James Woodburn

0.00.05 Parentage; father born in Northern Ireland, was in the artillery during the First World War after which he came to live in London; mother also from Northern Ireland; both from academic families; mother's parents both missionary doctors in India and she was born there; sent back to Northern Ireland aged eight; feel I have a double identity which I value

0:03:52 The influence of parents; father died when I was eighteen; respected him although he was distant; mother a great enthusiast and unrestrained; full of strong opinions; schooling affected by war as sent away from London for a time; before that searched for relics of the bombing with other children; went to a succession of schools; one appalling school in Scotland when living with uncle in Greenock where experienced corporal punishment; at eleven sat for range of entrance examinations and got a scholarship to a minor public school called Whitgift; some good teachers but much affected by the war; had three brothers and a sister and together rode round the countryside; great concern with natural history, particularly pond life and butterflies; this love of the outdoors certainly played a part in later anthropological career

0:13:53 Familiarity with the countryside led later to working with hunter-gatherers; at school specialized in history where there were some gifted teachers; applied to read history at Cambridge and got into Christ's College; immediately conscripted to do National Service in 1952; went first to Oswestry; organised humiliation of basic training; gave me a lifelong hatred for all things military; escaped by getting on a course for military interpreters; started intensive course in Russian for which sent to Cambridge; exams every Friday and if failed two weeks in a row were sent back into the army; learnt fast to read Russian literature; course lasted for two years but never put to any use; this language learning was helpful when later had to learn the Hadza language;

0:28:29 Back in Cambridge the thought of doing history was no longer attractive; visited Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and by chance met Meyer Fortes; told him about indecision over what to read; intrigued that Grandfather had an interest in archaeology and dual identity; captivated by Fortes and immediately enrolled; found shortly that anthropology more interesting; much influenced by Fortes and liked him and wife, Sonia; his books were difficult for undergraduates and his lectures were not pitched well for them; much better at the post-graduate level; Edmund Leach was my supervisor; charismatic lecturer and responsive teacher; started as a student in 1954 when 'Political Systems of Highland Burma' published; was not aware of much tension between Fortes and Leach at that stage; conflict only developed when Leach questioned the applicability of Fortes' approach to Asian material

0:40:30 Other teachers were Reo Fortune and G.I. Jones; taught by Jones, very much an ethnographer concerned with West Africa, not a theorist; Fortune an eccentric giving irrelevant lectures; vitriolic towards the memory of Malinowski so avoided his lectures; enjoyed lunching with him and listening to his scurrilous tales; his 'Sorcerers of Dobu' is an important book, but by 1954 was past doing serious work in anthropology

0:43:54 Supervised by post-graduate students among whom were Jean La Fontaine, Grace and Al Harris, Nur Yalman and Frederik Barth; very stimulating and all had a great effect; at that time there was not a great separation between undergraduates and post-graduates; decided by second year to do a PhD but very difficult to get funding for research; wanted to work somewhere exotic and wild which led to focus on hunter-gatherers; applied to work with Yanomamo but failed; also applied to work in New Guinea through A.N.U. and got funding; accepted funding to work among East African savannah peoples, the Hadza in Tanganyika; two brief articles on them, one by Fosbrook whom I met in Cambridge; Fosbrook thought it would be difficult to live among them but confirmed their existence; got various small grants and managed to fund my own project

0:54:50 Supervised by Aidan Southall at Makerere in Uganda as the nearest research institute; found little similarity with African peasant farmers; there was no training before going out to do fieldwork; had very little idea of techniques for getting information or for working out hypotheses; Makerere was very helpful in this regard as many others doing field research; Aidan Southall took us for a couple of week's survey work in Uganda; very valuable exercise

Second part

0:00:05 Memories of post-graduate seminar; Edmund Leach's disagreement with Meyer Fortes over data analysis; Jack Goody supervised my PhD for a while; very influenced by 'Death, Property and the Ancestors' which contrasted with attitude of Hadza to property; sharing a moral obligation among the Hadza; disagrees with idea that reciprocity is fundamental in human societies

0:09:09 Own work on equality in society developed from fieldwork but also a prevalent idea in Britain at that time; among Hadza, differences of power, status and wealth systematically subverted; these mechanisms promote equality; not possible to do this among peasant farmers where there is a need for control over land and labour

0:15:00 Differences between hunter-gatherers; distinction between immediate return systems and delayed return systems; control of ritual "property" among Australian aborigines creates delayed return; in Africa most striking delayed return hunter-gatherers are the Okiek of Kenya through honey; very similar to African peasants and many have become such; immediate return hunter-gatherers are not effective farmers and typically work as labourers on the farms of peasants

0:24:56 Attraction of working and living among the Hadza; highly distinctive group linguistically and socially; importance of language; enduring challenge to understand them; Hadza have been under increasing threat; land stolen and discrimination; feel an obligation to try to help them by publishing articles on their plight; Hadza feel angry and let down by everyone, including me; feel that it is a fundamental human right that hunter-gatherers are allowed to work out their own future on their land which may include some agriculture or other exploitation but by them

0:31:39 Interest in film in anthropology; feel most important role is for the people who were filmed; to preserve an archive of their way of life; also film valuable in teaching and at the R.A.I. from the 1960's started a library of ethnographic films; preoccupation in making films available now much easier with digitisation; there was a conflict between doing field research and filming because of the difficulties of using 16mm equipment; at that time better to do research first then go back to make film applying knowledge learnt earlier; little knowledge even now about making ethnographic film and the many techniques that have been developed; feel that film should be based on ethnographic knowledge; much that is produced for television is disgraceful

0:39:21 Taught at L.S.E. for many years; early on very impressed by Raymond Firth, also Maurice Freedman; respect the work of Jonny Parry, particularly his work on the gift; in conclusion, would like people to read my work on hunter-gatherers; plea for respect for hunter-gatherers' way of life; in the past did not want to criticize Africans, but their behaviour towards hunter-gatherers is a breach of human rights which should be addressed by African governments.