Anthropology in the Public Arena Anthropology in the Public Arena Historical and Contemporary Contexts

Home , Edgar Leopold Layard, Lucia Graves, Ruthven Todd, Shadows in the Sun

Jeremy MacClancy

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1 2013 To Peter Hacker, and towards the memory of Rodney Needham (1923–2006), with my thanks I don ’ t think anybody would question that it ’ s a valuable thing to write histories of disciplines and of disciplinary concepts. Charles Stafford

What do you mean nobody would question it! People have been questioning it all the time! Violently! Adam Kuper (1999: 12) Contents

Acknowledgments x

1 Beating the Bounds of Discipline? Innovation at the Margins and Beyond 1 2 John Layard, “Study of a Failure”: An Innovative Integrated Approach from the Psychoanalyst 58 3 Geoffrey Gorer, “Britain’s Margaret Mead”: Blending Anthropology and Travelogue 81 4 Robert Graves: Empowering Anthropological Modes of Explanation in Myth and Ritual 110 5 Mass Observation: A Radical, Popular Ethnography of the People, by the People, and for the People 135 6 The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 158 7 Parting Comments: Public Interest, Multiple Anthropologies 184

Bibliography 193 Index 228 Acknowledgments

I have been working on this material, in a spasmodic way most of the time, ever since my BLitt thesis in the late 1970s. My debts are extensive. I sincerely thank all those below for their generosity, though in some, lamented cases my statement of gratitude is in fact a memorial tribute rather than an acknowledgment. The opening chapter was read by Chris McDonaugh, Peter Parkes, Robert Parkin, Peter Riviere; that on John Layard by the late Margaret Gardiner, Professor Lord Richard Layard; that on Geoffrey Gorer by Peter Gorer; that on Robert Graves by Lucinda Graves, William Graves, and Jackie Waldren. An earlier version of the chapter on Layard was published in History of Anthropology 4. For assistance with the opening chapter I thank Ray Abrahams, Audrey Butt Colson, Richard Fardon, Kate Fox, Gustav Jahoda, Gerry Mars, Larry Weiskrantz; with the Gorer chapter, Michael Banton, Mary Catherine Bateson, Jack Goody, Peter Gorer, Rachel Gross (née Gorer), Rodney Needham, and Robin Fox . For archival assistance on the Gorer and Graves chapters, I thank, respectively, Jessica Scantlebury and the staff of the Special Collections Library, University of Sussex, and Caroline Shaw, who managed the Canellun Archive, St. John’ s College, University of Oxford. As always, I remain grateful to Vera Ryhajlo and other members of the staff who make visiting the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a continual pleasure. Earlier versions of the Mass Observation chapter were published in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1 (3), September 1995, pp. 495–512, and New Formations. The chapter was read by Hastings Donnan, the late Charles Madge, the late Kathleen Raine, and the anonymous reader for Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute . My thanks for their assistance to the late Sir Raymond and Lady Rosemary Firth, Humphrey Spender, and especially Angus Calder, and Dorothy Sheridan of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, which houses all the ﬁ les and reports of the original organization, as well as much donated material. Acknowledgments xi

For the chapter on the literary image of anthropologists, I thank the writers who replied to my comments and queries: Pat Barker, Jenny Diski, Penelope Lively, Kathy Reichs, and especially Sharyn McCrumb. My gratitude to Peter Parkes for comments, and to the following for suggesting items to me: Jonathan Benthall, Chris Brewin, Heidi Fjeld, Gerard Galliard, Aida Hawila Racy, Joy Hendry, Carol Kommerstand-Reiche, Edgar Krebs, John Landers, Carmen Lar- rañaga, Aitzpea Leizaola, John Linstroth, Peter Parkes, Nicole Shanahan, David Sutton, and my late mother. I do not list those who recommended books which, by the time I reached the last chapter, I realized did not contain any reference to anthropologists. My wife grew tired of the comment, “Well, there ’ s only ﬁ fteen pages to go and the anthropologist has yet to appear!” Earlier versions of chapters were given at seminars in Oxford Brookes Univer- sity, the University of Sussex, the University of Oxford, the University of East London, and the ASA Decennial Conference held in Oxford. I thank their audiences for their comments. If you think mention of anyone above implies they agree with what I have written, you are incorrect.

