Malcolm Ruel

0:00:05 Introduction; feels he is one of the second generation of British anthropologists; came to Downing College, Cambridge, to read English under F.R. Leavis; number of others came via Leavis such as Jack Goody, Paul Baxter and Peter Lienhardt; 1950 when thinking of doing anthropology was introduced to Godfrey Lienhardt by Peter Lienhardt; Meyer Fortes took the chair at Cambridge that year; met Meyer in Oxford beforehand where Evans-Pritchard asked why Leavis had pushed so many into anthropology; Meyer believed that a requisite for an anthropologist was languages; encouraged by Godfrey Lienhardt to take anthropology; Evans-Pritchard’s 1950 Marett Lecture ‘History and Anthropology’

0:06:15 Did one year part II at Cambridge then went to Oxford to do a B.Lit.; the 1949 group at Cambridge had included Derek Stenning and Raymond Smith though no significant people in 1950; apart from Meyer Fortes, other teachers included Reo Fortune and Ethel Lindgren; taught by the latter; remember Radcliffe-Brown coming to lecture, at that time nothing had been published by him except articles; at that time there were very few ethnographies so made do with Bleak and Rattray; G.I. Jones gave the ethnographic lectures; enthused when the Bohannans came from Oxford to speak to the anthropology society on their fieldwork; among the graduate students was Bill Watson

0:10:48 Memories of Meyer Fortes in 1950; wanting to introduce the notion of social structure; working on Ashanti material; Oxford and Evans-Pritchard; B.Lit. thesis on the Dinka; doctoral research in Cameroons on the Banyang with money from a specific development project that included Edwin Ardener and W.A. Warmington, an economist (1953-54); no formal training for fieldwork was deliberate; assumed better to go with an open mind than with pre-set idea of what one was going to do; learnt methodology by asking what other people had done; Godfrey Lienhardt took notes in a receipt book with carbon copy and kept a large, diary all the time, so did the same; sent carbon copy back to the Institute; all rather haphazard; took genealogies, etc. but discovered this for oneself; became interested in secret societies; supervisor was Jim Bohannan

0:19:45 did a second period of fieldwork in East Africa under Evans-Pritchard who suggested this would make him an Africanist rather than just a West Africanist ; went from Bantoid people to another Bantu group; worked as a fellow of Institute of East African Research which was headed by Tom Fallers; worked on the Kuria (1956-58); memories of Audrey Richards; Tom Fallers an important link between American anthropology and British social anthropology and the East African Institute; Walter Elkin was there at the time

0:25:55 Reflections on the importance of Evans-Pritchard; Mary Douglas’s biography of Evans-Pritchard; Ahmed Al-Shahi has Godfrey Lienhardt’s papers which include papers of Evans-Pritchard so a proper biography should be written

0:30:00 Came back to Edinburgh as an assistant in January 1959; Penniman had started anthropology in Edinburgh and Kenneth Little was head of department; Scottish enlightenment figured large; huge first-year classes and smaller honours classes; Michael Banton was there; Kenneth Little’s interest in race relations had brought him in with Sidney Collins; also there was James Littlejohn, and Mary Bird who had worked on the Yoruba; Edinburgh a good place to be as married with a young family by then; Evans-Pritchard had said he would support the second period of fieldwork as long a he didn’t write a novel or get married for five years

0:35:35 Came to Cambridge in 1970 after becoming a senior lecturer in Edinburgh; became a fellow of Clare College; came to Social and Political Science department which was headed by John Barnes; Edmund Leach persuaded him to apply; lack of direction; problems between Social Anthropology and S.P.S. over many years

0:41:55 Memories of Edmund Leach; fell out with Evans-Pritchard over ‘Political Systems of Highland Burma’ where he discounted the value of fieldwork; a gadfly

0:44:37 Taught in S.P.S. for about fifteen years until Tony Giddens took over as head of department; moved fully into the department of Social Anthropology for last five years; reflections on Jack Goody; an important figure for opening up the subject; intellectually gregarious; Rivers Lectures; important work on literacy and European kinship; important figures Stanley Tambiah and Godfrey Lienhardt; changes in anthropology over lifetime

0:53:30 Current interest in art as a collector and in biographies of artists; teaches now in University of the Third Age.