Stephen Hugh-Jones interviewed by Alan Macfarlane, 14th February 2007

0:05:05 Introduction; born 20th September 1945 in Poole, Dorset; father one of the major influences in why I became an anthropologist; father was illegitimate son of Philip Morrell, husband of Lady Ottoline Morrell; he had an odd upbringing in that his father only half accepted his existence; I am called Hugh-Jones because Philip had a son called Hugh by Ottoline at the same time as my father was born; his mother's surname was Jones and when father was young he was called Philip Hugh Jones; when he went to Cambridge his father suggested hyphenating the name; father's mother worked on 'The Nation' (later to merge with 'The New Statesman'); she was on the periphery of the Bloomsbury Group; father is a remarkable person; has always been interested in natural history and was a great traveler; he is just finishing writing his memoirs and thought of calling it 'I used Medicine' as a reflection of how he got himself invited to interesting places such as Irianjaya or Oman to give lectures in the medical school and then would go off traveling; went to Ecuador where some American missionaries had been killed by Auca Indians (now called Wuaorani); having cured one of the missionaries, Rachel Saint, he was allowed up to the Auca area where none but missionaries had been before; my childhood and youth was surrounded by Auca spears etc;, father used to take me on animal collecting expeditions and sent me the the Marine Biological Station in Dale Fort, Pembrokeshire; father also went to a Royal Geographical expedition to the Xingu and knew the Villa Boas brothers

6:35:19 At the age of about seven, father took us to Jamaica; move to create University of the West Indies at the time of decolonization; from seven until eleven I grew up in the university environment on a place called College Common, a paradise for me; spent my time collecting plants and animals and snorkeling on the reefs; for my Cambridge entrance exam I wrote on fish camouflage on a tropical reef using Jamaican vernacular names of fish; I was sent to a series of schools there; although not much formal education, learnt to throw stones well which later helped me to become a champion javelin thrower when at school in England; lack of ability in reading, writing and arithmetic at eleven panicked my parents and they sent me back alone to a prep school called Port Regis in Dorset in order to civilize me; I spoke fluent Jamaican patois but not proper English; prep school was an horrific shock as the whole culture of the place was totally different from anything I knew and liked; have the first letter I ever wrote telling my mother how unhappy I was; initially I was mercilessly teased but I was quite tough and fought back; set remedial reading which bored me; rescued by a biology master who realized that I did know quite a lot about natural history; he gave me Wallace's book 'Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro'; written in 1853 when Wallace went to the Vaupes where I ended up doing my field research; coincidentally, Wallace gave the first ever account of Jurupari rituals on which I wrote my PhD.; the book inspired me to want to read, also from a very young age was determined to go to Amazonia; in botany remember learning about leaf adaptations, most of which one couldn't see except in the tropics; while in Jamaica my father had led an expedition to climb the mountains in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia so I also had Colombia in my head from an early age; at school I enjoyed reading about natural history; father was a chest physician, and although he said I could do anything I liked when I grew up, assumed I would go to medical school; felt pressure to become a doctor and did biology, physics and chemistry at school - by now I'd moved on to Bryanston School

17:38:22 Bryanston was better; still preferred being outdoors; met my wife Christine while there; she went to Bryanston's sister school, Cranborne Chase; the top scientists from there came to Bryanston as they didn't have proper laboratories; at the age of fourteen this beautiful blond girl appeared in my chemistry class; she had a slightly similar history, a bright girl whose parents also wanted her to do medicine; she was good at the maths and I was good at setting up the apparatus; she rebelled; failed to turn up for Cambridge interviews and went instead to study ceramics at the Central School of Art; there she had to do another course and took sociology; she then decided to become an academic and went to the L.S.E.; I had pressure from both parents and school to do medicine; I wrote to the Villa Boas brothers when I was about sixteen asking to work for them; told I was too young but started to read anthropology; first book I ordered was Ruth Benedict's 'Patterns of Culture' and shared it with my great friend, Alfred Gell, who shared my study; neither of us thought much of it, but the idea intrigued us; I read Levi-Strauss's 'Triste Tropique' which I thought much more interesting, partly because is was about Brazil and Amazonia, but the structuralism was way over my head; had to go for interviews at medical schools and despite any real lack of interest was successful; then came to Cambridge for interview; as father had been at King's I put it last on my preferences with Caius at the top; failed both there and Peterhouse; at my King's interview I revealed that I didn't really want to do medicine; unexpectedly they asked what I was interested in and I said South American Indians and anthropology; asked if he would like an interview with Edmund Leach; by coincidence all Edmund's family had lived in Argentina - (the R.A.I.'s Esperanza Fund is named after the sugar mill that they owned in Northern Argentina); Edmund had an attachment to South America but not much knowledge about it; he also was the interpreter of Levi-Strauss and structuralism (this being 1962) in Britain; he also knew that the only British anthropologist to have worked in South America was Francis Huxley; Leach was excited by my awareness of South American Indians and Levi-Strauss; told him about my dilemma with medicine but accepted on the spot and encouraged to follow plan of going to South America