In 1974 Peter Hacker, the senior philosophy tutor at St. John ’ s College, Oxford, agreed to take on a medical student who had belatedly realized doctoring was not for him. In 1976 Rodney Needham accepted a recent graduate as one of his three students for that year. To a keen but callow young man, each was, in his own way, an exemplar of academic endeavor and productivity, and of commitment to his students. Even though I was a faltering philosopher at best, and an aimless anthropologist for a protracted period, both scholars did their best to train me to think, critically. Do not take this book as an indicator of how successful, or otherwise, they were as my teachers. Better to regard it as a prolonged statement of thanks.

Jeremy MacClancy 1 Beating the Bounds of Discipline? Innovation at the Margins and Beyond

Social anthropology, in the course of this century, has behaved like some shops – Boots the Chemists, W. H. Smith & Son the newsagents and bookseller, for example. It has expanded, diversiﬁ ed, and shifted its alliances and boundaries, so that what it was ﬁ rst known for no longer indicates the range of commodities it stocks. (Lienhardt 1997 : 63)

Anthropology has no bounds. It has no limits. So long as something appears to fi t, however vaguely, however polemically, within “the study of man,” it can be called anthropology. That is all the etymology of the term, fi rst used in the late sixteenth century, requires: from the Greek, anthropos, “man,” and - logia, “study of.” Let us ponder the consequences of this for a moment. To begin with, this is not a new point. In 1903 one of the very fi rst professional anthropologists in Britain, Alfred Haddon, stated:

A peculiarity of the study of Anthropology is its lack of demarcations; sooner or later the student of Anthropology fi nds himself wandering into fi elds that are occupied by other sciences. The practical diffi culty of drawing a dividing line between the legitimate scope of Anthropology and that of other studies is so great that we are often told there is no science of Anthropology. This lack of defi niteness adds a charm to the subject and is fertile in the production of new ideas. (Haddon 1903 : 11)

Haddon ’ s general point is easily demonstrated. In mid-century Britain those within the Ethnological Society of London, founded 1844, drew upon archaeological and ethnographic data in order to elucidate a single common origin for humans. In contrast members of the Anthropological Society, founded 1863, stressed

Anthropology in the Public Arena: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, First Edition. Jeremy MacClancy. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2 Anthropology in the Public Arena polygenism and the value of physical anthropology. These learned bodies were not mutually exclusive: a signifi cant minority, especially medics, were members of both. In 1871 they tucked away their residual differences to form a broadly based Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (Stocking 1987 : ch. 7; Ellingsen 2001 : 235–330). In the next century, thanks above all to the efforts of Malinowski and Radcliffe- Brown, the subject taught in most British universities came to be known as “social anthropology,” to differentiate it from evolutionary, archaeological, biological, and pre- or anti-functionalist approaches. This adjectival innovation also served to draw a transatlantic line between this UK variant and its North American counterpart, “cultural anthropology.” The latter, for many, for many decades, was to be sited within “four-fi elds anthropology,” which included physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology as well. Students of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown were so successful at developing a distinctive approach that in 1951 the US anthropologist Murdock felt able to conclude that “British social anthropologists,” as he collectively dubbed them, “are actually not anthropologists, but professionals of another category: . . . primitive sociology” (Murdock 1951 : 471–472). In response Firth seemed content with this relabeling, especially if it emphasized that the primary connections of he and his colleagues were “not with the human biologists who study physical anthropology, nor with the students of primitive technology . . . nor with the archaeologists’ (Firth 1951 : 477). “Ethnology,” however, though unfashionable, did not completely disappear. It was just pushed deeper into the margins. The Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford Uni- versity, continued to teach an unpopular Master’ s in the subject until its title was changed in the late 1980s to “Museum ethnography.” When, in 1976, as a neophyte anthropology postgraduate I asked an Oxford social anthropologist what “ethnology” actually meant, he replied, to my great surprise, “To be honest, I don ’ t know” (P. Riviere pers. comm.). If social anthropologists allowed ethnology to drift off in an indefi nable way, many of them appear to have turned their backs on folklore, though the ethnographic overlap may be very marked. In a good number of countries many anthropologists today neglect folklore studies or simply treat it with haughty disregard, to the anger of folklorists (e.g., Azcona 1984 ). Japan appears to be an exception (Kuwayama 2006 ). In the interwar period, “physical anthropology” could mean very different things, depending on location: the German and Austrian versions had “only very little in common with its counterparts” in Britain, France, and the USA (Gingrich 2010 : 375). By the end of World War II, “physical anthropology” had become so tainted with racist and eugenicist excesses that the subject was left in the far margins of academic desuetude. “Biological anthropology,” which appears to have later replaced it, exploits a far broader range of approaches; it is revealing that some of “the most interesting work” within this fi eld has been carried out by researchers who do not call themselves biological anthropologists (Huss-Ashmore and Ulijaszek 1997 : 82; MacClancy and Fuentes 2011 : 17). Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 3

