George Appell

0:00:05 Born in York, Pennsylvania; lived on 700 acre farm; early interest in Blackfoot Indians; by the age of twelve interested in anthropology; went to Phillips Exeter Academy; two wonderful latin teachers;

0:02:45 Reading about the Plains Indians and the abuse they suffered led to interest in human rights; from Exeter went on to Harvard, before which enlisted in the Army Air Corps; got one term in at Harvard before being called up; war over before I finished training so went back to Harvard; family were not particularly wealthy; father a businessman

0:04:13 Accident at Harvard playing basketball and lost an eye; there studied with Homans, Kuhn; memories of Homans; interaction school; after Harvard worked with F.L.W. Richardson jun., part of the interactionist school doing work flow; interested in applied anthropology; went to work in father’s factory for about a year and then went on to Harvard Business School; while there father died and brother took over business

0:07:37 Went to University of Pennsylvania where Kuhn had migrated from Harvard; [at Harvard] Clyde Kluckholn; Douglas Oliver, John Whiting, Cora du Bois; meeting with future wife at Peabody Museum; 1957 trip to study Hare Indians in North-West Territories of Canada; found that June Helm was working there so went on to study the Dog Rib Indians; disappointed with the acculturation of Dog Rib Indians

0:10:43 At Harvard wrote paper on corporation and corporate groups but Homans not interested; went to Australian National University to study with Derek Freeman because very impressed by his work on Iban agriculture; wanted to work in Borneo and got approval for research plan but had to find location near a good hospital as had wife and six-month old daughter; toured the west coast among Dusun peoples and found the Rungus who were the least acculturated and impacted; worked there for 10-11 months and returned to A.N.U. to write up a preliminary analysis; not back to the field until 1963

0:13:35 Wanted to work in a cognatic society as never understood unilineal societies; back at A.N.U. Derek Freeman had had a confrontation with Tom Harrisson, had become interest in ethology and psychoanalysis and was uninterested in my social anthropology; John Barnes took over as supervisor; trying to develop a method for studying societies in a general way; disagreement over Radcliffe-Brown; examined finally at Yale

0:18:59 After dissertation, wanted to continue research on Rungus; moved to Maine and got an associate research position at Peabody Museum; got funding for one year from National Science Foundation; during that time Sabah, formerly a colony of North Borneo, closed down and no anthropologists allowed in; finally got a grant to go back and work among the Rungus in 1980 but I was declared persona non grata and shipped out; Laura and three daughters went up to Rungus and I ended up in Kuala Lumpar; went to Brunei where told by a couple of Dusun speakers of the troubles they were facing through a modernisation programme which gave him the idea for book on landless peasantry; went on to Australia and met Derek Freeman who was troubled over the book on Margaret Mead; went to Indonesian Borneo and worked among the Balusu people for about three months; Derek Freeman re-energized and book subsequently published by Harvard

0:22:43 I was accused by Margaret Mead of not knowing the ethics of anthropology; started a series on ethics cases which were presented at AAA meetings etc.; book was pre-empted by my publisher’s in-house advisor who published his own book on ethics; back at Harvard tensions in the Faculty so left for Brandeis where prepared book on cognatic social organisations; British anthropology obsessed with kinship lineages as the way to understand a non-literate society; all wrong, didn’t fit Rungus, for instance; important for dealing with resources

0:29:13 Problems of legal anthropology; Robin Fox’s attempt to deal with problem; corporate groups; Henry Maine

0:35:55 In Australia for five or six years when school of cognitive structuralism developed at Yale , Goodenough, Lounsbury etc.; I was working on social action; upset about what was happening to the Rungus and approached by David Maybury-Lewis on becoming a member of ‘Cultural Survival’; feeling that anthropology was useless in this context; disagreed with the economic fundamentalism that seemed to permeate ‘Cultural Survival’; fired from the board after laying out proposal that eventually led to ‘Anthropologists Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research’

0:39:50 Encouraged by Robin Hanbury-Tennison of ‘Survival International’, formed a branch in New York based on human rights; this failed while away working among the Balusu; later sat on the Human Rights Commission of the American Anthropology Association, but again based on Western ideology not anthropological theory; resigned

0:43:02 Terry Turner’s quarrel with Napoleon Chagnon; ideas on cultural relativism in human rights; dehumanisation

0:46:24 Contradictions within organisations such as ‘Cultural Survival’, ‘Survival International’; Terry Turner and the Kayapo

0:51:48 Working among the Balusu who were being resettled was so horrible I couldn’t go back; characteristics of reservations; formation of ‘Anthropologists’ Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research’ with the help of Jonathan Benthall [Director of the Royal Anthropological Association]

0:55:18 Current work includes books, digitising of photographs and tapes of the Rungus; when we went back in 1986 the culture was gone so we have been working with old people, recording oral literature, historical account, myths, legends, and religious literature, trying to get it from several different sources to see how they change; as there is no one place to handle material have formed a Borneo Foundation which will hold ours and others’ material; last thoughts on the Rungus
Further conversation the following day.

0:57:48 Rungus very egalitarian; oral literature done by Laura; Chinese settlement on Rungus land; encounter with the Cobbold Commission; acted as interpreter; Malayanisation; illness; Lord Cobbold; article on district administration and anti-government activity published in ‘Human Organisation’; another article suggested he was source of anti-government activity, but was not published due to the good offices of Margaret Mead; may, however, have been circulated in Borneo, and possibly caused the ban on anthropologists; thoughts on being on the edge of academia.