Polly Hill interviewed by Alan Macfarlane, 20^th July 1996

0:00:05 Introduction; reads from a script about early life; 1933 Newnham College; 2:1 in economics; 1938 research assistant at the Fabian Society and wrote a book on unemployment, published 1940;

0:02:20 Memories of Cambridge during First World War coloured life; during Second World War, a civil servant in statistics department of the Colonial Office; became commercial editor of weekly paper ‘West Africa’

0:04:23 Sent to the Gold Coast in 1952 which was a very positive experience; 1953 married; did research in Ghana until 1965 at University of the Gold Coast; 1956 daughter born which enormously improved intellectual work on cocoa farmers; research on cocoa farmers; Meyer Fortes; 1956 published ‘The Gold Coast Cocoa Farmer’ with OUP; Smuts visiting fellow at Cambridge 1960-61

0:11:12 On principle, never asked permission from higher authorities to do work as it was almost always refused; later mapped Hausaland using official aerial photos but never challenged; very bad at languages, used interpreters, but don’t see it as a weakness as one has time to take notes

0:15:42 Description of work on migrant cocoa farmers; published ‘Migrant Cocoa Farmers’ 1963, to be republished in paperback

0:20:28 Reflections on Meyer Fortes and his influence; Keynes relatives; visited Fortes among the Tallensi people in 1963

0:23:10 After returning to Ghana 1961 moved from economics department to African Studies Centre as colleague of Thomas Hodgkin (Nigerian Perspectives) and Ivor Wilks; worked among the Ga on cattle rearing and later in Northern Ghana on the same, written about in ‘Rural Capitalism in West Africa’ 1970

025:21 Left Ghana 1965 as daughter at risk from malaria; moved back to Cambridge and became a research fellow at Clare Hall (unpaid); 1965-73 did fieldwork in Hausaland, Northern Nigeria, lived in Hausa village, precariously supported by grants

0:27:43 1969 moved to house on stilts in Cambridgeshire on the River Ouse; 1973 Smuts Reader in Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge; 1977 went to South India mainly because of dissatisfaction with pseudo-Marxism in economic anthropology in Cambridge

0:31:29 Went to Sri Lanka 1976 and felt at home in Colombo and felt previous experience in West Africa was relevant to the Indian sub-continent so decided to go to India for the following year, funded by Smuts; no visas required at that time; chose Bangalore for the climate but ignored by Srinivas;

0:35:25 Worked on six villages in Karnataka with two Indian assistants; couldn’t live in villages but in Bangalore;  work resulted in ‘Dry Grain Farming Families’ 1982, a comparison with Hausa dry grain farming

0:38:10 Comparison of wealth in Karnataka with Hausaland; at the time no electricity in villages studied and water stored in tanks, not tube wells as later; grew rice and inferior millet; assistants; difference between people in Hausaland and Karnataka

0:46:35 1982-3 Went to Trivandrum in Kerala, South West India; article ‘Kerala is Different’ in Modern Asian Studies, on demographic differences with other parts of India; illness due to heat curtailed field research

0:48:32 1986 produced ‘Development Economics on Trial, The anthropological case for the prosecution’; based on the rural tropical world that is little understood by development economists; concept of subsistence farmers and peasants; position of women in Hausaland much better than in India as the former had separate economic activities from their husbands; joint families in India; farm slavery in Hausaland;

0:59:00 M.G. Smith, Daryl Forde, unhelpful; lack of niche gives little power; 1966 PhD in anthropology based on book on migrant cocoa farmers