Product Description

Professor Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing. Goody also examines the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love. The Theft of History discusses a number of theorists in detail, including Marx, Weber and Norbert Elias, and engages with critical admiration western historians like Fernand Braudel, Moses Finlay and Perry Anderson. Major questions of method are raised, and Goody proposes a new comparative methodology for cross-cultural analysis, one that gives a much more sophisticated basis for assessing divergent historical outcomes, and replaces outmoded simple differences between East and West. The Theft of History will be read by an unusually wide audience of historians, anthropologists and social theorists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76501 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"The author is famous; the analysis is cogent and stimulating."
--Robert L. Tignor, Princeton University, Journal of Interdisciplinary History


"The book will be welcomed to graduate seminars or to advanced classes in the historiography of world history." -Jared Poley, World History Bulletin

About the Author
Jack Goody is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John's College. Recently knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to anthropology, Professor Goody has researched and taught all over the world, is a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1980 was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Customer Reviews

Goody against Eurocentrism
Professor Sir Jack Goody, Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the American National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, is one of the world's leading anthropologists, specialized particularly in literacy and alphabetism as an anthropological and political economic phenomenon. However, in "The Theft of History", he has written an excellent and courteous refutation of Eurocentric claims in anthropology and cultural history.

"The Theft of History" refers to the way in which the non-European cultures are part of the popular received opinion in the Western world only in the denigrating, false and imperialist manner in which the 19th century colonial historians and anthropologists portrayed them, and that only insofar as they appear in supposed world history at all. This is done in similar manner as in the books of James Blaut, André Gunder Frank, Eric Wolf and so forth, only Goody is less polemical than these and focuses in particular on the cultural aspects. The first part here treads the familiar ground (at least among people who have read this before, not among the general public or even intellectuals!) of refuting Eurocentric feudalism, the 'Asiatic mode of production', Asian backwardness etc.

The rest of the book goes into the cultural-anthropological aspects, which Goody is more unique in talking about in this context. These include but are not limited to the "theft of love" (the claim 'romantic love' was an invention of High Medieval European culture), the "theft of institutions" (universities, charities, city-states as unique to Europe), and the "theft of values" (democracy, individualism, etc. as unique to Europe). Goody with much British understatement does a great job of both spotting and demolishing these claims and assumptions, and in the process is very informative about the cultural exchange between Europe and other parts of the world from very early times on. What is also interesting is that unlike most of the above mentioned authors, he does not particularly contrast Europe with Asia, but rather with Africa (where he did field work) and the Arab world.

Goody does share with Frank the problem of going overboard occasionally in wanting to dismiss useful political economic concepts that have been used Eurocentrically in the past, such as feudalism and capitalism, which throws away the baby with the bath-water. He also occasionally misses the forest for the trees, in focusing too much on the Eurocentric errors (often out of unfamiliarity rather than malice) of otherwise progressive historians without duly acknowledging their good side, such as with Sir Moses Finley/Finkelstein.

But these are minor criticisms. This book is yet another excellent introductory refutation of Eurocentric common conceptions, and due to its particular focus it is especially useful for people of a cultural history or anthropological bent.