In this collection of nine essays, noted anthropologist Jack Goody explores his view of writing as a transforming technology, charting the differences between cultures with writing and those without in such practices as historical record keeping, religious ceremony, and the telling of time. He describes how one version of a ritual---the Bagre of the loDagaa of northern Ghana---assumed primacy over other versions when it was written down, and he shows that as societies acquired writing, verbatim...

Whilst the fundamental significance of the spoken language for human interaction is widely acknowledged, that of writing is less well known, and in this wide-ranging series of essays Jack Goody examines in depth the complex and often confused relationship between oral and literate modes of communication. He considers the interface between the written and the oral in three cultures or societies with and without writing, and that within the linguistic life of an individual. Specific analyses of...

Current theories and views on the differences in the 'mind' of human societies depend very much on a dichotomy between 'advanced' and 'primitive', or between 'open' and 'closed', or between 'domesticated' and 'savage', that is to say, between one of a whole variety of 'we-they' distinctions. Professor Goody argues that such an approach prevents any serious discussion of the mechanisms leading to long-term changes in the cognitive processes of human cultures or any adequate explanation of the changes...