Starting with a sustained discussion of the debates on social development in the thought of classic theorists as well as contemporary historical and sociological notions of modernization, Goody goes on to tease out the general historical processes embedded in the most intimate recesses of our lives. In a final bracing section challenging dominant relativist conceptions, Goody considers the difficulties and complexities of cross cultural and comparative analysis, and he picks apart the doubts involved in the very process of representation and symbolic communication.

Throughout this collection, Goody demonstrates that the ethnocentricity of much of Western scholarship has distorted not only the comprehension of the East but also developments in the European past and present.