The East in the West

by Jack Goody

The East in the West reassesses Western views of Asia, which much European history and social theory has seen as "static" or "backward." Jack Goody challenges these Eurocentric assumptions, including the notion of a special Western rationality, and differences in mercantile activity. Other factors "inhibiting" the East's development, such as the role of the family, have also been greatly exaggerated, and have contributed to a misunderstanding of both Eastern and Western history and society. This wide-ranging and provocative book begins to redress the balance.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 1996

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

[Emily]

Let's say your grandpa or elderly world history professor says something like, "Europeans and other white people are the kings of men because they are rugged individualists, and they invented double entry bookkeeping." You can hand them this book, case closed, they'll shut up forever, and spend the rests of their lives talking about how Europe and Asia are co-inheritors of the urban civilizations of the Bronze Age and both progressed technologically and socially at similar rates, with Western Europe being rather late to the party in some ways that enabled it to improve upon things the rest of humanity had already developed.

Problem: This book is boring as hell. There are plenty of interesting historical tidbits and asides but the way it's written is dry as dust and slogging through it will make your eyes numb. The East in the West is a hugely important refutation of two hundred years of literature, written by the British, about how the British are superior, the epitome of civilization, the best, etc. However, a lot of us in the 21st century already at least kinda know that's not true and a long discourse on how family units run businesses in all cultures, including Europe, isn't news nowadays. Absolutely worth skimming, but don't read the whole thing unless you're forced to by your professor, which some of you undoubtedly will be.