The Culture of Flowers

by Jack Goody

Jack Goody's new book takes as its theme the symbolic and transactional uses of flowers in secular life and religious ritual from ancient Egypt to modern times. He links the use of flowers to the rise of advanced systems of agriculture, the growth of social stratification, and the spread of luxury goods, looking at the history of aesthetic horticulture in Europe and Asia. Other themes which emerge are the role of written texts in building up a culture of flowers; the importance of trade and communications in disseminating and transforming attitudes to flowers; the rejection on puritanical grounds of flowers and their artistic representation, and the multiplicity of meanings which flowers possess. Written from a broad temporal and geographical perspective, this original and wide-ranging book will appeal not only to anthropologists and social historians but also to anyone interested in flowers and their symbolic function across the centuries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology

480 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 1990

About the author

Sir John (Jack) Rankine Goody (born 27 July 1919) is a British social anthropologist. He has been a prominent teacher at Cambridge University, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1976,[1] and he is an associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. Among his main publications are Death, property and the ancestors (1962), The myth of the Bagre (1972) and The domestication of the savage mind.

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 for 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 urbanization and growth of bureaucratic institutions that modified or overrode traditional forms of social organization, such as family or tribe, identifying civilization 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 an important paper with Ian Watt (Goody and Watt, 1963), he advanced the argument that the rise of science and philosophy in classical Greece depended importantly on their invention of an efficient writing system, the alphabet. Because these factors could be applied to either to any contemporary social system or to systematic changes over time, his work is equally relevant to many disciplines.

Reviews

[Mustang Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

çiçeğin Yahudi, Hristiyan ve İslam kültüründe aldığı yerden sivil yaşamdaki rolüne ve bu rolün tarihsel gelişimine ilişkin ilginç bir kitap. Dinden edebiyata, sanattan gündelik yaşama çiceğin serüvenini anlatıyor.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent reference work for researchers and anyone wanting a deeper education on how flowers have imbued cultures around the world in the past several hundred years (and millennia, in the case of China).

[Sarah ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

un peu malaise

[Susan Mazur Stommen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this way back in grad school, but thought about it the other day and decided to share. This and his book about food are profound, yet accessible and lively.

[AskNezka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating history about the rise, decline, and rise of the use of flowers in world cultures.