Jeremy Boissevain interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 6^th July 1983

0:00:05 Introduction: born in England 1928, educated in U.S.A. and read French and economics; always an outsider looking in, a Dutch man in American and an American in Holland, made him ask questions on why people are different; worked for CARE, an American relief organisation and stationed in the Philippines, Japan, India and Malta, also as an outsider having to deal with people; need to understand their customs etc; when in Japan, supervisor had studied with Boas, and introduced to anthropological questions; Lawrence Wylie who wrote ‘Village in the Vaucluse’ was his French teacher at Haverford College, questions on what make French people different from Americans

0:02:20 First book on anthropology he read was when in Malta, Coon and Kimball on human interaction; of teachers, most important was Raymond Firth who ran the seminar at L.S.E.; of  books, most influenced by Edmund Leach ‘Political Systems of Highland Burma’ and ‘Pul Eliya’, and later Frederik Barth’s ‘Models of Social Organization’

0:05:00 Chose to work in Malta as last posting with CARE was there before leaving for post-graduate work at L.S.E. First interest was in Libya but young family made this impossible; Malta possible and got funding from S.S.R.C. helped by Lucy Mair; after thesis went to Sicily and began to develop Mediterranean anthropology

0:07:23 Maltese themes were factionalism and the way in which patrons and brokers operate; work with CARE showed the importance of working with brokers etc. to achieve things; nothing written on these in anthropology at that time; British anthropology at that time emphasised the importance of corporate groups, the Africanist model, and this was the theoretical basis taught with little room for the idea of temporary coalitions and opportunism

0:11:00  At the time debates on cognatic kinship theory so fairly easy to look at networks rather than lineages; first saw the relevance of looking at networks in Sicily: the Sicilian links with family in Montreal

0:13:00 Would like to be remembered for work on factions, brokers, and legitimising the anthropology of our own society, Europe; this now so in Holland; need to understand history and developing trends; at present looking at numbers of small entrepreneurs in Europe; for students work on own society will enable them to get jobs afterwards

0:17:40 Would be an anthropologist if starting out again