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Rethinking the Goody Myth

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Rethinking the Goody Myth TECHNOLOG~ LITERAC~ AND THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY Implications of the Work of Jack Goody Edited by David R. Olson Michael Cole m LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 2006 Mahwah, New Jersey London 15 Rethinking the Goody Myth Michael Cole University of California Jennifer Cole University of Chicago] Among Jack Goody's numerous works, his studies of literacy have had an es- pecially influential and continuing impact on a wide range of different disci- plines. Even the briefest search in the Social Citation Index reveals that his work on this topic continues to be used by anthropologists and historians, psychologists and sociologists. The range and depth of Goody's scholarly contributions to our understanding of literacy make any attempt at a brief but comprehensive summary a difficult undertaking in any circumstances. In approaching an analysis of his contributions to literacy studies appropriate to this occasion, we seek to understand a peculiar dynamic that seems to char- acterize academic appropriations of his ideas concerning literacy and the em- pirical materials on which they are based. We begin by summarizing the major points of the initial Goody and Watt essay, "The Consequences of Literacy" (1963) which was the starting point of what we refer to in our title as the Goody myth. We then pause to exam- ine aspects of the article's sociohistorical context, including the context pro- vided by other prominent scholars writing in fields where literacy was a rec- ognized focus of attention. We believe that the construction of the myth depended in good measure on these social-historical contextual factors. Our reexamination of Goody's writing on literacy and its interpretations leads us to a somewhat ironic conclusion. According to what we are terming the Goody myth, Goody is said to believe that literacy is the autonomous driving mechanism of change that heats up "cold," homeostatic, amnesic, face-to- practices of literacy, as the appropriate unit of analysis for the study of cul- fac:, nonliterate societies, transforming them into "hot," rapidly changing, ture and mind. ratlOnahzed, bureaucratically organized, and possibly democratic societies peopled by rational, modern thinkers. As Brian Street (1984) summarizes "The claims are that literacy affects cognitive processes in some of the fol~ lowing ways: it facilitates "empathy," "abstract context-free thought," "ratio- nality," critical thought" post-operative thought '" detachment and the Written jointly with Ian Watt in 1960 at the Center for Advanced Study in kinds of logical processes exemplified by syllogisms, formal language, elabo- the Behavioral Sciences, "The Consequences of Literacy" (Goody & Watt, rated code etc." (p. 2). Sometimes this belief is met with disapproval (Ahern, 1963) starts from the following premise: We can no longer accept the 2001; Gee, 1990; Kawatoko, 1995; Street, 1984). At other times the idea of ethnocentric notion that rational thought characterizes people who live in literacy as the engine of social and intellectual change is met with approval complex societies, whereas prelogical thought is typical of simpler societies, and extended to studies of educational design and policy both domestically nor can we afford to ignore the differences between societies that represent and internationally (Gustafsson, 1991; Olson, 1989). polar opposites with respect to the complexity of their technological infra- Whatever their attitude toward his ideas, many critics and admirers alike structure. As a result, Goody and Watt set out to understand the differences ascribe to Goody the view that literacy is an autonomous causal agent in his- between civilized and primitive societies by focusing on the different ways tory. This consensus is odd because, as we shall see, from the very beginning that cultural transmission takes place in them. In primitive/oral societies, Goody explicitly rejects the technologically determinist view that his critics as- they suggest, transmission of cultural heritage takes place through a "long cribe to him. For every text fragment that contains statements that provide chain of interlocking conversations between members of the group" (Goody "clear proof" that Goody is a technological determinist, one can find just as & Watt, 1963, p. 306). Goody and Watt acknowledge that there may be clear statements that the consequences of literacy at all levels of human activ- some mnemonic devices in preliterate cultures that resist absorption into the ity are contingent on the cultural circumstances in which they are embedded. "tyranny of the present," as well as individuals who retain a critical attitude In fact, some commentators believe that the literacy thesis is without toward the past. In general, however, they conclude that the whole content merit precisely because, as his views have become more elaborated, he often of social tradition apart from the material inheritances is held in memory, emphasizes the special effect/potential/implication of a technology of