Scarlett Epstein interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 25^th March 2004

0:00:05 Born in Vienna in 1922; Jewish; father a social democrat and an atheist, so grew up without any Jewish identity; apartment in Karl Marx Building, a social experiment; father a commercial traveller; to school in street where Beethoven had lived, opposite Eroica Park; only Jewish child in school; first experience of anti-Semitism

0:05:00 1934 civil war in Austria and Social Democratic government ousted; Karl Marx building used as a fortress against the Christian Socialists, the forerunners of the National Socialists; saw person shot dead; brother already student and involved in fighting

0:07:08  Chancellor Schuschnigg; Hitler’s invasion 1938; brother said they must leave; he was an early emigrant to England; father already in Yugoslavia; dressed up in uniform of association for German girls and observed different responses of orthodox and assimilated Jews to their torturers; latter devastated; made a strong impression; thrown out of school and put into all-Jewish school; became aware of the importance of  recognising Jewish identity; after marriage to Bill Epstein learnt to keep a kosher home

0:14:19 July 1938 left Austria and went to Yugoslavia to join father; he was being persecuted as an illegal worker; difficulty of getting visas as passports marked with big red J; went to Albania, then an undeveloped society; joined commune of Jewish refugees; threat of Mussolini; taught German and French to two young girls; Italian Consul heard and asked that she teach him German; Albanian police warned them of danger of Italian invasion; she did survey  of what each refugee had taken with them and 80% said they’d taken their documents as they feared losing identity

0:19:18 Became spokesmen for refugees as could speak Italian; brother had got permit for mother and self to go to England; Jewish International Organisation paid fares for those with permits; needed to touch down in France but French Embassy would not allow Jews to do so; booked a ship from Naples to Southampton but found it was delayed and would reach England too late for permits to be valid; only way they could get to England was to fly via Germany by KLM; told Dutch steward that they were Jewish refugees; touched down in Frankfurt and permit accepted, but at Cologne very nearly apprehended by guards; steward kept back plane and retrieved passports

0:31:40 Arrived in London with a trainee permit to be a hairdresser; knew no English; rejected job; registered at refugee centre and ended up as a machinist making ladies underwear for Marks & Spencer in the East End of London; moved to Manchester and got another job as a machinist; by that time wanted to study again; had wanted to become a medical doctor but decided on pharmacy; Salford Tech; father and brother interned on the Isle of Man; had to give up night school to care for mother

0:38:14  Two years later was a costing clerk; evening class in industrial administration at Manchester College of Technology; after four years encouraged to do economics at Ruskin College, Oxford; after one year, in 1951, got a scholarship to Manchester University to study economics; working to support parents during that time; in second year went to a lecture by Max Gluckman and was enthralled; a charismatic lecturer; lecture on why most anthropologists are marginal to their own societies; decided to do social anthropology; serious accident before final exams; managed to take exams in hospital; Max Gluckman invigilated for the social anthropology paper; desire to give up but encouraged to finish by Gluckman;  offered a graduate scholarship

0:52:25 First year as a post-graduate; Elizabeth Colson supervisor introduced the idea of cultural profiles; developed this as key cultural variables for research in Third World; Gluckman wanted her to go to Central Africa to study tribal economics; wanted to go to India; M.N. Srinivas was visiting professor at Manchester and suggested she tell Gluckman that she wanted to do research in India; Gluckman agreed and got her a Rockefeller research fellowship

0:58:13 M.N. Srinivas was supervisor in India; wonderful person; helped find fieldwork village and vernacular teacher; last memory of him in Bangalore, viewing the film ‘Village Voices’

1:01:13 Fieldwork in two villages near Mysore from 1954; desperate to get villages voices heard; marginal as anthropologists thought of her as an economist; Arthur Lewis at Manchester had discouraged her from taking job in South Africa and appalled by her doing fieldwork in India; later when trustee of the Agricultural Development Council in late 1970’s, only woman, only non-American, was regarded as an anthropologist; Arthur Lewis was at Princeton; then he agreed that with hindsight the career path taken had been a clever investment; still marginal in Jewish communities as brought up an atheist; Mangalore villages the only society where she had ever been accepted as one of them

1:08:09 After fieldwork, met Bill Epstein, married, and went to Australia; did research together in New Guinea; back in England joined the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University; had opportunity to go back fairly frequently to South India; always greeted with receptions and parties; film shown at Mysore University; the director of the  Anthropological Survey of India came; took film to the villages; feels she belongs there; a healing process

[some buzz from microphone from now on]

1:11:01 First went to villages in 1954 for two years; did a restudy in 1970, and since then back many times; Papua New Guinea also interesting, but emotionally has never taken the place of Indian villages; didn’t work in the same area as Bill as we feared it would strain marriage; discussed it once with the Firths; did meet up at weekends with Bill; became first European woman to dance with the local women; conquest has not done then any good; prior to that had ample food, land, fertile soils; missionaries; old burial practices; dance to inaugurate new cemetery; costume; choreography; primitive capitalists with shell money; T.N. Madan used this work to show there was primitive capitalism but not primitive communism in his dialogue with Marxists

1:21:24 Memories of Bill Epstein; complemented each other; joint research; use of research to try to improve quality of life; he was a theorist, she a practitioner; her books more popular as wants them to be widely read and used eg. ‘Village Voices’