Sir John Rankine Goody (born 27 July 1919) is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 social anthropologist

Social anthropology

Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...

. He has been a prominent teacher at Cambridge University, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

 in 1976, and he is an associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. Among his main publications are Death, property and the ancestors (1962), The myth of the Bagre (1972) and The domestication of the savage mind (1977).

Biography

Born on 27 July 1919, Goody grew up in Welwyn Garden City

Welwyn Garden City

-Economy:Ever since its inception as garden city, Welwyn Garden City has attracted a strong commercial base with several designated employment areas. Among the companies trading in the town are:*Air Link Systems*Baxter*British Lead Mills*Carl Zeiss...

 and St Albans

St Albans

St Albans is a city in southern Hertfordshire, England, around north of central London, which forms the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans. It is a historic market town, and is now a sought-after dormitory town within the London commuter belt...

, where he attended St Albans School

St Albans School (Hertfordshire)

St Albans School is an independent school in the city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, in the East of England. Entry before Sixth Form is for boys only, and co-educational thereafter. Founded in 948 by Wulsin , St Albans School is not only the oldest school in Hertfordshire but also one of the oldest...

 . He went up to St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....

 to study English Literature in 1938, where he came to know leftist intellectuals like Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...

.

Fighting in North Africa in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he was captured by the Germans and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camps.

Inspired by reading Frazer

James Frazer

Sir James George Frazer , was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion...

's Golden Bough and Gordon Childe, he transferred to Archaeology and Anthropology when he resumed university study in 1946. After fieldwork in Gonja

Gonja

This page discusses the Ghanaian kingdom of Gonja; for uses for the word Ganja, see Ganja Gonja was a kingdom in northern Ghana; the word can also refer to the people of this kingdom. The Gonja are a Guan people who have been influenced by both Akan people and Mande people. With the fall of the...

 in northern Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

, Goody increasingly turned to comparative study of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Between 1954 and 1984, he taught social anthropology

Social anthropology

Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...

 at Cambridge University, serving as the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology

William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology

The William Wyse Professorship of Social Anthropology is a professorship in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. It was founded on 18 June 1932 and endowed partly with the support of Trinity College from money bequeathed to them by William Wyse, formerly Fellow and Honorary Fellow of...

 from 1973 until 1984. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1976 and has also has been knighted by the Queen. He gave the Luce Lectures at Yale University—Fall 1987.

Goody has pioneered the comparative anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 of literacy

Literacy

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...

, attempting to gauge the causal preconditions and effects of writing as a technology. He also wrote substantially on the history of the family and the anthropology of inheritance

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

. More recently, he has written on the anthropology of flowers and food.

Works

Jack Goody explained social structure and social change primarily in terms of three major factors. The first was the development of intensive forms of agriculture that allowed for the accumulation of surplus – surplus explained many aspects of cultural practice from marriage to funerals as well as the great divide between African and Eurasian societies. Second, he explained social change in terms of urbanization and growth of bureaucratic institutions that modified or overrode traditional forms of social organization, such as family or tribe, identifying civilization as “the culture of cities”. And third, he attached great weight to the technologies of communication as instruments of psychological and social change. He associated the beginnings of writing with the task of managing surplus and, in an important paper with Ian Watt (Goody and Watt, 1963), he advanced the argument that the rise of science and philosophy in classical Greece depended importantly on their invention of an efficient writing system, the alphabet. Because these factors could be applied to either to any contemporary social system or to systematic changes over time, his work is equally relevant to many disciplines.

Books

• 1956 The social organisation of the LoWiili (H.M.S.O.), 2nd ed. 1976 (London, published for the International African Institute by the Oxford U.P.)
• 1962 Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa (Stanford, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0422980803). reviews: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(196608)2%3A68%3A4%3C1039%3ADPATAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00330 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-9720(197001)40%3A1%3C40%3ADPATAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C
• 1968 ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into German and Spanish. reviews: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-6773(197008)78%3A4%3C577%3ALITS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0521290058

• 1971 Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa (Oxford, Oxford University Press)

• 1972 The Myth of the Bagre (Oxford, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198151349). reviews: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(197512)2%3A77%3A4%3C952%3ATMOTB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-7882(1973)6%3A4%3C708%3ATMOTB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1975.77.4.02a00830

• 1973 ed., The Character of Kinship (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973). reviews: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602(197703)82%3A5%3C1156%3ATCOK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1976.78.2.02a00740

• 1976 Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain 1976 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521290880

• 1977 The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977); translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish.

• 1982 Cooking,Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into Spanish, French and Portuguese.

• 1983 The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese. review: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0304-2421%28198505%2914%3A3%3C371%3ANWOTHO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

• 1986 The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese.
• The Interface Between the Written and the Oral 1987 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521337941
• 1990 The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive: Systems of Marriage and the Family in the Pre-Industrial Societies of Eurasia (Studies in Literacy, the Family, Culture and the State) Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521367611
• 1993 The Culture of Flowers (Cambridge); translated into French and Italian.
• (1995) The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) review: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496(199702)24%3A1%3C211%3ATEMTRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I
• 1996 The East in the West (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into French and Italian.
• 1997 Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fictions, Relics and Sexuality (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers); translated into Spanish and French (Paris, La Découverte).
• 1998 Food and Love: A Cultural History of East and West (London, Verso). ISBN 185984829X
• 2000 The European Family: An Historico-anthropological Essay (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers).
• 2000 The Power of the Written Tradition (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London)
• 2004 Islam in Europe Polity Press, Cambridge, 178pp. ISBN 0 7456 3193 2. review: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jird/journal/v8/n3/abs/1800049a.html
• 2004 Capitalism and Modernity: the Great Debate (Cambridge, Polity Press)); translated into Turkish. *2004 Comparative Studies In Kinship ISBN 0415330106
• 2006 The Theft of History Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521870690

Selected articles

• 1956 Jack Goody A Comparative Approach to Incest and Adultery, British Journal of Sociology
  British Journal of Sociology
  The British Journal of Sociology is an academic journal, founded in 1950 at the London School of Economics. The main founders were the sociologists Morris Ginsberg and Thomas Humphrey Marshall. Their intended title, "The London Journal of Sociology", seems to have been changed by the publisher...
  
