Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Authorship
- Acknowledgements
- Finding and using the pioneers’ interviews
- Chapter 1 Introduction: the pioneers of social research study
- Voices 1 Moments of discovery
- Chapter 2 Life stories: biography and creativity
- Voices 2 Beginnings
- Chapter 3 Contexts: Empire, politics and culture
- Voices 3 Old boundaries, new thoughts
- Chapter 4 Organising: creating research worlds
- Voices 4 Old and new trends
- Chapter 5 Fighting or mixing: quantitative and qualitative research
- Voices 5 Into the field
- Chapter 6 Fieldwork: making methods
- Voices 6 On the margins
- Chapter 7 Social divisions: class, gender, ethnicity and more
- Voices 7 Reflections for the future
- Chapter 8 Conclusion: what can we learn?
- Chapter 9 Epilogue
- Notes
- Further reading
- Biographical summaries
- Index
Voices 3 - Old boundaries, new thoughts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Authorship
- Acknowledgements
- Finding and using the pioneers’ interviews
- Chapter 1 Introduction: the pioneers of social research study
- Voices 1 Moments of discovery
- Chapter 2 Life stories: biography and creativity
- Voices 2 Beginnings
- Chapter 3 Contexts: Empire, politics and culture
- Voices 3 Old boundaries, new thoughts
- Chapter 4 Organising: creating research worlds
- Voices 4 Old and new trends
- Chapter 5 Fighting or mixing: quantitative and qualitative research
- Voices 5 Into the field
- Chapter 6 Fieldwork: making methods
- Voices 6 On the margins
- Chapter 7 Social divisions: class, gender, ethnicity and more
- Voices 7 Reflections for the future
- Chapter 8 Conclusion: what can we learn?
- Chapter 9 Epilogue
- Notes
- Further reading
- Biographical summaries
- Index
Summary
Any social research takes places in a social and political context which not only has been powerfully shaped by the past, but also has the first signs of possible future new directions.
Empire and war
Jack Goody's journey to colonial Ghana
Because his anthropological research was funded by the Colonial Office, Jack Goody went out to Ghana as a Colonial Officer. Despite his egalitarian social commitments, he found himself embedded within the colonial system:
I went on the boat train up to Liverpool, and I was met there by somebody from the Dempster Line, who said to me, ‘You do realise you’re travelling with a lot of black gentlemen?’ I said, ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to get used to that, because I’m going out to study them’. So I was allowed to get on, and I got on this boat – it was rather depressing, right down in the hold – and we were allowed up on deck for what, half an hour or an hour every day. But I had very interesting company down there because the Africans I was with, one was going to be a lawyer, one was a doctor – I can't remember the others very much, but they’re the people who were in my cabin, so I probably had a lot more intelligent conversation down there than I did up in second or first class with Europeans. (pp 34–35)
Jack was met as soon as he reached Ghana by a former Ghanaian student who like Jack had been supervised in Oxford by Meyer Fortes:
The former student's name was Kofi Busia, who wrote a book on the Ashanti, and eventually became Prime Minister after Nkrumah, and he was Head of the Sociology Department in Lagos, and he looked after me… I suppose, through having been a prisoner-of-war, and also I felt my age was against me, I wanted to get things done as quickly as I could, so time was very important to me, so I didn't spend long in Accra at that time, in the capital. I got my permits or whatever I had to do, got my kit together, and my food, made my arrangements very quickly – always did.
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- Information
- Pioneering Social ResearchLife Stories of a Generation, pp. 73 - 78Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021