Jack Goody between Social Anthropology and World History

A giant of British social anthropology, Jack Goody (1919 - 2015)laboured for sixty years to transcend the view that anthropology wasthe study of "other cultures". He wanted to move it in the direction of amore sociological, postcolonial, comparative social science. The mostimportant precondition for this science was the freeing of worldhistory from centuries of Eurocentric bias. From his base in Cambridge,Goody‘s influence and inspiration spread out internationally. InGermany, as a long-term adviser to the Max Planck Society, he played akey role in the establishment of the Max Planck Institute for SocialAnthropology in Halle (Saale) in 1999. This volume presents twelveGoody Lectures delivered in Halle between 2011 and 2022, togetherwith an unpublished lecture given in 2004 by Goody himself andbiographical and bibliographical essays by the editors.Chris Hann is Emeritus Director and Han F. Vermeulen is ResearchAssociate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.