The Theft of History (Google eBook) 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. |
What people are saying - Write a review
Review: The Theft of History
User Review - Bűkfeyes-Rákossy Zsombor - Goodreads1-25 page 286-306 page Read full review
Review: The Theft of History
User Review - Zachary Moore - GoodreadsGoody's book provides a solid corrective to some of the more egregious aspects of eurocentric history, largely by focusing on a historiography of different "unique" aspects of European history for ... Read full review
Common terms and phrases
achievements activity Africa agriculture ancient Ancient Greece Anderson 1974b Antiquity Arab argued Asia Asiatic behaviour bourgeoisie Braudel Bronze Age capitalism capitalist Carthage centres certainly China Chinese Christian cities civilization claim classical collapse commercial complex concept context culture democracy despotism dominant earlier early east eastern economy Elias Elias’s elsewhere Elvin emergence empire especially Eurasia eurocentric European example exchange existed fact feudalism Finley freedom Ghana Goody Greece Greek growth historians human idea important India Industrial Revolution institutions invention Islam Italy kind later madrasa major manufacture Marx medieval Mediterranean mercantile merchants Mesopotamia modern science Muslim Needham nineteenth century notion ofthe Ottoman partly period Phoenician poetry political problem regimes religion religious Renaissance Roman romantic love Rome scholars secular seen silk similar slave social societies sociogenesis sphere textiles tion towns trade tradition troubadours Turkey unique urban Weber western Europe writing
Popular passages
Page 181 - The concept of culture is a value-concept. Empirical reality becomes "culture" to us because and insofar as we relate it to value ideas. It includes those segments and only those segments of reality which have become significant to us because of this value-relevance.
Page 18 - They have, however, never been able to bring themselves to print books and set up public clocks. They hold that their scriptures, that is, their sacred books, would no longer be scriptures if they were printed ; and if they established public clocks, they think that the authority of their muezzins and their ancient rites would suffer diminution. In other matters they pay great respect to the time-honoured customs of foreign nations, even to the detriment of their own religious scruples.
Page 270 - un secteur du cceur, un des aspects eternels de rhomme';1 (ii) that the feeling of amour courtois is not confined to courtly or chivalric society, but is reflected even in the earliest recorded popular verse of Europe (which almost certainly had a long oral tradition behind it); (iii) that researches into European courtly poetry should therefore be concerned with the variety of sophisticated and learned development of courtois themes, not with seeking specific origins for the themes themselves.
Page 68 - One group of scholars uses the word to describe the technical arrangements by which vassals become dependents of lords, and landed property (with attached economic benefits) became organized as dependent tenures of fiefs. The other group of scholars uses feudalism as a general word which sums up the dominant forms of political and social organization during certain centuries of the Middle Ages' (1956: 15)One can discern two trends in the narrower technological use of the term feudal.
Page 270 - I would propose instead: (i) that 'the new feeling' of amour courtois is at least as old as Egypt of the second millennium BC, and might indeed occur at any time or place: that it is, as Professor Marrou suspected, 'un secteur du...
Page 181 - Culture" is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
Page 163 - One gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion.
Page 65 - For very many years past the people of Tyre have kept public records, compiled and very carefully preserved by the state, of the memorable events in their internal history and in their relations with foreign nations...
Page 56 - The pre-Greek world - the world of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Assyrians; and I cannot refrain from adding the Mycenaeans - was, in a very profound sense, a world without free men, in the sense in which the west has come to understand that concept. It was equally a world in which chattel slavery played no role of any consequence.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Theft of History |
| Author | Jack Goody |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 2007 |
| ISBN | 1139461184, 9781139461184 |
| Subjects | › › History / General History / Historiography History / World Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural Social Science / Anthropology / General Social Science / Sociology / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |