List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Going Against the Grain, Again
Barbara Bodenhorn, Alicia Fentiman and Mary Goody

Chapter 1. Wives into Sisters, Sisters into Wives
Marilyn Strathern

Chapter 2. Fragments of Intimacy and the Reassembling of Relations
Barbara Bodenhorn

Chapter 3. The Visible Invisibilities of the Circulation of Women in the Ottoman Mediterranean and Their Implications
Paul Sant Cassia

Chapter 4. The Circulation of Women and Children, and Everybody Else… Half a Century Later
Lynne Brydon

Chapter 5. Video, Voice and Vygotsky: Narratives of Learning among the Konkomba of Northern Ghana
Alicia Fentiman

Chapter 6. Lessons in Milking and Lessons in Math
Cataline Laserna

Chapter 7. Singing the Names: Custom and Chronology in Mamprusi Drum Histories
Susan Drucker Brown

Appendix: BAAMYO’S TEXT

Chapter 8. One Snake is the Biggest in the Pond: Religious Change, Funerals and Linguistic Evidence in Mambila
David Zeitlyn

Chapter 9. Childrearing through Social Interaction on Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea
Penny Brown and Marisa Casillis

Conclusion
Felicia Kafui Etsey

Afterword
John Keith Hart

Appendices
Index

Building Social Worlds

Thinking forwards with Esther Newcomb Goody

Edited by Barbara Bodenhorn, Alicia Fentiman, Mary Goody

410 pages, 27 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-80539-952-0 Hb Published (April 2025)

eISBN 978-1-80539-953-7
web ISBN 978-1-80539-953-7

Details

“Building Social Worlds is a fitting tribute to an exceptional scholar and a significant contribution to scholarship in its own right. The introduction is impressively comprehensive.” • Joanna Cook, University College London

“I found this book fascinating and I know it will interest many people. The structure of this book works well, as it highlights the multiple aspects of her personality and work.” • Rebecca Empson, University College London

Esther Newcomb Goody had an extensive academic career. She particularly revisited intellectual themes of kinship and relationships. This collection draws on ethnography across Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Americas, and uses Goody’s ideas to expand contributors understanding of the nature of relationships, communication, intimacy, resistance and resilience with a particular focus on rich ethnographies of childhood and learning. It discusses a wide range of subjects in personhood and parenthood, fosterage, apprenticeship and modes of learning; kinship in historical perspective; power, politics and speech; the effects of late-modern capitalism on households and the complex relations between persons and things.

Barbara Bodenhorn is an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. She has worked in Arctic Alaska since 1980 and in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca since 2004. Her most recent publication is Risky Futures, edited with Olga Ulturgasheva (Berghahn, 2022).

Alicia Fentiman is a social anthropologist and has worked extensively in the field of international development in sub–Saharan Africa. She has published numerous articles on anthropology and education.

Mary Goody is an artist and researcher, currently working on links between sculpture-making and physical empathy as a doctoral student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the daughter of Esther Newcomb Goody.

Series: Volume 17, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology

Subject: Anthropology (General) Sociology

Area:

LC: GN21.G67 B85 2025

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC026010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Marriage & Family; SOC026040 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Social Theory

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Building Social Worlds

Thinking forwards with Esther Newcomb Goody

Edited by Barbara Bodenhorn, Alicia Fentiman, Mary Goody

Series: Volume 17, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology

Subject: Anthropology (General) Sociology

Area:

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Contents

Building Social Worlds

Thinking forwards with Esther Newcomb Goody

Edited by Barbara Bodenhorn, Alicia Fentiman, Mary Goody

Series: Volume 17, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology

Subject: Anthropology (General) Sociology

Area: