By Jack Goody
Within the robbery of heritage Jack Goody builds on his personal past paintings to increase extra his hugely influential critique of what he sees because the pervasive Eurocentric or occidentalist biases of lots western ancient writing, and the resultant 'theft' by way of the West of the achievements of alternative cultures within the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism and love. Goody, one of many world's such a lot distinct anthropologists, increases questions about theorists, historians and technique, and proposes a brand new comparative method of cross-cultural research which permits for extra scope in reading heritage than an East as opposed to West type.
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Extra info for The Theft of History
Sample text
17 But these achievements were constantly played down in relation to the Greek, whose position was always assessed from the standpoint of the later European dominance of the world, that is, teleologically. 18 16 18 17 Goody 1987. Evans 1921–35. See von Staden 1992 for a comprehensive and sensitive discussion of this point. 32 A socio-cultural genealogy A type of alphabet, one that did not represent vowels but only consonants, had long been available in Asia, from about 1500 , where it had permitted a big extension of literacy among Semitic-speaking peoples, Phoenicians, Hebrews, speakers of Aramaic, later of Arabic too.
The concepts of history and the social sciences, however hard scholars may struggle for a Weberian ‘objectivity’, are more closely bound to the world that gave them birth. For example, the terms ‘Antiquity’ and 12 Boas 1904: 2. Who stole what? Time and space 23 ‘feudalism’ have clearly been defined with a purely European context in view, mindful of the particular historical development of that continent. Problems arise in thinking about the application of these concepts to other times and to other places, when their very real limitations come to the fore.
See von Staden 1992 for a comprehensive and sensitive discussion of this point. 32 A socio-cultural genealogy A type of alphabet, one that did not represent vowels but only consonants, had long been available in Asia, from about 1500 , where it had permitted a big extension of literacy among Semitic-speaking peoples, Phoenicians, Hebrews, speakers of Aramaic, later of Arabic too. 19 Moreover, with other types of script mankind has performed miracles in terms of accumulating and diffusing knowledge, for example using the logographic scripts of the Far East.