Stocking, a hundred years after Haddon, has written eloquently on this variabil- ity of anthropology, which he terms “multifariously constituted, variously denom- inated, nationally diverse” (Stocking 2001 : 313). However, the phenomenon extends far wider than the West European and American examples he looks at. For instance, in revolutionary Russia anthropology was branded bourgeois, and so replaced by “Soviet ethnography,” nationally bound and geographically oriented (Gingrich 2010 : 358). Fascists in Italy left anthropology dormant and, for political reasons, reinvigorated folklore studies, renaming it popolaresca in the process (De Simonis and Dei 2010 : 79). In newly independent Cameroon anthropologists, to avoid a charge of neocolonialism, presented themselves as historians or philosophers (Fokwang 2008 : 133). In Titoist Yugoslavia anthropology was neglected for the sake of ethnology which, though regarded as a very general science, lacked a comparative dimension, while in post-Communist Slovenia the turf-wars over who controlled the term “cultural anthropology” became, in the words of one local practitioner, “rather comical” (Boskovic 2008a ). Eric Wolf (1964 ) called anthropology “a discipline between disciplines.” On the evidence of the above, it appears more an evolving assortment of activities coast- ing among disciplines. Moreover, at this point it seems diffi cult to study our central theme without preempting ourselves: how to research a highly contested, fragmented, and vaguely defi ned pursuit without our own working defi nition exclud- ing some historical dimensions, especially if their investigation might otherwise have proved fruitful? My image for this conundrum is not of a dog chasing its tail, but of a passage down a glazed labyrinth: much effort, little progress, and a lot of banging into oneself. Perhaps the least worst compromise here is to take a plural approach: follow the work done by those who are today regarded as precursors of modern anthropology, whether or not they called themselves “anthropologists”; scrutinize the writings of those who called themselves “anthropologists,” “ethnologists,” or closely associated contemporary terms, whether or not they are today viewed as ancestral fi gures of modern anthropology; be prepared to review the work of anyone/any institution whose activity appears relevant to work done by members of either the above approach or whose work appears to fi t within a defi nition of “anthropology.” To some this would be a messy, uncoordinated style of historical method; to others it might seem a discerning eclecticism, open-ended to suggestive possibility. The point is not to make a premature decision either way, but see where researching the material leads. I wish to follow my nose, not be led by it. As the opening examples suggest, the liberty to decide the content of the term is an apparent freedom all too open to exploitation, even abuse, by those with their own agendas, however laudable or innocuous those aims may at fi rst seem. The logical sequitur is that if we are to gain a more exact idea of what our common pursuit is and what it might be, then the questions we need to ask, in any instance, are who is deploying what conception of anthropology, how, for what ends, and to what effect. For instance Kempney, who has written on the 4 Anthropology in the Public Arena history of Max Gluckman ’ s time as the postwar head of anthropology at Man- chester, states that he did not worry whether the work done by his colleagues were labeled sociology or anthropology “as long as” (and that is the illuminating qualifi er here) “the research was done in accordance with the tradition that domi- nated the department” (Kempney 2005 : 189). Similarly Meyer Fortes, who held an even more powerful position (the chair at Cambridge), propounded a nakedly self-serving defi nition, shortly after helping set up the Association of Social Anthropologists, which laid down professional credentials of the pursuit: “Social anthropology is what social anthropologists do” (quoted in Hart 2003 ). That is to say anthropology is performatively defi ned, by the example of institutionally powerful defi ners with a declamatory style. It’ s a closed circle. Knowledgeable anthropologists, even those within the relatively pacifi c Anglo- American traditions, are very well aware that the chronicle of their scholarly practice is not one of steady development, or even saltatory evolution, but of constant dispute as rival camps seek to persuade others (colleagues, prospective students, funders, the public) of the value of their distinctive defi nition or approach. These intellectual protagonists strive to take advantage of anthropology’ s vagueness, by trying to fi ll it with the content and style they deem most appropriate or promising. In these circumstances we cannot speak of a simple-minded scholarly progress over time for anthropology, rather a stormy muddling through a learned terrain whose terms, divisions, and destinations change as we attempt to potter on. In this book I seek to explore key consequences of this integral vagueness for our conceptions of what it is we do, why, and whether we should revise our practice. For, as far as I can see, failure to recognize this integral lack of limits cramps our idea of what anthropology has been, is, and could be. And an easy, effective way to demonstrate this point is through a historical investigation, very broadly conceived. In particular, I focus on otherwise neglected fi gures, movements, and topics within anthropology, in order to highlight just how straitjacketing the conventional histories of our practice are. I have to stress that I am not hauling the previously marginalized onto center-stage for the narrow sake of some arcane historiographical end. Rather, my aim is that reevaluation of these slighted characters, organizations, or themes may well nudge us to reconsider the frames and nature of anthropology. This historical re-view is key because those British anthropologists with an uncritical sense of the past of their pursuit tend to be relatively unaware of why we have ended up with the discipline that we have and that our present predicament does not have to be this way. For many, the anthropology of 1950s Britain remains a “golden age,” regarded as both exemplary and worthy of a mild nostal- gia. What is not being taken on board here is what an unusual period that was in the chronology of our discipline and, just as importantly, in British academic life more generally. Mills, in his well-received political history of UK anthropology, sites his work into this period as an investigation into the formation of an academic Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 5 discipline (Mills 2008 ). My work has a related, but broader remit: to query the deployment of a notion of “discipline,” to expose the limitations protagonists attempted to impose, to urge the serious consideration of anthropologists usually thought beyond the pale, and in so doing, to recognize the fertile plurality of our common pursuit, in and beyond universities. A common query by colleagues about this kind of work is, but what is the theoretical payoff ? This sort of question starts the conversation on the wrong foot, immediately prejudicing the direction of the conversation, and thus the possibilities of positive response. It is too restrictive, prohibiting from the very beginning the consideration of theoretical approaches other than those already accepted by the interrogator. For I wish to suggest that we should contemplate the potential benefi ts of stepping outside the usual theoretical bounds, and be prepared to envisage the benefi ts of other anthropologies than the conventional. Also, it was suggested to me that an extra-academic anthropologist, such as Hocart, would be a better candidate for study than say Layard or Gorer because some of his work is still regarded as illuminating reading for anthropology students. This again is to prejudge the issue: Hocart’ s work on kinship terms, for example, is considered worthy of inclusion in a course of anthropology precisely because it fi ts into the presently construed parameters of social anthropology. This sort of attitude, however, only confi rms the contemporary bounds of our subject; it does not question or extend them. In contrast, the work of Layard, Gorer, Graves, and Mass Observation, to each of which I devote a chapter of this book, goes beyond the conventional limits of anthropology and can make us query the aims and modes of our pursuit. It is precisely for that reason that they are included. Similarly some modern-day anthropologists, blinkered by contemporary delin- eations of the discipline, sideswipe the issue by a defi nitional sleight of hand. All