PART TWO

0:00:20 After Harvard went briefly to M.I.T. then to Indonesia and ended up in Bali then back to think tank at Palo Alto and had job at Berkeley for a year – only time in an anthropology department – taught many courses – period of political unrest. Edward Shils and David Apter forming Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations at Chicago asked me to join them. Jumped at it as wanted to get back to research. I don’t like lecturing though don’t mind teaching – liked the students. I avoided administration. One of the reasons I left Chicago after ten years was that I was in danger of ending up as chairman of department

0:04:12 Chicago – David Apter worked in Gold Coast, Uganda and Japan as political scientist – Edward Shils – both at Palo Alto with me. David Schneider Tom Fallers and I all left Berkeley for Chicago at the same time. Benevolent department headed by Fred Eggan, Sol Tax etc. really wanted us to change the place. Later joined by Victor Turner – McKim Marriott, Milton Singer was there. Most of my time spent with Committee which had yearly fellows and had weekly seminar. We published things – I was secretary for a long time. Period when I started to work in Morocco

0:07:18 Went to Morocco as couldn’t go back to Indonesia at that time – had two young children at that time. Thought seriously about going to Bengal but here, in Cambridge, ‘Hands Across the Sea’ meeting [A.S.A. Conference in New Approaches to Social Anthropology], someone suggested I go to Morocco – Islamic, peaceful – so instead of going back to Chicago after the meeting I went to Morocco and drove around the country for six weeks visiting small towns. Decided it was a good place to work, got money, went back three or four times during time at Chicago in collaboration with several students. Managed to cover a small town over a decade.

0:09:50 Value in comparison – learnt more about Java by going to Morocco and vice versa – uncontrolled comparisons not just through an American lens – triangulation

0:11:50 Linguistic differences between Java and Morocco with emphasis on hierarchy in the former and gender in the latter – Morocco ‘sedq (loyalty, strength) Java ‘rasa’ (hierarchy, subtlety)

0:14:40 Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies – joined new social science school as first member 1970 – internal disputes

0:20:50 Anthropological journey – who am I among when writing – own emphasis is as a writer rather than as an anthropologist in the traditional sense – initial ignorance of anthropology – put off by Murdock ‘Social Structure’ as totally opposite to anything he wanted to do

0:25:43 Banner bearer for new anthropology – no desire to lead new movement but accept that some people were threatened – never said there were no facts – I am very ethnographic – have become an adjective

0:31:20 Historical pessimism and nostalgia for the past evident in work . Being an anthropologist always marginal – deliberately marginal in rest of life – became an anthropologist when it was no longer possible to study small societies without history – no way to isolate local focus from larger political scene – play between local and general issues all important. Study of Pare in 1950’s at start of this trend in anthropology, now impossible to ignore outside influences – watershed period – upset the old guard

0:39:10 Tried to show how an anthropologist can work in a literate society with much history and still make novel observations – understanding of the structure of society that economists and others often can’t see – value of dialogue between disciplines

0:44:43 Objection to Radcliffe-Brown’s ideas of anthropology and natural science, so what do you search for – in Java tried to find out about political life, main lines of cleavage, differences in world view – gives understanding of what politics is about in Indonesia – in Morocco, a different set of divisions – I would not try to teach them about their society but how to learn about their society and find out for themselves how and who they are

0:49:30 Writing and methodology – dissatisfaction – need to be much more self-reflexive – much done in literary criticism but not much in anthropology – would like to see more on how anthropological texts are constructed, how they make their argument etc. – very few good essays on anthropological writers

0:53:52 Started wanting to be a writer and consider myself to be essentially a writer as well as an anthropologist – I write by hand, sentence by sentence in order – takes a long time – I don’t write drafts – build up paragraphs, correct, rearrange – most I ever get done is a paragraph a day – took two and a half to three months to write the Frazer Lecture [given the following day]  - I don’t advise this just fits my temperament – do feel enormous anxiety while writing but enjoy it when its done

0:57:42 Importance of companions (wives) in fieldwork