The Expansive Moment: The rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa 1918–1970

by Jack Goody

Jack Goody's new book explores the history of social anthropology as an emergent discipline in the interwar years. It focuses on key practitioners, such as Malinowski and Fortes, and explores how far ideological approaches adopted by social anthropologists were defined by the institutions in which they developed, particularly in response to key issues of the time: colonialism, anti-Semitism and communism. Goody focuses on Britain and Africa, and draws on his own wide-ranging personal fieldwork experience.

Genres: Anthropology

244 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 1995

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

[Wendelle]

it's a copiously detailed personal history of British social anthropology written by one of its 2nd-generation leaders. One stated motive for this publication was to redeem the discipline from its association with British colonialism and empire-building, through an emphasis on the independence of the activities and research paradigms of the anthropologists involved from their funding sources (the British government).

[Mona · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Expansive Moment is a curious piece of literature. Goody presents his tome as a historical review of the development of British anthropology, particularly under the auspices of Stanislaw Malinowski at the London School of Economics. It is an account put together largely through the collection of personal correspondence, which Goody acknowledges has only focused on certain materials while leaving out others (5). It is also largely personal: Goody personally knew the anthropologists concerned, or their students, and the work in fact emerged as a by-product of writing an obituary to Meyer Fortes (4). Given the vested interest of the author in presenting himself (indeed he dedicates a chapter to his own contributions to the field (118-143)) and his forebears in a positive light, and the defensive tone he takes in presenting some of his arguments (especially that regarding the role of colonialism in anthropology), The Expansive Moment can hardly be considered a work of objective history. In fact, it arouses great suspicion regarding what has been left out. Goody attempts to divest early British anthropology in Africa of its colonial roots. He uses two main lines of argument that are emphasized throughout the book: 1. That anthropologists at the time were largely independent in terms of the subject matter they chose to analyze, and thus did not contribute to colonial projects, which many of them opposed (he makes a point of emphasizing the 'leftist views' (9) held by certain persons, including Kirchhoff, who, despite the deceptive title of the third chapter, never “[made] it to the field as a Jew and a Red” (42-57)); 2. That the primary organism funding these anthropologists, namely the Rockefeller foundation, was not interested in supporting colonialism because it was, allegedly, an American foundation interested in reform. Although these claims hold some truth, they are either deliberately deceptive or bely an embarrassing lack of insight on Goody's part.

Jack Goody's book is an intriguing account of the early days of British anthropology. But it appears that a lot is left out or ignored, and that the primary interest of the book lies not in what it says, but in what it leaves unsaid. By reading between the lines, one can gain some insight into the continued influence of funding institutions on academic freedom, and how anthropologists' own vested interests can lead them to disguise or deny truth. Unfortunately for Goody, he does more to undermine his own argument than to support it. The book seems to fly in the face of what is today considered to be common knowledge about anthropology's less than savoury underpinnings.