  , Vol. 7, No. 4 (Dec., 1956), pp. 286–305 doi:10.2307/586694

• 1957 Fields of Social Control Among the LoDagaba The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan. - Jun., 1957), pp. 75–104 doi:10.2307/2843972

• GOODY, J. 1959. The Mother's Brother and the Sister's Son in West Africa. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 89:61-88 response

• 1961 Jack Goody Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Jun., 1961), pp. 142–164 doi:10.2307/586928

• 1963 Jack Goody, Ian Watt The Consequences of Literacy Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 304–345

• 1969 Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 55–78

• 1972 Taboo Words Man, New Series, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), p. 137

• 1973 Goody, J. [Polygyny, economy and the role of women]. In J. Goody (Ed.), The character of kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973

• 1973 Inheritance, Property, and Marriage in Africa and Eurasia Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 1, 55-76 (1969) DOI: 10.1177/003803856900300104
• Goody, Jack (1973) Bridewealth and Dowry in Africa and Eurasia in Bridewealth and Dowry, ed. J. Goody and S. Tambiah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

• Jack Goody, Joan Buckley Cross-Sex Patterns of Kin Behavior: A Comment Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, 185-202 (1974) DOI: 10.1177/106939717400900301

• 1977 Ethnology and/or Cultural Anthropology in Italy: Traditions and Developments [and Comments and Reply] Vinigi Grottanelli, Giorgio Ausenda, Bernardo Bernardi, Ugo Bianchi, Y. Michal Bodemann, Jack Goody, Allison Jablonko, David I. Kertzer, Vittorio Lanternari, Antonio Marazzi, Roy A. Miller, Jr., Laura Laurencich Minelli, David M. Moss, Leonard W. Moss, H. R. H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, Diana Pinto, Pietro Scotti, Tullio Tentori. Current Anthropology
  Current Anthropology
  Current Anthropology is a peer-reviewed anthropology academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press and sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Founded in 1959 by the anthropologist Sol Tax...
  
  , Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 593–614

• 1989 Futures of the Family in Rural Africa Population and Development Review, Vol. 15, Supplement: Rural Development and Population: Institutions and Policy (1989), pp. 119–144 doi:10.2307/2807924

• 1991 Towards a Room with a View: A Personal Account of Contributions to Local Knowledge, Theory, and Research in Fieldwork and Comparative Studies Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, 1991, pp. 1–23

• 1992 Culture and its boundaries: a European view Social Anthropology 1 (1a),9–32. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.1992.tb00238.x

• 1994 Jack Goody, Cesare Poppi Flowers and Bones: Approaches to the Dead in Anglo-American and Italian Cemeteries Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 146–175

• 1996 Comparing Family Systems in Europe and Asia: Are There Different Sets of Rules? Population and Development Review: 22 (1).

• 1996 Cognitive contradictions and universals: creation and evolution in oral cultures Social Anthropology Volume 4 Issue 1 Page 1-16, February 1996. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.1996.tb00310.x

• 2002 The Anthropology of the Senses and Sensations La Ricerca Folklorica, No. 45, Antropologia delle sensazioni (Apr., 2002), pp. 17–28 doi:10.2307/1480153

• 2004 The folktale and cultural history Cahiers de littérature orale n. 56 , pp. 53–66

• 2006 From misery to luxury Social Science Information, Vol. 45, No. 3, 341-348 DOI: 10.1177/0539018406066526

• 2006 Gordon Childe, the Urban Revolution, and the Haute Cuisine: An Anthropo-archaeological View of Modern History Comparative Studies in Society and History (2006), 48: 503-519 (Issue 03 - May 2006) Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0010417506000211

External links

• Other articles: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p101681516vu0361/ http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496(197012)2%3A5%3A4%3C627%3ASODLAV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5001984956 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3195(196809)83%3A3%3C337%3ACADIG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0011-3204(196102)2%3A1%3C3%3ATCODDS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1 http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journal/v46/n4/pdf/1110492a.pdf http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0678(197412)26%3A5%3C448%3ADATIOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8537(1963)4%3A1%3C1%3AFIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713717633~db=all http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ346967&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=EJ346967 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/341654&erFrom=-1663529304162877707Guest http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0038-4801(197022)26%3A2%3C125%3ACT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-278X(196812)6%3A4%3C461%3ATMOAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-1315(197303)24%3A1%3C1%3AEACTDO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496(196706)2%3A2%3A2%3C226%3ATCOWAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496(196609)2%3A1%3A3%3C343%3ACMING%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s8150.pdf http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a739409324~db=all http://www.feem.it/NR/rdonlyres/7A086958-19BD-4AE4-861E-21A9A4D010BE/1006/11205.pdf http://dio.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/2/7 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=546432 http://ccr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/citation/9/1/21

• Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke, interview with Jack Goody. Chapter 1 of The New History: Confessions and Conversations (Polity Press, 2002). ISBN 0-7456-3020-0
• Maurice Bloch, Dan Sperber (to Jack Goody)Kinship and evolved psychological dispositions: The Mother's Brother controversy reconsidered Current Anthropology. 2002. 43 (4) 723-748
• Interview of Jack Goody by Eric Hobsbawm 18 May 1991 (film)