and processes of social change.

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.

Human ecology is ultimately part of a general theory of society. This is the argument developed here by Roy Ellen, whose exploration of the interplay between social organization and ecology in small-scale subsistence systems has direct bearings both on the investigation of human environmental relations in general and on contemporary social theory. He argues that while ecological study of non-industrial societies cannot be elevated to the status of theory, domain or discipline, it can be represented as a single 'problematic' that historically has acquired some degree of autonomy and which continues to make a significant contribution to a wider anthropology. Dr Ellen introduces his subject matter through an extended and systematic discussion of some major frameworks developed within the last hundred years to examine and explain facets of the relationship between culture, social organization and the environment: determinism, possibilism, cultural ecology, systems theory and ideas derived from modern biology. He follows this with a detailed review and appraisal of important recent research involving the use of ecological models, methods and data. This original and innovative study of the pre-eminently social character of human ecological relations will be of considerable interest to all students and researchers concerned with understanding the nature of the relationship between human beings and their environments.

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.

A collection of specially commissioned essays dealing with general aspects of kinship, family and marriage from an anthropological point of view, that is, considering the total range of human societies. In his editorial introduction, Jack Goody explains that his aim has been to provide 'essays dealing with general themes rather than ethnographic conundrums or descriptive minutiae' in the hope of achieving 're-consideration of some central problem areas including those examined by an earlier generation of anthropologists and still raised by scholars outside the discipline itself'. Individual essays cover problems such as the nature of kinship and the family; why monogamy?; intermarriage and the creation of castes. The contributors include R. G. Abrahams, J. A. Barnes, Fredrik Barth, Maurice Bloch, Derek Freeman, Jack Goody, Grace Harris, Jean La Fontaine, Edmund Leach, Julian Pitt-Rivers, Raymond T. Smith, Andrew Strathern and S. J. Tambiah.

The importance of writing as a means of communication in a society formerly without it, or where writing has been confined to particular groups, is enormous. It objectifies speech, provides language with a material correlative, and in this material form speech can be transmitted over space and preserved over time. In this book the contributors discuss cultures at different levels of sophistication and literacy and examine the importance of writing on the development of these societies. All the articles except the first were specially written for this book and the extensive introduction unites and synthesizes the material.

Edmund Leach's book investigates the writings of 'structuralists,' and their different theories: the general incest theory and of animal sacrifice. This book is designed for the use of teaching undergraduates in anthropology, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy and related disciplines faced with structuralist argument. It provides the prolegomena necessary to understand the final chapter of Levi-Strauss's massive four-volume Mythologiques. Some prior knowledge of anthropological literature is useful but not essential. The principal ethnographic source is the Book of Leviticus; this guide should help anyone who is trying to grasp the essentials of 'seminology' - the general theory of how signs and symbols come to convey meaning. The author's core thesis is that: 'the indices in non-verbal communication systems, like the sound elements in spoken language, do not have meaning as isolates, but only as members of set'; the book's special merit is that it makes this kind of jargon comprehensible in terms of our everyday experience.

This book is an attempt to see the development of domestic institutions, the family, marriage, conjugal roles, in relation to changes in the mode of productive activity, and specifically with the change from hoe to plough agriculture. These differences are related to societies in Africa on the one hand, and in Asia and Europe on the other. The author tries to do this in two ways. He compares information derived from a range of human societies, historical as well as contemporary, employing the impressionistic techniques of the social scientist and comparative historian. But in addition, he has tried to make systematic use of material on a range of world societies, coded in the Ethnographic Atlas. In the main chapters of the book, the author examines general features of the network of traditional social roles found in these two continental areas of the Old World. He discusses the reasons why Europe and Asia should stress marriage within the social group, monogamous unions as well as the roles of concubine, step-parent, spinster and adopted child, whereas in Africa, the emphasis is on marriage outside the group, polygyny and co-wives. Similar differences emerge in a range of other features, including the division of labour by sex. Behind all these lie differences in the systems of agriculture and the nature of the social hierarchies which they support. Professor Goody is firmly committed to the idea that the social sciences have no alternative but to be comparative and explicitly historical if they are to contribute to the serious causal analysis of fundamental features of social organisation and development. His broad and ambitious book will appeal to anyone with a professional interest in social sciences - historians, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and economists.