30:57:15 At school I had developed an interest in archaeology because when they were building the new music school they came across the remains of a Romano-British settlement so I instantly founded the Archaeology Club; we did do an excavation and to our delight found the skeleton of a Romano-British woman who was 6'2"; through archaeology I then developed an interest in Incas and Aztecs to Mayas; at school worked out why I didn't like archaeology and liked anthropology as in the context of South America the two run in parallel but more exciting to see the real people; before I came to King's I worked on the Victoria line which was being built to save for a trip to South America; with help from parents went to Venezuela by boat; found it extraordinarily expensive; on the boat had met an English school teacher and his wife who were going out to teach in Colombia and they had invited me to stay with them; got a bus and went to Bogata and stayed with them; started looking for Indians and heard about Reichel-Dolmatoff, the doyen of Colombian archaeology and anthropology; went to see him and he suggested I went to the Vaupes which straddles the equator on the Colombia-Brazil border; spent about nine months in Colombia; learnt Spanish; went to the Vaupes and spent about one month with people called the Cubeo whom Irving Goldman wrote about; heard of another river called the Pira-parana where Christine and I later did field research; people didn't go there as in the 1930's some rubber gatherers had been killed; also the river was dangerous with rapids so that missionaries had not gone there and the people had been left alone; decided then it was the place to do field research; traveled widely in Colombia and got to know it pretty well; came back to Cambridge knowing I wanted to study anthropology and where I wanted to do field research; tried to use South American material wherever I could in my studies; chose to do the South Asia special area partly because Leach and Tambiah taught it, but had found that there were analagous kinship systems with South America

39:22:09 Leach was my main teacher to whom I felt a debt of gratitude; I liked him although I found him absolutely terrifying at the beginning as he was very moody and unpredictable; if you agreed with him in an essay he would test you on why, if you disagreed he was offended; even when Christine and I were writing up we would go to see his secretary, June, and get what we called a weather forecast; if he was in a bad mood we would cancel our appointment with him; however, he was a wonderful supervisor and taught me how to supervise; essays would come back heavily annotated showing a serious response; have tried to do the same with my own students; he was right at the cutting edge and encouraged us to read new field research such as the Stratherns on the 'moka'; Leach was partisan, and this was the time of the great debate between him and Fortes, and criticism of Jack Goody; Alfred Gell and I both felt that we had to be on one side or the other, and we were on the Leach-Tambiah side; didn't go to Jack's lectures though we did go to Reo Fortune's as they were so hilariously funny and completely off the wall; for instance, he would stand with his back to the class for an hour writing mathematical symbols on the board; Leach took over as Provost in my third year and Tambiah became Director of Studies so I also worked with him

45:27:18 At that time there were about eight or nine students in my year; nowadays its more likely to be thirty to forty but only one or two will continue in anthropology; then, as undergraduates, it was assumed we would go on, and most of us did; in my year there was Rod Stirrat, Vanessa Maher, Ibrahim Tahir, Roger Ballard, Alfred Gell - most of them went on to become anthropologists; don't remember much about Ray Abrahams at the time, or G.I. Jones, as they were Africanists and in the other camp, but do remember James Woodburn's lectures on the Hadza; only remember Fortes's first year lectures on the necktie and how good he was at running the third year seminar; when I finished as an undergraduate I announced my intention to stay on as a graduate student and to work in Amazonia; remember Meyer trying to persuade me to go to Ghana instead; did think of escaping from Cambridge as Peter Riviere had recently come back from research among the Trio and I thought I would like to go to Oxford to work with him; had an interview with Godfrey Lienhardt and Raymond Carr, the historian, who suggested Amazonian Indians were completely irrelevant and why didn't I do research in the Highlands of Latin America; they rejected my application and I came back to Cambridge to work with Edmund; had the benefit of Peter Riviere's weekly lecture here on South America as a special area so maintained contact with him, but had the benefit of Leach's interest and the challenge of working with him; feel that if Peter had been my supervisor it would have been too cosy and insular

54:26:10 Should explain the "we"; Christine had started doing sociology at the L.S.E. with a bias towards anthropology and very quickly transferred to anthropology; she was taught by Lucy Mair, James Woodburn and Raymond Firth, then by Anthony Forge; she was a year behind me although older than me; we had married in my second year as an undergraduate and we knew we wanted to do fieldwork together; there was some debate on where we should go as she was quite keen on New Guinea and I was absolutely certain I was going to Amazonia; after graduation I spent a year in King's supervising and reading as much as I could about Amazonia while Christine finished; she graduated in July and by the end of August we were in the field - so much for pre-fieldwork training that they have to do now; Edmund told me a little bit about what kind of notebooks to use, suggesting reporter's notebooks and indelible ink, and taking carbon copies; soon stopped the carbon copies but the indelible ink proved useful when I lost some notebooks overturning in a rapid; when they were recovered some four months later they were still legible; in my year another friend was Peter Silverwood-Cope whose father was a diplomat in Brazil; he wanted to go to South America so we teamed up; also doing the M. Phil. was Bernard Arcand who had wanted to work in the Nicobar Islands but couldn't get a permit so he came with us; we had all decided to go to Colombia; Christine and I were working with the Barasana, part of the Tucana group who were in contact with nomadic hunters, the Maku, whom Silverwood-Cope would study; Bernard chose to study the Cuiva on the basis of a pin in the map; Edmund solved our money problems by applying to the S.S.R.C. for money for research in the Colombian Amazon and employed all four of us as researchers; this is the "we" that I was referring to; Christine was one of Edmund's research students; when we came back and wrote our first chapters for him, Edmund covered mine with notes and hers was just marked "fine"; she went to see him and said she wanted to be treated just as I was with full critical notes which startled him somewhat.