com- which tends to work through a process of automatic updating, shedding as- munication (such as alphabetic writing), even while he affirms the central pects of social life that are no longer relevant (p. 307). As a result, the past is role of the society in determining what is, or is not, made of/with that tech- transmuted in the course of being transmitted. This process of continual nology. From this perspective, Goody is making two contradictory claims at transformation means that the "individual has little perception of the past once. The result is said to be incoherence or the implosion of the literacy except in terms of the present" (p. 312) and that people's perceptions of so- thesis (Halverson, 1992). cial experience are therefore kept in line with the basic Durkheimian catego- We prefer to adopt the view that Goody has, from the beginning, been at- ries that organize social life. tempting to develop an account of literacy's role in historical change and hu- Using ancient Greece as the germinal case, Goody and Watt (1963) hy- man consciousness that does justice to both the peculiarities of the medium pothesize that the widespread use of alphabetic literacy, which they suggest of communication and the sociohistorical context. Time and again, in vari- was first attained in 5th and 6th-century Athens, had important effects on ous turns of phrase, he argues, "I want to maintain a balance between the re- many aspects of social and mental life. They are careful to note that the de- fusal to admit differences in cognitive processes or cultural developments on gree to which literacy actually produces such changes varies "according to the one hand and extreme dualism or distinction on the other" (Goody, the system's intrinsic efficacy as a means of communication, and according to 1977, pp. 16-17). These goals present difficult dilemmas that to date have the social constraints placed upon it" (p. 311). They also point out that the not been successfully resolved, but it is not clear why they should entail a widespread diffusion of the alphabet in Greece was "materially assisted by necessary contradiction; instead, the challenge is to articulate the dynamic various social, economic and technological factors" (p. 318). These factors Interplay of tool and context that a balanced position requires. In what fol- included an economic revival that followed on the Mycenaean collapse in lows, we offer a reading of Goody's work that sees the route to achieving the the 12th-century, a relatively decentralized social system and increased con- needed balance and sense of complementarity in that. emerging stream of so- tact with the East that brought "material prosperity and technological ad- CIal SCIence research and theory that focuses on cultural practices, including vance" (p. 318). As a further caveat, they suggest that even when a society is text, of the exact words of the story" (p. 138). Classics was also the prove- concepts, he believed, reorganize the spontaneous, everyday concepts that nance of Eric Havelock, whose monograph, Preface to Plato (1963), extended children have acquired before they are exposed to school. the Perry-Lord thesis beyond a focus on the role of literacy in the production Drawing on his own cultural circumstances, Vygotsky (1934) assumed and reproduction of poetry to encompass a general "cast of thought, or a that writing was central to this process of change. In a manner that echoes mental condition," which, he said, came to dominate Greece in the centuries Goody and Watt (1963) (and a good many psychologists during the 20th- preceding Plato. In Havelock's view, the crucial foundation for the pervasive century), Vygotsky believed that the acquisition of literacy/schooling re- consequences of literacy was the alphabet. Here he was following that thread quires the ability to think in terms of a double abstraction: Language pro- of Goody and Watt's (1963) essay in which they suggested that phonetic vides a first-order abstract representation of experience and writing, and a writing systems are especially well suited for "expressing every nuance of in- new materialization of language involves a second process of abstraction. As dividual thought" (p. 315) in contrast with syllabic or other writing systems, he put it, this materialized/abstracted nature of written language "requires a which "were too clumsy and complicated to foster widespread literacy" (p. high degree of abstraction. Written speech lacks intonation and expression. 312). It lacks all the aspects of speech that are reflected in sound. Written speech Havelock (1978) argued that the alphabet's effects went beyond mere is speech in thought, in representations. It lacks the most basic form of oral rendering of text into language and vice versa; it was the foundation for a speech; it lacks material sound" (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 202). new and more powerful mode of thought: "Atomism and the alphabet alike Writing also entails a different form of social interaction: "[Written were theoretic constructs, manifestations of a capacity for abstract analysis, speech] is speech without an interlocutor ..
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