Current theories and views on the differences in the 'mind' of human societies depend very much on a dichotomy between 'advanced' and 'primitive', or between 'open' and 'closed', or between 'domesticated' and 'savage', that is to say, between one of a whole variety of 'we-they' distinctions. Professor Goody argues that such an approach prevents any serious discussion of the mechanisms leading to long-term changes in the cognitive processes of human cultures or any adequate explanation of the changes in 'traditional' societies that are taking place in the world around us. In this book he attempts to provide the framework for a more satisfactory explanation by relating certain broad differences in 'mentalities' to the changes in the means of communication, and specifically to the series of shifts involved in the development of writing. The argument is based upon theoretical considerations, as well as empirical evidence derived from recent fieldwork in West Africa and the study of a wide range of source material on the ancient societies of the Near East.

This pioneering book examines different aspects of the inheritance customs in rural Western Europe in the pre-industrial age: for families and whole societies, the roles of lawyers in reducing them to a common system, and the recurring debate on the merits of various inheritance customs in shaping particular kinds of society. At first sight the study of inheritance customs may appear to be a dull affair, concerned with outdated practices of hair-splitting lawyers; certainly, little academic interest has been shown in the subject. Yet inheritance customs are vital means for the reproduction of the social system, by the transmission of property and other rights through the family. Various family structures and social arrangements are linked by different means of inheritance. This book will interest a wide range of historians, students, postgraduates and teachers alike, whether they are concerned with social, economic, demographic or legal history, in the medieval, early modern or modern periods, and whether their interests are directed to England or other countries of Western Europe; it will also be valuable to social anthropologists, sociologists and historians of ideas. A comprehensive glossary of technical terms has been added for the non-specialist.

In this book, the author provides a detailed analysis of kinship, household and family relations in early modern France. He discusses the strength of kinship and family ties, the structure of households, the rights and duties of husband and wife, their authority over their children, the role of the family in education, the position of servants within the family, the attitudes and sentiments of different family members towards each other and the differences between noble and peasant families. He also deals with the changes in the patterns of sexual life that occurred in this period and investigates the beginnings of birth control in the late eighteenth century, and the possibilities or abortion and divorce. Professor Flandrin uses primarily documentary evidence from early modern France, but also draws comparisons with England in the same period, and with the medieval and modern family. His book provides a fascinating account of the intimate life of men and women in past society, and shows how that society has exerted a lasting influence on the behaviour of our contemporaries.

This 1979 text addresses the ways in which the dominant theories in large areas of Western social science have been subject to strong criticisms, particularly of their supposed philosophical deficiencies. In the philosophy of science, this resulted in empiricist views being replaced by an emphasis on the potential obstinacy of theory in the face of the empirical world. After introducing this contemporary philosophy of science, Dr Thomas uses it to argue that social study can both retain the natural scientific commitment to the constraint of the external world and assimilate the sorts of philosophical criticisms that were made of the old social scientific theories. In particular, he shows that social study understood in terms of the new philosophy of science can give an account of the former's distinctive concerns with issues of the meaning and value of social life. Dr Thomas supports his abstract arguments by detailed case studies.

Positions of authority in any society are limited in number, and therefore rules of selection must operate in their recruitment. There must also be limitations upon the range of authority exercised. These problems are particularly acute in the case of high office, where the questions of recruitment and succession are of central importance. This 1979 volume provides a general and theoretical analysis of succession in different traditional African societies. Jack Goody's introduction spells out the main ways in which systems of succession to office differ, and assesses the problem each system solves and the dilemmas it creates. He also analyses the tensions to which succession gives rise, and relates these to specific methods of transferring office from one generation to the next, The four case studies, all based on extensive fieldwork, consider succession among the Bausto, the Baganda, the Nyamwezi and the Gonja.

Since the Second World War, the world has witnessed a remarkable efflorescence of ethnic feeling and nationalist aspirations. Among Bretons, Basques, Scots, Welsh, Flemish, Quebecois, Catalans, Kurds, Ibo, Somali, and a host of other communities, ethnic movements demanding much greater autonomy, or even independence, have sprung up. Originally published in 1981, this book explores the ethnic separatisms and 'neo-nationalisms' that, at the time, threatened to undermine the fragile stability of the world order and to annul liberal and cosmopolitan dreams of world government and a universal scientific culture. What were the underlying causes of this ethnic revival? Why did it assume worldwide proportions? Anthony D. Smith claims that to uncover the cultural root and mental spring of the ethnic renaissance we must look to the development of a sense of history that first arose in eighteenth-century Europe.

