Implications of Endogamy in the Southwest Eurasian Highlands: Another look at Jack Goody’s theory of production, property and kinship

Abstract

Reviving interest in Jack Goody’s comparative and historical work on systems of production, kinship and state organization prompts us to revisit his analysis in ‘Production and Reproduction’–looking both at the data and at the explanatory framework. While we accept Goody’s emphasis on the central importance of productive technology, we nevertheless contend that he underplays the role of kinship and marriage systems in fostering agricultural production, the growth of state power and inequality. We argue that this oversight results from Goody’s ‘resolute materialism’ and that a more realistic view requires a more systematic formulation of the interactions between pragmatic rationality and the logic of social identity and cohesion. We develop an alternative argument, adding a Maussian analysis of exchange and identity and evaluate its implications using Goody’s data and our ethnographies. Finally, we consider the implications this raises for future research–and how these might be answered by ethnography and comparison.