Bøger af Jack Goody

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.

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 argues that the divergence came with the Industrial Revolution and that the earlier bourgeois revolution of the sixteenth century was but one among many Eurasia-wide expressions of developing mercantile and manufacturing activity. This original book casts new light on the history of capitalism, industrialization and modernity, and will be essential reading for all those interested in the great debate about the economic rise of the West.

Surveys phenomena as diverse as the uniqueness of the European family, the development of romantic love, the evolution of national and regional cuisines, and the globalization of Chinese food. This book shows that the ethnocentricity of much of Western scholarship has distorted the comprehension of the East and of developments in Europe.

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

The idea of long-term European dominance is characteristic of most evolutionary theories of human culture and society in the 19th century. 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. This book dismantles this Eurocentric view of the world.

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.

This volume is a study of mortuary customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa, in research for this project the author spent over 100 days attending funeral ceremonies and attended 25 burial services.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Metals, Culture and Capitalism is an ambitious, broad-ranging account of the search for metals in Europe and the Near East from the Bronze Age to the Industrial Revolution and the relationship between this and economic activity, socio-political structures and the development of capitalism. Continuing his criticism of Eurocentric traditions, a theme explored in The Theft of History (2007) and Renaissances (2009), Jack Goody takes the Bronze Age as a starting point for a balanced account of the East and the West, seeking commonalities that recent histories overlook. Considering the role of metals in relation to early cultures, the European Renaissance and 'modernity' in general, Goody explores how the search for metals entailed other forms of knowledge, as well as the arts, leading to changes that have defined Europe and the contemporary world. This landmark text, spanning centuries, cultures and continents, promises to inspire scholars and students across the social sciences.

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.

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.

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. This is followed by four case studies.

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.