Technology, Literacy, and the Evolution of Society

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An Introduction to Jack Goody’s Historical Anthropology

Rosaire Langlois

For 50 years, Jack Goody has been producing a body of work that is, arguably, the most important contribution to historical sociology and anthropology since the time of Max Weber. Rejecting the East–West divide propounded by both Marx and Weber, Goody is attempting to alter the focus and to extend the range of comparison, suggesting that a North–South contrast of the hoe cultures of sub-Saharan Africa with the plough cultures of Eurasia will provide a new outlook on some old controversies.

Demonstrating how ecological and technological factors in Africa differed so fundamentally from those in Eurasia, he clarifies the corresponding variations in the political and class ...