Goody Lectures




Sir Jack Goody (1919-2015) began his career as an Africanist. His work as an ethnographer in N. Ghana led to major contributions to the comparative study of kinship, literacy and property transmission. In later decades he has pursued these and other themes historically with reference to Eurasia, in the process exposing the deep Eurocentrism that persists within much Western scholarship. Goody's understanding of the unity of Eurasia and his conception of anthropology as a truly comparative sociology have been central to the Department of Chris Hann since its foundation. Every year since 2011 we have marked this debt to Jack Goody with a public lecture named in his honour.

 

A "memoir" by Chris Hann has been published by the British Academy.

An obituary by Keith Hart.

Video of the Goody Lecture 2020 (6 October) held by Stephen C. Levinson

Goody Lecture 2020

Title: On Technologies of the Intellect
Speaker: Stephen C. Levinson
6 October 2020 | 18:00

Video of the Goody Lecture 2019 (13 June) held by Carola Lentz

Goody Lecture 2019

Title: Class and Power in a Stateless Society: revisiting Jack Goody’s ethnography of the LoDagaa (Ghana)
Speaker: Carola Lentz
13 June 2019 | 18:00 – 19:30


Video of the Goody Lecture 2018 (28 June) held by Sylvia J. Yanagisako

Goody Lecture 2018

Title: Accumulating Family Values
Speaker: Sylvia J. Yanagisako
28 June 2018 | 18:00 – 19:30

 

Video of the Goody Lecture 2017 (11 May) held by Nur Yalman

Goody Lecture 2017

Title: On Cultural Revolutions: Observations on Myth and History in Turkey
Speaker: Nur Yalman
11 May 2017 | 18:00 – 19:30

 

Video of the Goody Lecture 2016 (9 June) held by Martine Segalen

Goody Lecture 2016

Title: On Papies and Mammies: the invention of a new parent in contemporary European kinship
Speaker:
Martine Segalen
9 June 2016 | 18:00 – 19:30

2021
Thomas Hylland Erikson: The Treadmill Paradox in the Anthropocene: unintentional consequences of competition under runaway globalisation

2020
Stephen C. Levinson: On Technologies of the Intellect

2019
Carola Lentz: Class and Power in a Stateless Society: revisiting Jack Goody’s ethnography of the LoDagaa (Ghana)

2018
Sylvia Yanagisako: Accumulating Family Values

2017
Nur Yalman: On Cultural Revolutions:observations on myth and history in Turkey

2016
Martine Segalen: On Papies and Mammies: the invention of a new parent in contemporary European kinship

2015
David Wengrow: Cities before the State in Early Eurasia

2014
Francesca Bray: Rice as Self: Eurasia and Beyond

2013
Martha Mundy: The Solace of the Past in the Unspeakable Present: The Historical Anthropology of the ‘Near East’

2012
Peter Burke: A Case of Cultural Hybridity: The European Renaissance

2011
Keith Hart: Jack Goody’s Vision of World History and Africa Today

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