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Jack Goody

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Sir Jack Goody
Goody in 2009
Born
John Rankine Goody

(1919-07-27)27 July 1919
Hammersmith, England
Died16 July 2015(2015-07-16) (aged 95)
Cambridge, England
Spouses
  • Mary Joan Wright
    (divorced)
  • Esther Newcomb Goody
    (m. 1956, divorced)
    [1]
  • (m. 2000)
Academic background
Alma mater
Doctoral advisorMeyer Fortes
Other advisorsE. E. Evans-Pritchard
Academic work
DisciplineAnthropology
Sub-disciplineSocial anthropology
InstitutionsSt John's College, Cambridge

Sir John Rankine Goody FBA (27 July 1919 – 16 July 2015) was an English social anthropologist. He was a prominent lecturer at Cambridge University, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1984.

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

Early life and education

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Born 27 July 1919, His parents were Harold Goody (1885–1969) and Lilian Rankine Goody (1885–1962). Goody grew up in Welwyn Garden City and St Albans, where he attended St Albans School. He went up to St John's College, Cambridge to study English literature in 1938, where he met leftist intellectuals like Eric Hobsbawm, Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson.

Military service

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

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

Academic career

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Inspired by James George Frazer's Golden Bough and the archaeologist V. 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 the LoWiili and LoDagaa peoples in northern Ghana, Goody increasingly turned to comparative study of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Between 1954 and 1984, he taught social anthropology at Cambridge University, serving as the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 until 1984.[7] He gave the Luce Lectures at Yale University—Fall 1987.

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

Later life

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

Honours

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In 1976, Goody was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[2] He was an associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. In the 2005 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Knight Bachelor "for services to Social Anthropology", and therefore granted the use of the title sir.[8] In 2006, he was appointed Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Republic.[3]

Works

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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 with Ian Watt (Goody and Watt 1963), he advanced the argument that the rise of science and philosophy in classical Greece depended on the invention of the alphabet. 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]

Books

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Selected articles

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Notes

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  1. ^ "In Remembrance of Dr Esther Goody". Department of Social Anthropology - University of Cambridge. 19 January 2018.
  2. ^ a b "The Fellowship – Fellows Archive". British Academy. Archived from the original on 20 December 2007. Retrieved 11 July 2007.
  3. ^ a b c "Sir Jack Goody, social anthropologist - obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 30 July 2015. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  4. ^ "No. 34821". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 March 1940. pp. 1900–1902.
  5. ^ a b "Professor Sir Jack Goody: 1919 – 2015". St John's College, Cambridge. 17 July 2015. Archived from the original on 3 January 2017. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  6. ^ a b "No. 39442". The London Gazette (Supplement). 15 January 1952. p. 380.
  7. ^ Venn database of Cambridge University offices and officers Archived 14 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "No. 57665". The London Gazette (Supplement). 11 June 2005. p. 1.
  9. ^ David R. Olson, ed. (2006). Technology, Literacy and the evolution of society: implications of the work of Jack Goody. Michael Cole. Mahwah, New Jersey – London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associated, Publishers. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007.
  10. ^ Hoebel, E. Adamson (1 January 1966). "Review of Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa". American Anthropologist. 68 (4): 1039–1040. doi:10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00330. JSTOR 670436.
  11. ^ Hoebel, E. Adamson (1966). "Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the Lo Dagaa of West Africa . Jack Goody". American Anthropologist. 68 (4): 1039–1040. doi:10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00330.
  12. ^ Keesing, Hilary (2012). "Death, Property, and the Ancestors: A Reconsideration of Goody's Concepts". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. 40 (1): 40–49. doi:10.2307/1157567. JSTOR 1157567. S2CID 145582091.
  13. ^ Foster, Philip (1970). "Review of Literacy in Traditional Societies". The School Review. 78 (4): 577–580. doi:10.1086/442938. JSTOR 1084095.
  14. ^ Goody, Jack (19 December 1975). Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29005-0.
  15. ^ Grindal, Bruce (1 January 1975). "Review of The Myth of the Bagre". American Anthropologist. 77 (4): 952. doi:10.1525/aa.1975.77.4.02a00830. JSTOR 674868.
  16. ^ Call, Daniel F. Mc (1 January 1973). "Review of The Myth of the Bagre". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 6 (4): 708–711. doi:10.2307/217243. JSTOR 217243.
  17. ^ Grindal, Bruce (1975). "The Myth of the Bagre . Jack Goody". American Anthropologist. 77 (4): 952. doi:10.1525/aa.1975.77.4.02a00830.
  18. ^ Graburn, Nelson H. H. (1 January 1977). "Review of The Character of Kinship". American Journal of Sociology. 82 (5): 1156–1159. doi:10.1086/226456. JSTOR 2777839.
  19. ^ Graburn, Nelson H. H. (1976). "The Character of Kinship . Jack Goody". American Anthropologist. 78 (2): 400. doi:10.1525/aa.1976.78.2.02a00740.
  20. ^ Zaretsky, Eli (1 January 1985). Goody, Jack; Mitterauer, Michael; Sieder, Reinhard; Segalen, Martine (eds.). "New Work on the History of the Family". Theory and Society. 14 (3): 371–379. doi:10.1007/bf00161283. JSTOR 657120. S2CID 144075629.
  21. ^ Moore, Sally Falk (1 January 1997). "Review of The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970". American Ethnologist. 24 (1): 211–212. doi:10.1525/ae.1997.24.1.211. JSTOR 646577.
  22. ^ Maroša, Petra (2005). "Islam in Europe". Journal of International Relations and Development. 8 (3): 311–314. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jird.1800049. S2CID 144225510.
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Academic offices
Preceded by William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology
1973–1984
Succeeded by