those who practiced the pursuit before the emergence of a modern, university- grounded anthropology are termed “pre-anthropologists” or “proto-ethnographers,” as though the only practitioners worthy of the title are those born after the mid-nineteenth century and trained and accredited by university departments of anthropology. Herzfeld, for instance, pointedly refers to the “apparent anach- ronism of calling pre-19th century scholarship anthropology” (Herzfeld 2010 : 290). These more blinkered of our brethren have already created their own terms of debate, without justifying their maneuver. For them, anything not recognizable as academic in today ’ s terms is not to be discounted, just ignored from the very beginning. If there are key terms here I pay especial attention to they are the academic and the popular. These two may be, at different times, an opposed pair, a deeply dovetailing couple, or more simply two amorphous terms distant in some ways, overlapping in others. In places throughout this text, I examine different varieties of popular anthropologies, complementing and contrasting their contemporary academic variants, to see what the popular might offer us, to check whether these extra-mural styles should make us rethink the purposes and methods of 6 Anthropology in the Public Arena anthropology, broadly understood. In the process we may come to regard anthropology in a more open, plural, richer manner, of benefi t to us all. For some, the remarkably successful establishment of the history of anthropology as a worthy subfi eld of our pursuit was a further sign of the discipline’ s intellectual exhaustion. These skeptics took an academic turn into our own past to be a damning statement of our contemporary irrelevance: nothing to say about today, so let’ s look at all our yesterdays. Of course, it is only themselves they damn, for, in Santayana ’ s original formulation, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana 1905 : 284). A skeptic might reply that that is precisely the point of history of anthropology as conventionally taught. The obvious response is that if the past is narrowly conceived, the lessons learnt will be equally narrow; if our chronicle is highly structured, then all the more diffi cult to think outside those strictures. Since the 1980s anthropologists have been only too well aware of the real threats to the survival of their discipline: swingeing university cutbacks; the rise of new disciplines seen as competitors, especially cultural, queer, and media studies; following the death of Margaret Mead in 1978, the sustained dearth of anthropologists as public intellectuals; and so on. In consequence, recent years have seen the rise of “critical,” “engaged,” and “public” anthropologies (e.g., Marcus 1998 ; Eriksen 2006 ; Borofsky 2011 ). At root all three have a common concern in reintro- ducing anthropology to debates broader than those which only interest colleagues. Eriksen and Borofsky are both deeply aware of the potential power of our subject to inform issues of the day in a knowledgeable, analytical, revelatory manner (e.g., MacClancy 2002a ). Both are also very conscious that an essential ingredient in crossing academic boundaries is writing in an unpretentious, clear style. Otherwise there is little hope of turning public into popular anthropology. And a public activity without a populace does not make much sense. This recent “turn to the public” by mainstream anthropologists is part of a more general shift toward making our pursuit more accountable to the taxpayers who foot our bill (e.g., Strathern 2000 ; Brenneis, Shore, and Wright 2005 ). This shift has both been imposed by government policy and welcomed by those practitioners who were always unhappy by the image of anthropologists as gathered in a close huddle and only talking to one another. This book is, I hope, an indirect contribution toward that shift, a demonstration that anthropology can be profi t- ably practiced by amateurs and not just by the university-trained. It is at the same time a reminder that there have always been more versions of anthropology than the ones imposed by its hegemons. Of the many different factors at play in the production of academic and popular anthropologies, two are crucial. First, organizational: universities are deliberately structured to ensure the reproduction of their key staff. Departments of anthropology reproduce themselves by producing, among other things, academic anthropologists. Popularizers do not have this recourse, but arise afresh with each new bidder for book sales and non-academic success. There are no Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 7 courses in popular anthropology, and no preexisting paid positions for them. They are, to this extent, lone stars. The second key differentiating factor is commercial: the market for academic writing is usually tiny; it rarely extends beyond colleagues, students, maybe a few others; other than the comments of academic reviewers, they are usually left to get on with the job alone. In stark contrast, the potential sales of successful popularizers are huge. They are thus frequently assisted and cajoled by a host of involved others: literary agents, friendly critics, interested publishers, and a range of other mediators who know how to gauge the market. The literary agent I worked with on a popular book about the anthropology of food (MacClancy 1992 ) forecast, “It’ ll sell OK in Britain, do much better in the States; we might get it translated into two or three languages. If it comes out in Japanese, that’ ll sell as much as the rest combined.” He was exactly right. In this opening chapter I present my understanding of the development of anthropology. I pay particular attention to the interaction between supposedly professional anthropologists and anthropologically informed writers, especially in the years surrounding the appearance of a recognizedly academic version of the pursuit. This may be seen, at different points, as a pitted contest or a mutually enriching collaboration between a literary intelligentsia and an intelligentsia devoted to anthropology. A similar debate was played out over the same period between men of letters and social theorists in the intellectual arena whose academic dimension came to be dubbed sociology. As its chronicler, Lepenies, points out, the consequences of that debate “are still visible today” (Lepenies 1988 : 1). Almost identical comments can be made about anthropology, for the parallels between this pair of historical fora are highly suggestive. More generally, this book should be also sited within the broad historiography of British social science, which has recently started to appear. The key questions here go beyond conventional intellectual histories and strive to discern the inter- locking dynamics of rising disciplines and the social contexts within which they are arising. Historians engaged in these tasks seek to understand: how practitioners of different disciplines competed for public prominence; the evolving encounters between academic practice and contemporary literature; the usually parallel processes of professionalization and popularization; the roles of publishers and editors, and the effects of novel publishing technologies, modes of transportation, and the levels of literacy (e.g., Thomson 2006 ; Lightman 2007 ; Beer 2009 ; Savage 2010 ). It is misleading, within one ’s account, to prescribe in which direction the causal arrows should point: quite simply, it seems best to fl esh out the effects of these developing interrelations as they appear to emerge from the data. Like the historian of Victorian popularizers, Bernard Lightman, I practice a discriminating eclecticism (Lightman 2007 ). A properly rounded account of popularization would also discuss different modes of communication: books, periodicals, fi lms, lecture tours, radio, television, museums, exhibitions, etc. (e.g., Starr 1893 ; Loizos 1980 ; Benedict 1983 ; Coombes 1994 ; Caplan 2005 ). In this book I have restricted myself almost exclusively to 8 Anthropology in the Public Arena printed modes. I accept this limitation, grounded on considerations of publishing space and personal expertise, may edge me slightly toward the elitist, i.e., toward studying those with suffi cient education to read fl uently, and the leisure time to indulge their habit. In mitigation, I point out later in this text that publishers made great efforts to produce cheap books as the rate of literacy grew and the numbers of people with no disposable income whatsoever declined. Further, my focus on print over other means of communication may appear somewhat arbitrary. In defense, I plead that the broader consequences of my work may transcend the circumstances of its production.

