Born on 27 July 1919, Goody grew up in Welwyn Garden City and St Albans, where he attended St Albans School . He went up to St John's College, Cambridge to study English Literature in 1938, where he came to know leftist intellectuals like Eric Hobsbawm.

Fighting in North Africa in World War II, he was captured by the Germans and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camps.

Inspired by reading Frazer's Golden Bough and Gordon Childe, he transferred to Archaeology and Anthropology when he resumed university study in 1946. After fieldwork in Gonja in northern Ghana, Goody increasingly turned to comparative study of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Between 1954 and 1984, he taught social anthropology at Cambridge University, serving as the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 until 1984. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1976 and has also has been knighted by the Queen. Gave the Luce Lectures at Yale University-Fall 1987

Goody has pioneered the comparative anthropology of literacy, attempting to gauge the causal preconditions and effects of writing as a technology. He also wrote substantially on the history of the family and the anthropology of inheritance. More recently, he has written on the anthropology of flowers and food.

Jack Goody explained social structure and social change primarily in terms of three major factors. The first was the development of intensive forms of agriculture that allowed for the accumulation of surplus — surplus explained many aspects of cultural practice from marriage to funerals as well as the great divide between African and Eurasian societies. Second, he explained social change in terms of urbanization and growth of bureaucratic institutions that modified or overrode traditional forms of social organization, such as family or tribe, identifying civilization as “the culture of cities”. And third, he attached great weight to the technologies of communication as instruments of psychological and social change. He associated the beginnings of writing with the task of managing surplus and, in an important paper with Ian Watt (Goody and Watt, 1963), he advanced the argument that the rise of science and philosophy in classical Greece depended importantly on their invention of an efficient writing system, the alphabet. Because these factors could be applied to either to any contemporary social system or to systematic changes over time, his work is equally relevant to many disciplines.

Books

• 1956 The social organisation of the LoWiili (H.M.S.O.), 2nd ed. 1976 (London, published for the International African Institute by the Oxford U.P.)
• 1962 Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa (Stanford, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0422980803). reviews: [1] [2] [3]
• 1968 ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into German and Spanish. reviews: [4] [5]
• 1972 The Myth of the Bagre (Oxford, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198151349). reviews: [6] [7] [8]

• 1973 ed., The Character of Kinship (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973). reviews: [9] [10]

• 1976 Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain 1976 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521290880

• 1977 The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977); translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish.

• 1982 Cooking,Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into Spanish, French and Portuguese.

• 1983 The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese. review: [11]

• 1986 The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese.
• The Interface Between the Written and the Oral 1987 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521337941
• 1990 The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive: Systems of Marriage and the Family in the Pre-Industrial Societies of Eurasia (Studies in Literacy, the Family, Culture and the State) Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521367611
• 1993 The Culture of Flowers (Cambridge); translated into French and Italian.
• (1995) The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) review: [12]
• 1996 The East in the West (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); translated into French and Italian.
• 1997 Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images,Theatre,Fictions,Relics and Sexuality (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers); translated into Spanish.
• 1998 Food and Love: A Cultural History of East and West (London, Verso). ISBN 185984829X
• 2000 The European Family: An Historico-anthropological Essay (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers).
• 2000 The Power of the Written Tradition (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London)
• 2004 Islam in Europe Polity Press, Cambridge, 178pp. ISBN 0 7456 3193 2. review: [13]
• 2004 Comparative Studies In Kinship ISBN 0415330106
• 2007 The Theft of History Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521870690

Selected articles

• 1956 Jack Goody A Comparative Approach to Incest and Adultery, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Dec., 1956), pp. 286—305 doi:10.2307/586694

• 1957 Fields of Social Control Among the LoDagaba The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan. - Jun., 1957), pp. 75—104 doi:10.2307/2843972

• GOODY, J. 1959. The Mother's Brother and the Sister's Son in West Africa. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 89:61-88 response

• 1961 Jack Goody Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Jun., 1961), pp. 142—164 doi:10.2307/586928

• 1963 Jack Goody, Ian Watt The Consequences of Literacy Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 304—345

• 1969 Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 55—78

• 1972 Taboo Words Man, New Series, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), p. 137

• 1973 Goody, J. [Polygyny, economy and the role of women]. In J. Goody (Ed.), The character of kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973

• 1973 Inheritance, Property, and Marriage in Africa and Eurasia Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 1, 55-76 (1969) DOI: 10.1177/003803856900300104
• Goody, Jack (1973) Bridewealth and Dowry in Africa and Eurasia in Bridewealth and Dowry, ed. J. Goody and S. Tambiah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

• Jack Goody, Joan Buckley Cross-Sex Patterns of Kin Behavior: A Comment Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, 185-202 (1974) DOI: 10.1177/106939717400900301

• 1977 Ethnology and/or Cultural Anthropology in Italy: Traditions and Developments [and Comments and Reply] Vinigi Grottanelli, Giorgio Ausenda, Bernardo Bernardi, Ugo Bianchi, Y. Michal Bodemann, Jack Goody, Allison Jablonko, David I. Kertzer, Vittorio Lanternari, Antonio Marazzi, Roy A. Miller, Jr., Laura Laurencich Minelli, David M. Moss, Leonard W. Moss, H. R. H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, Diana Pinto, Pietro Scotti, Tullio Tentori. Current Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 593—614

• 1989 Futures of the Family in Rural Africa Population and Development Review, Vol. 15, Supplement: Rural Development and Population: Institutions and Policy (1989), pp. 119—144 doi:10.2307/2807924

• 1991 Towards a Room with a View: A Personal Account of Contributions to Local Knowledge, Theory, and Research in Fieldwork and Comparative Studies Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, 1991, pp. 1—23

• 1992 Culture and its boundaries: a European view Social Anthropology 1 (1a),9—32. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.1992.tb00238.x

• 1994 Jack Goody, Cesare Poppi Flowers and Bones: Approaches to the Dead in Anglo-American and Italian Cemeteries Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 146—175

• 1996 Comparing Family Systems in Europe and Asia: Are There Different Sets of Rules? Population and Development Review: 22 (1).

• 1996 Cognitive contradictions and universals: creation and evolution in oral cultures Social Anthropology Volume 4 Issue 1 Page 1-16, February 1996. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.1996.tb00310.x

• 2002 The Anthropology of the Senses and Sensations La Ricerca Folklorica, No. 45, Antropologia delle sensazioni (Apr., 2002), pp. 17—28 doi:10.2307/1480153

• 2004 The folktale and cultural history Cahiers de littérature orale n. 56 , pp. 53—66

• 2006 From misery to luxury Social Science Information, Vol. 45, No. 3, 341-348 DOI: 10.1177/0539018406066526

• 2006 Gordon Childe, the Urban Revolution, and the Haute Cuisine: An Anthropo-archaeological View of Modern History Comparative Studies in Society and History (2006), 48: 503-519 (Issue 03 - May 2006) Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0010417506000211