James Woodburn interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 2nd June 2005 - First part

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