Reading :: The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society

The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society
By Jack Goody

I've been meaning to pick up Jack Goody for a long time—really, since I was in my MA program—but didn't really get motivated until recently, when seeing citations in Comaroff and Comaroff. Now I wish I hadn't waited so long. Goody, a social anthropologist, uses his fieldwork in West Africa as well as literature from the Ancient Near East to better understand how writing impacts human societies. 

In Chapter One, he argues that only literary religions can be religions of conversion (p.5) because conversion itself is a function of the boundaries that the written word defines (p.10). In written communication,

1. codes extend outside boundaries to all the faithful
2. written statements must be abstracted from situations to the universal (pp.12-13)

Thus religions of the book impose restrictions on literacy and control over education. Later, this power is assumed by the state (p.17—cf. Vygotsky and Luria's Uzbek expedition). The development of bureaucracy widened the gap between church and state (p.19).

In Chapter Two, Goody explores "the part played by economic activities in the origin of the first complete writing systems" (p.45). He draws on Schmandt-Besserat's account of the development of writing in the Middle East, noting that writing functions as communication at a distance, but also as a means to distance oneself from communication (p.50). And he notes that "writing encourages a non-syntactical use of language that renders it especially adapted to the purposes of accounting that are so characteristic of Aegean Linear B" (p.54). In enabling administrators to more precisely forecast needs, writing resulted in the penetration of the State into domestic life (p.63). "The nature of writing means that each activity is transformed in significant ways by its introduction" (p.67). And he concludes the chapter by claiming that neo-colonialism was successful in societies that did not have a strong written tradition that could stand up to written cultures (p.86).

In Chapter Three, he asks: "how do regimes with writing differ from those without?" (p.87). He argues that "The segregation of administrative activities in a specific organization, the bureaucracy ... is critically dependent, in this extended form, on the capacity for writing to communicate at a distance, to store information in files, and to tend to depersonalize interaction" (pp.89-90). Literate bureaucracy provides a "consolidating factor in state-building" (p.112). 

We'll leave it there. But if you are interested in thinking through the relationships among literacy and organization, this book is a must-read.