Sir Jack Goody FBA
Goody in 2009
Born	John Rankine Goody (1919-07-27)27 July 1919 Hammersmith, England
Died	16 July 2015(2015-07-16) (aged 95) Cambridge, England
Spouses	Mary Joan Wright ​ (divorced)​ Esther Newcomb Goody ​ ​ (m. 1956, divorced)​ [1] Juliet Mitchell ​ (m. 2000)​
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Oxford St John's College, Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	Meyer Fortes
Other advisor	E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Academic work
Discipline	Anthropology
Sub-discipline	Social anthropology
Institutions	St John's College, Cambridge

Sir John Rankine GoodyFBA (27 July 1919 – 16 July 2015) was an Englishsocial anthropologist. He was a prominent lecturer atCambridge University, and wasWilliam Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1984.

Among his main publications wereDeath, property and the ancestors (1962),Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa (1971),The myth of the Bagre (1972) andThe domestication of the savage mind (1977).^[2]

Born on 27 July 1919, he was the son of Harold Goody (1885–1969) and Lilian Rankine Goody (1885–1962). Goody grew up inWelwyn Garden City andSt Albans, where he attendedSt Albans School. He went up toSt John's College, Cambridge to study English literature in 1938, where he met leftist intellectuals likeEric Hobsbawm,Raymond Williams andE. P. Thompson.

Goody left university to fight inWorld War II.^[3] Followingofficer training, he was commissioned into theSherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment),British Army, on 23 March 1940 as asecond lieutenant.^[4] Fighting in North Africa, he was captured by the Germans and spent three years inprisoner-of-war camps.^[5] At the end of the war he held the rank oflieutenant.^[6] Following his release, he returned to Cambridge to continue his studies.^[3]

He officially relinquished his commission on 19 January 1952.^[6]

Inspired byJames George Frazer'sGolden Bough and the archaeologistV. Gordon Childe, he transferred to Archaeology and Anthropology when he resumed university study in 1946.Meyer Fortes was his first mentor in Social Anthropology. After fieldwork with theLoWiili andLoDagaa peoples in northernGhana, Goody increasingly turned tocomparative study of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Between 1954 and 1984, he taughtsocial anthropology at Cambridge University, serving as theWilliam Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 until 1984.^[7] He gave theLuce Lectures atYale University—Fall 1987.

Goody has pioneered the comparativeanthropology ofliteracy, attempting to gauge the preconditions and effects of writing as a technology. He also published about the history of the family and theanthropology of inheritance. More recently, he has written on the anthropology of flowers and food.

Goody died on 16 July 2015, aged 95. His funeral was held on 29 July at the West Chapel, Cambridge City Crematorium.^[5]

In 1976, Goody was electedFellow of the British Academy (FBA).^[2] He was an associate of theUS National Academy of Sciences. In the 2005Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed aKnight Bachelor "for services to Social Anthropology", and therefore granted the use of thetitlesir.^[8] In 2006, he was appointedCommandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by theFrench Republic.^[3]

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 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 urbanisation and growth of bureaucratic institutions that modified or overrode traditional forms of social organisation, such as family or tribe, identifying civilisation 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 a paper withIan Watt (Goody and Watt 1963), he advanced the argument that the rise of science and philosophy in classical Greece depended on the invention of thealphabet. As these factors could be applied to any contemporary social system or to systematic changes over time, his work is equally relevant to many disciplines.^[9]

• 1956The Social Organisation of the LoWiili (London, HMSO), 2nd ed. 1976, London, published for the International African Institute by the Oxford University Press
• 1962Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa, Stanford, Stanford University PressISBN 0422980803^[10][11][12]
• 1968 ed.,Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into German and Spanish.^[13][14]
• 1971Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa, Oxford, Oxford University Press
• 1971The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 978-0521096607
• 1972The Myth of the Bagre, Oxford, Oxford University PressISBN 0198151349^[15][16][17]
• 1973 ed.,The Character of Kinship, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press^[18][19]
• 1974 withStanley Jeyaraja Tambiah,Bridewealth and Dowry, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 978-0521201698
• 1976Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 978-0521290883
• 1977The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish.
• 1982Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; translated into Spanish, French and Portuguese.
• 1983The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese.^[20]
• 1986The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; translated into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese.
• 1987The Interface Between the Written and the Oral, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 0521337941
• 1990The 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, Cambridge University PressISBN 0521367611
• 1993The Culture of Flowers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; translated into French and Italian.
• 1995The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918–1970, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press^[21]
• 1996The East in the West, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; translated into French and Italian.
• 1997Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence Towards Images, Theatre, Fictions, Relics and Sexuality, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers; translated into Spanish and French (Paris, La Découverte).
• 1998Food and Love: A Cultural History of East and West, London, VersoISBN 185984829X
• 2000The European Family: An Historico-Anthropological Essay (Making of Europe), Oxford, Blackwell PublishersISBN 978-0631201564
• 2000The Power of the Written Tradition, Washington and London, Smithsonian Institution PressISBN 978-1560989622
• 2004Islam in Europe, Cambridge, Polity PressISBN 0-7456-3193-2^[22]
• 2004Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate, Cambridge, Polity PressISBN 978-0745631905; translated into French, Polish and Turkish.
• 2004Comparative Studies In Kinship, London and New York, RoutledgeISBN 0415330106
• 2006The Theft of History, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 0521870690; translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish.
• 2008Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
• 2010Myth, Ritual and the Oral, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 978-0521768016 ; translated into French and Turkish
• 2010Renaissances: The One or the Many?, Cambridge, Cambridge University PressISBN 978-0521768016 ; translated into Chinese, French, Italian, Polish, Turkish
• 2012Metals, Culture and Capitalism: An Essay on the Origins of the Modern World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
• 2018Changing Social Structure in Ghana: Essays in the Comparative Sociology of a New State and an Old Tradition, London and New York, Routledge

• 1956 Jack GoodyA Comparative Approach to Incest and Adultery,British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Dec. 1956), pp. 286–305doi:10.2307/586694JSTOR 586694
• 1957Fields 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. 75–104doi:10.2307/2843972JSTOR 2843972
• GOODY, J. 1959.The Mother's Brother and the Sister's Son in West Africa, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 89:61–88responseArchived 20 June 2021 at theWayback Machine
• 1961 Jack GoodyReligion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Jun. 1961), pp. 142–164doi:10.2307/586928JSTOR 586928
• 1963 Jack Goody, Ian WattThe Consequences of Literacy Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr. 1963), pp. 304–345JSTOR 177651
• 1969Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan. 1969), pp. 55–78JSTOR 178288
• 1972Taboo WordsMan, New Series, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar. 1972), p. 137JSTOR 2799863
• 1973 Goody, J.[Polygyny, economy and the role of women]. In J. Goody (Ed.),The character of kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973
• 1973Inheritance, 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 BuckleyCross-Sex Patterns of Kin Behavior: A Comment Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, 185–202 (1974)doi:10.1177/106939717400900301
• 1977Ethnology 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, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec. 1977), pp. 593–614JSTOR 2741501
• 1989Futures of the Family in Rural Africa Population and Development Review, Vol. 15, Supplement: Rural Development and Population: Institutions and Policy (1989), pp. 119–144doi:10.2307/2807924JSTOR 2807924
• 1991Towards 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. 1–23JSTOR 2155791
• 1992Culture 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 PoppiFlowers 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. 146–175JSTOR 179330
• 1996Comparing Family Systems in Europe and Asia: Are There Different Sets of Rules? Population and Development Review: 22 (1).
• 1996Cognitive 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
• 2002The Anthropology of the Senses and Sensations La Ricerca Folklorica, No. 45, Antropologia delle sensazioni (Apr. 2002), pp. 17–28doi:10.2307/1480153JSTOR 1480153
• 2004The folktale and cultural history Cahiers de littérature orale n. 56, pp. 53–66
• 2006From misery to luxury Social Science Information, Vol. 45, No. 3, 341–348doi:10.1177/0539018406066526
• 2006Gordon 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 Pressdoi:10.1017/S0010417506000211

Wikiquote has quotations related toJack Goody.

