Audrey Richards

Filmed at the Audio Visual Aids Unit, 3rd May 1982 by Martin Gienke and his team.

Before an invited audience, including questions from Professor Jack Goody (introduces), Sandy Robertson, Steven Levinson, Caroline Humphrey, Cesare Poppi, Phil Evans.

Originally filmed on U-matic and edited by Dr. Levinson and A.V.A. Copied onto H-8 and then digital tape. Table of contents by Alan Macfarlane.

(Wherever a name is not indicated, the comments are by Audrey R.)

Audrey Richards introduces the discussion (8 mins)

Introduction by Jack Goody

Bill Epstein asked how people in the ‘30s collected so much

The idea of studying a whole society or tribe

Memories of Malinowski and his coloured pens and cards

Can you study a whole society?

Fascination in Bemba chieftainship; Elizabeth Colson

What I would do now – general outline and detail – what to do?

Richards, Goody, Robertson on types of fieldwork (7 mins)

Jack Goody talks about his experience; two types of fieldwork

The importance of describing all the tribes and leaving no blank on the map

Sandy Robertson, on the general and particular & Land, Labour & Diet

The people force you in a particular direction with their interests

Jack G. surely your training in natural sciences etc. influenced you?

Not really, I only started on this in second year, as a leisure employment

Jack G. Land… came later, after fieldwork

Formal (statistical methods) – absence of (3 mins)

Sandy R. what was your interest in survey and statistical methods?

We were trying to be scientific

Raymond Firth had some numerical information which impressed everyone including Malinsowski

We had no training in statistics and I totally misunderstood ‘random sampling’

Frazer thought it marvellous that Malinowski counted gifts

The difficulty of counting – every hut had a different kind of marriage

The Malinowski training method and contemporaries at LSE (4 mins)

Steven Levinson, what kind of training in methods did you get?

None really, there were certain things we were told to avoid, like paying informants

Memories of scrabbling around on floor looking at Malinowski’s notes

The infection of enthusiasm and influence of small group

Others like Firth, E-P and others were coming back from the field

Evans-Pritchard lecturing on kinship, but not witchcraft

Letters of advice during fieldwork, hardly at all

Jack G. Who were playmates on floor?

Raymond Firth, Hortense Powdermaker, Schapera, Nadel, Fortes and Godfrey Wilson were among the leading ones.

Deep and divergent types of anthropologist (3 mins)

Sandy R. did you have specialist knowledge in economics or politics?

Not really, thought some connections with psychology

Sandy R. seem to need broad interests to be an anthropologist, for example in cooking

Yes, this is one of the pleasures. I am naturally very extrovert

Sandy R. there are two types of anthropologist, deep and divergent

One does need to set against a wider setting

Fieldwork exercises to train younger anthropologists (9 mins)

Jack Goody – ruminations on the LSE, fieldwork training and Elmdon, can people be trained for fieldwork?

Yes, in note taking and interviewing techniques, but basically only an attitude of mind

We went out in the 1950’s to describe tribes, unstudied tribes

We wanted to look at ‘Tribes without Rulers’ and chieftainships

There is a lot of unpublished materials we collected on clan structures, for example by Lloyd Fallers, Martin Southwold and perhaps Malcolm Ruel

Jack Goody – you sent LSE students to study markets and write reports

Yes, the Rupert Street market, Edmund Leach went straight to heart of problem,

Steven & Barbara Morris and Jacques Maquet were also ther

Jack Goody – were there any other schemes?

The two Stratherns studied the Cambridge Market, but on the whole the students were not interested in a whole market.

The Elmdon study worked because each student was assigned a family

Vanessa Maher took the Hammonds, Anne Whitehead another family etc.

Sandy R. did you give any detailed training?

We explained about taking genealogies, which is not easy

Indian girl: surely your natural science background made the lack of formal methods in anthropology rather strange?

Yes, it must

The effects of personality and gender on fieldwork (4 mins)

Indian girl and Sandy R. how has your personality been expressed in your fieldwork?

I was interested in two many things

Pat ? What benefits and drawbacks were there in being a woman in the field?

It made it a lot easier; when things were bad in Buganda, the women got out into the villages to safety first

Pat (repeated by Sandy R) – in the Middle East you rare less of a threat as a woman

Yes, I was not a District Officer and seen as a kind of social worker, to whom sick babies should be brought

Letters and advice and visits from Malinowski in the field. (4 mins)

Caroline Humphrey - How important was it to keep in touch with other anthropologists in the field and to get letters from Malinowski?

There was no air traffic, the first airoplane landed locally after I arrived

It took 6 weeks for a letter to get back. So I never heard from Malinowski or anyone

There were several pupils of Herskovitz who had to give regular reports

It was probably a great bonus to be away from correspondence

Sandy R. did not Malinowski visit you among the Bemba?

He came out to vist all his students, like Wagner, Hilda Kuper, staying about a week with each

What I noticed was his extraordinary linguistic gifts, for leaning whole phrases

Sometimes this led to embarrassing mistakes

Steven Levinson – did he go through your fieldwork notes?

No, he did his own fieldwork attending ceremonies etc. He took a special interest in housebuilding and witchcraft – he couldn’t bear to stay without working

Anthropological specialization and fragmentation – the reasons? (6 mins)

Cesare Poppi – the great early classics showed the interconnectedness of things, integrated societies, how much was this a result of the theoretical framework?

Very difficult. We had a sense of pattern and interconnections.

We had coloured files for each field to put notes in. A good method.

Cesare P – surely must be linked to the nature of the State?

It was a hierarchical system

Cesare P. nowadays very difficult to preserve the interconnections

Yes, it was then much easier to study because of political integrations

Sandy R. the first edition of Essays on African Chiefs compared to the revised edition of this book suggests fragmentation

Jack Goody on the historical turn, literacy etc. on fieldwork (4 mins)

Jack Goody – reflections on the reasons for fragmentation, it was not a simple unchanging world then; main reason the growth of historical materials which make the subject more complex. The opening of the Public Record Office, for example

Audrey – we used parish records in Elmdon

Jack Goody – but what stands out in Elmdon study is the concern with the present rather than the past

Things have changed in Africa, you can now attend meetings in a way that was previously impossible

Working in a colonial context, what effects? (5 mins)

Phil Evans – what effects did working in a colonial context have?

Malinowski told us (wrongly) not to have any contact with officials as it would make our work unscientific

In fact our friendships with colonial officials were well known

There was wide anxiety among colonial officials about women working in the field: ‘ that girl will be raped within a fortnight’ sort of thing. Totally untrue. In fact the Africans knew who your friends were, but were not very interested.

Phil Evans – did not some anthropologists work for the Government – Nadel etc?

Yes, and I tried to dissasociate myself from a particular unpopular District Officer

Jack brings to a close and final credits.