Reviewing the course of English population history from 1066 to the eighties, this book challenges orthodoxies about the evolution of English family forms, and offers a bold interpretation of the inter-connections between social, economic, demographic and family history. Taking as the point of departure the well-known observations that England was the first industrial society, that it was the first society to have its peasantry replaced by proletarians and that it was a society that was always dominated by nuclear family households, the main question David Levine asks is how these elements were connected in time and space. In answering this, he looks to contemporaneous changes in the labour process, and, in particular, to the disposition of labour within the family. His central theme is the impact of proletarianisation on family formation. He argues that the explosive transformations of family and demography that occurred between 1780 and 1815 were the culmination of a protracted transition from a feudal to a capitalist social structure; and that the post-1870 decline in marital fertility took place within a context of demographic, familial, social and political adjustments which were themselves a response to the earlier population explosion.

Whilst the fundamental significance of the spoken language for human interaction is widely acknowledged, that of writing is less well known, and in this wide-ranging series of essays Jack Goody examines in depth the complex and often confused relationship between oral and literate modes of communication. He considers the interface between the written and the oral in three cultures or societies with and without writing, and that within the linguistic life of an individual. Specific analyses of the sequence of historical change within writing systems, the historic impact of writing upon Eurasian cultures, and the interaction between distinct oral and literate cultures in West Africa, precede an extensive concluding examination of contemporary issues in the investigation, whether sociological or psychological, of literacy. A substantial corpus of anthropological, historical and linguistic evidence is produced in support of Goody's findings, which form a natural complement to his own recently published study of The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society.

This book assesses the impact of writing on human societies, both in the Ancient Near East and in twentieth-century Africa, and highlights some general features of social systems that have been influenced by this major change in the mode of communication. Such features are central to any attempt at the theoretical definition of human society and such constituent phenomena as religious and legal systems, and in this study Professor Goody explores the role of a specific mechanism, the introduction of writing and the development of a written tradition, in the explanation of some important social differences and similarities. Goody argues that a shift of emphasis from productive to certain communicative processes is essential to account adequately for major changes in human societies. Whilst there have been previous descussions of the effect of literacy upon social organisation, no study has hitherto presented the general synthesis developed here.

Both biologists and social scientists have much to say about human behaviour. Yet attempts to combine their approaches to provide a deeper understanding of human nature have not so far been generally successful. First published in 1987, this book offered an original way of bridging the gap between them. The key to bringing the two approaches together is, Professor Hinde suggests, to recognise crucial distinctions between levels of social complexity (individuals, interactions, relationships and groups), whilst at the same time bearing in mind that all are processes in dialectical relations with each other and with the socio-cultural structure of institutions, beliefs, values, norms and so on. Professor Hinde argues that principles derived from ethology are essential for understanding some aspects of behaviour at the lower levels of social complexity, but have severe limitations at higher ones. This innovative approach will interest research workers, lecturers and students of psychology, biology, anthropology and sociology, as well as other readers seeking a comprehensive understanding of the nature of human social behaviour.

If faraway peoples have different ideas from our own, is this because they have different mentalities? Did our remote ancestors lack logic? The notion of distinct mentalities has been used extensively by historians to describe and explain cultural diversity. Professor Lloyd rejects this psychologising talk of mentalities and proposes an alternative approach, which takes as its starting point the social contexts of communication. Discussing apparently irrational beliefs and behaviour (such as magic), he shows how different forms of thought coexist in a single culture but within conventionally defined contexts.

In The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive one of the world's most foremost anthropologists looks in depth at kinship practice in Asia, and continues the comparative survey of pre-industrial family formation undertaken in The Development of Family and Marriage in Europe (1983) and elsewhere. Professor Goody's findings cause him to question many traditional assumptions about the 'primitive' east, and he suggests that, in contrast to pre-colonial Africa, kinship practice in Asia has much in common with that prevailing in parts of pre-industrial Europe. Goody examines the transmission of productive and other property in relation both to the prevailing political economy and to family and ideological structures, and then explores the distribution of mechanisms and strategies of management across cultures. He concludes that notions of western 'uniqueness' are often misplaced, and that much previous work on Asian kinship has been unwittingly distorted by the application of concepts and approaches derived from other, inappropriate, social formations, simple or post-industrial.