This important new book investigates how the West attained its current position of economic and social advantage. In an incisive historical analysis, Jack Goody examines when and why Europe (and Anglo-America) started to outstrip all other continents in socio-economic growth. Drawing on non-Western examples of economic and technical progress, Goody challenges assumptions about long-term European supremacy of a ‘cultural’ kind, as was a feature of many theories current in social science. He...

The idea of long-term European dominance is characteristic of most evolutionary theories of human culture and society in the nineteenth century. It was commonly believed that there was a natural progression from Antiquity through Feudalism to Capitalism which could not have taken place elsewhere. Today there are many who still believe that this progression was part of a European miracle that underlay the rise to global supremacy of the West.In this short book Jack Goody systematica...

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 Combining classic papers with recent unpublished work, this volume brings together some of the most important essays written on these themes in the past half century, representative of a lifetime of critical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 a...

Originally published in 1967 (second edition) presents an account of the life and social organisation of the Lo Wiili of the Haute Volta and Ghana. Chapters on the geographic and ethnographic background and economic system are followed by a detailed analysis of Lo Wiili social organisation which in its broad outlines is typical of the general area. Of particular theoretical interest, however, is the co-existence in the one society of both patriclans and matriclans and the way in which the ...

Originally published in 1971 this book argues that certain aspects of traditional African social systems have been misunderstood because of a failure to appreciate what is implied by important differences between the technologies of the major traditional African states and those of Europe and Asia. Differences in the modes of agricultural production were connected with differences in other aspects of the social system such as the relations between subjects and chiefs. This means that compa...

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.

This vigorously argued book reveals the central role that Islam has played in European history. Following the movement of people, culture and religion from East to West, Goody breaks down the perceived opposition between Islam and Europe, showing Islam to be a part of Europe's past and present. In an historical analysis of religious warfare and forced migration, Goody examines our understanding of legitimate violence, ethnic cleansing and terrorism. His comparative perspective offers impor...

Originally published in 1975, this book presents the results of research into social change in Ghana. The book looks in detail at the problems of particular sub-groups and sectors in one single nation and they show that the field-worker with a wide comparative background in the range of pre-industrial societies has a positive role to play in contemporary social science.

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 · Th...

Ethnographers of religion have created a vast record of religious behavior from small-scale non-literate societies to globally distributed religions in urban settings. So a theory that claims to explain prominent features of ritual, myth, and belief in all contexts everywhere causes ethnographers a skeptical pause. In Ritual and Memory, however, a wide range of ethnographers grapple critically with Harvey Whitehouse's theory of two divergent modes of religiosity. Although these co...

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 ...

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...