SECOND PART

00:00:01 R: Comparisons of Caribbean diaspora through slavery and immigration.

M: Differences may result in treatment. In C19 about 100,000,000 people left their homelands and about half of these were Europeans; Europeans were mainly diasporic populations and went to places like Canada, Argentina and Uruguay, South Africa and United States; other half also diasporic, but non-whites and went mostly to Cuba, Jamaica, India and South Africa, those parts of the tropical world still engaged in overseas production to feed Europe; comparing two segments, white half went mostly to democratic countries and non-white half went to countries that did not have democratic constitutions; white half went where there were public universities and education, and voting rights, and the other half went where there was none; looked at from the point of view of long term success of these two populations, to become successful in the Caribbean, for instance, the competition was the entire population of where you lived; in Canada or US, possible for son of a cook to become a Yale professor; not distinctions between individuals but fates of populations; one's fate bound with place to which one's parents had gone; fate of the enslaved was terrible as they could do nothing to improve the fate of their children; the main reason why people migrate to the US is for the sake of their children

00:06:30 R: After war Hannah Arendt writes about refugees saying that unless you have national citizenship you do not have human rights

M: True. My mother, a political radical, said one of the things she noticed in the US, coming from Tsarist Russia, was looking out of the back window she could see the policeman standing at the corner of the street where there was a school, and when it rained he would cover children with his raincoat and take them across to the school, like a mother hen. In the Russia if you saw a policeman you would run the other way; most people I have told this to agree, but a black student said that in his neighbourhood they ran from cops ie. not yet a full citizen; a society where the policemen are not enemies is on the way to becoming civilized

00:09:37 R: Came to US in 1997 and have found since that anthropology has become a little stifling due to accountability on how scientific it is

M: It bothers me but talking about our field as one that straddles the boundary of science and humanities is stimulating; when anthropology was four fields that were assumed to cover the study of man there was not such a problem; lot goes back to the changes in the bureaucratic structure and the desire to emphasize science, but part is our own fault; backing away from fieldwork has weakened us; anthropology benefits from uncertainty, we learn things that are vital to our survival, that make us humble about the way we do things ourselves; might have learnt there were differences between Sunnis and Shiites before we went into this war; problem for us is lack of a public voice, but do we have a common purpose; I am not so much pessimistic about anthropology but sad about it; think we could be contributing so much more

00:13:58 R: Who is your favourite theorist and composer?

M: Eric Wolf; when I first knew him I was struck by his erudition; found I live on and from his theoretical ideas, even today; admire him as a war hero, but someone also who understood his own limitations; also great admirer of Karl Marx as a theorist; admire Plekhanov's paper 'The Role of the Individual in History' - a very interesting figure in history of thought; my teacher Alexander Lesser also a smart man; my favourite composer is Sibelius, then Beethoven; I asked Levi-Strauss this question and he said Wagner, I was so surprised, but then Wagner was my mother's favourite; Sibelius was the first composer whose music I got to know well; I finished high school at 15; at that time favourite radio listening was Saturday night, 'Lucky Strike hit parade'; problem was only one radio and this was time Toscanini conducted the M.B.C. symphony and mother wanted to listen; moved in with my sister who was a music teacher who played classical music on the radio all the time; gave up 'Lucky Strike' completely; sister was marvellous as she would never make you listen, like my father who would cook a new food which he did not force me to eat but encouraged me to taste and the next time he cooked it I would want to eat it; sister encouraged serious listening, within weeks transformed

00:20:45 M: Thoughts on anthropology - cultural and social, American and British, a narrowing gap between them

R: Does British anthropology have a man like Franz Boas?

M: In British social anthropology there were two different figures, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, who had different conceptions about what anthropology was or could be; hard to find an organizing figure, but pinnacle would be Firth who lived nearly the length of British anthropology; in terms of fieldwork feel Malinowski had a greater influence (than R-B); also there are figures who could stand beside Franz Boas in American anthropology, so should look for a Radcliffe-Brown figure here