• Jack Goody publications indexed byMicrosoft Academic
• Other articles:
  • Goody, Jack (1975). "Schools, education, and the social system: Some utopian suggestions".Interchange.6 (4):1–5.doi:10.1007/BF02145342.S2CID 143071408.
  • Goody, Jack (1970). "Sideways or Downwards? Lateral and Vertical Succession, Inheritance and Descent in Africa and Eurasia".Man.5 (4):627–638.doi:10.2307/2799107.JSTOR 2799107.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 1968). "Consensus and Dissent in Ghana".Political Science Quarterly.83 (3):337–352.doi:10.2307/2147503.JSTOR 2147503.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 1961). "The Classification of Double Descent Systems".Current Anthropology.2 (1):3–25.doi:10.1086/200156.JSTOR 2739593.S2CID 143635269.
  • Goody, Jack. R. (2003). "Religion and Development: Some comparative considerations".Development.46 (4):64–67.doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110492.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 1974). "Death and the Interpretation of Culture: A Bibliographic Overview".American Quarterly.26 (5):448–455.doi:10.2307/2711884.JSTOR 2711884.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 1963)."Feudalism in Africa?".The Journal of African History.4 (1):1–18.doi:10.1017/s0021853700003674.JSTOR 179609.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 2002). "Bitter icons and ethnic cleansing 1".History and Anthropology.13 (1):1–12.doi:10.1080/02757200290002851.S2CID 143746024.
  • Goody, Jack (30 November 1985)."Writing, Religion and Revolt in Bahia".Visible Language.20 (3):318–43.
  • MauriceBloch, by; DanSperber (17 July 2015). "Kinship and Evolved Psychological Dispositions".Current Anthropology.43 (5): 723.doi:10.1086/341654.S2CID 13963476.
  • Goody, Jack (1970). "Cousin Terms".Southwestern Journal of Anthropology.26 (2):125–142.doi:10.1086/soutjanth.26.2.3629307.JSTOR 3629307.S2CID 224837271.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 1968)."The Myth of a State".The Journal of Modern African Studies.6 (4):461–473.doi:10.1017/s0022278x00017705.JSTOR 159327.
  • Goody, Jack (1 January 1973). "Evolution and Communication: The Domestication of the Savage Mind".The British Journal of Sociology.24 (1):1–12.doi:10.2307/588794.JSTOR 588794.PMID 4705137.S2CID 3552920.
  • Goody, Jack; Goody, Esther (1 January 1967). "The Circulation of Women and Children in Northern Ghana".Man.2 (2):226–248.doi:10.2307/2799489.JSTOR 2799489.
  • Goody, Jack; Goody, Esther (1 January 1966). "Cross-Cousin Marriage in Northern Ghana".Man.1 (3):343–355.doi:10.2307/2796796.JSTOR 2796796.
  • [1]
  • "No East nor West?".Economy and Society.27 (1):139–148. 1 February 1998.doi:10.1080/03085149800000007.
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20080911060913/http://www.feem.it/NR/rdonlyres/7A086958-19BD-4AE4-861E-21A9A4D010BE/1006/11205.pdf
  • Goody, Jack (1 May 2005). "Democracy, Values and Modes of Representation".Diogenes.52 (2):7–18.doi:10.1177/0392192105052611.S2CID 143518626.
  • Goody, Jack (1 November 2006). "Heidegger, Rorty and the Eastern Thinkers: A Hermeneutics of Cross-Cultural Understanding. By Wei Zhang. pp. 127. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2006".Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.16 (3):330–332.doi:10.1017/S1356186306326478.S2CID 162596558.
  • Buckley, Joan; Goody, Jack (1 February 1974). "Problems Involved in Sample Selection".Cross-Cultural Research.9 (1):21–22.doi:10.1177/106939717400900110.S2CID 144065274.
• Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke,interview with Jack Goody. Chapter 1 ofThe New History: Confessions and Conversations (Polity Press, 2002).ISBN 0745630200
• Maurice Bloch, Dan Sperber (to Jack Goody)Kinship and evolved psychological dispositions: The Mother's Brother controversy reconsideredArchived 20 June 2021 at theWayback Machine Current Anthropology. 2002. 43 (4) 723–748
• Interview of Jack Goody by Eric Hobsbawm 18 May 1991 (film)
• Jack Goody at "Pioneers of Qualitative Research" from the Economic and Social Data ServiceArchived 16 June 2013 at theWayback Machine

• 1919 births
• 2015 deaths
• English anthropologists
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• Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
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