Anthropology for Beginners

To make my text accessible to non-specialists, I summarize the most relevant schools of thought. Evolutionism, which arose in Victorian times, propounds that human societies have evolved from simpler to more complex social organization. Evolutionists equated greater complexity with a greater degree of civilization and, for some, with moral superiority. Taking contemporaneous societies as evidence of these stages, evolutionists ranked different social groups around the globe. Australian Aboriginals were usually placed on the bottom rung, and educated Protestant Westerners on the top one. The intermediary stages ran from hunter-gatherer societies to nomadic and agricultural ones and thence to industrialized ones. Evo- lutionists propounded a unlinear model: all societies had to pass through the same series of stages. They ignored the facts that some seemingly simple societies may well have evolved in their own manner, and that superfi cial simplicity may mask layers and modes of great subtlety. They also blithely passed over the caveat that any style of explanation which puts its protagonist and readers at the top of its tree should immediately be viewed with deep suspicion. From the 1920s on, modern anthropologists promoted functionalism. Here a society is viewed as a complex whole. Each of its integral parts fulfi ls a social function. Linked together their maintenance ensures the continued reproduction of society. One of its earliest proponents was Bronislaw Malinowski, an expatriate Pole who turned the London School of Economics into a world center for anthropology during the interwar period. Thanks to his promotional efforts, long-term intensive fi eldwork became the distinctive research method of anthropology. Malinowski at fi rst proposed a biological functionalism, where each integral part was supposed to meet a biological need, intuitively derived. Obvious objections here are how does one specify these purported needs, and how can their links to social activities be persuasively demonstrated? During the interwar years, the main competitor to functionalism was diffusionism. Led by Grafton Elliot Smith, at University College London, its proponents Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 9 were primarily concerned with the diffusion of cultural traits across societies. Their key strategy was to identify as large a number as possible of cultural traits which seemed to have been transmitted together as a cultural complex along identifi able routes around the world. The more extreme versions of this approach argued that almost all civilization as we know it originated in Ancient Egypt from which it diffused globally. Its critics derided this approach generally for taking insuffi cient account of independent invention, and as far too speculative. The Egyptocentric argument was relatively easy to discount. Malinowski ’ s overly crude, biologistic formulation was soon superceded by a much more sophisticated approach: structural-functionalism. Its standard-bearer was Arthur Radcliffe-Brown, who was inspired by and adapted the work of the illustrious French social theorist Emile Durkheim, which held the promise of providing a hitherto unseen level of rigor and of making the social sciences genuinely scientifi c. He was the fi rst person appointed, in 1937, to the chair of anthropology at Oxford. Radcliffe-Brown saw societies as structured social systems. In each fi eld study, the fi eldworker’ s job was to discern the component parts of the social structure and the particular functions each fulfi lled. The information about social structure derived from fi eld data, together with their interpretation, could then be used in cross-cultural comparison to provide, via induction, empirically grounded generalizations about the nature of human social life. Thus, to him, anthropology could be proclaimed a “natural science of society.” Edward Evans-Pritchard, who was appointed to the Oxford chair in 1946 , at fi rst worked along Radcliffe-Brownian lines but he soon launched an alternative manifesto, which proved highly infl uential. For him, social anthropology was a form of historiography. Anthropologists had to approach societies as moral, not natural systems. They were interested in design not process; they sought patterns not scientifi c laws. On this view, anthropology was not a positivist science, run on neo-Durkheimian lines, but one of the humanities, and its main job was translation. Thus fi eldworkers, rather than fuss about function, had to focus on the terms, especially key abstract ones, employed by the people they were living among. Evans-Pritchard ’ s successful shift in anthropological attention is often summarized as one “from function to meaning.” The greatest French anthropologist of the postwar decades was Claude Lévi- Strauss, whose structuralism, at its most pretentious, was more a philosophy than a mere mode of explanation. If British anthropologists had worried about social structure, Lévi-Strauss made conceptual or symbolic structure his object of attention. Within each society, a structuralist had to discern the most basic terms within which its people thought, and how they were structured. The ultimate aim was to compare, cross-culturally, these structuring devices and so derive “the fundamental structures of the human mind.” Lévi-Strauss ’ s radically new approach, his mastery of literary style, and his claims that structuralism had trans-disciplinary import won him, and anthropology, unprecedented and international attention. Rodney Needham at Oxford, Edmund Leach at Cambridge, and Mary Douglas, 10 Anthropology in the Public Arena who trained at Oxford, began to produce from the 1950s on, an Anglicized, more empirically grounded structuralism, which they and their students disseminated throughout Anglophone anthropology. For several years, above all in the 1960s, our relatively small subject enjoyed a surprising level of prestige among the educated thanks, above all, to Lévi-Strauss ’ s efforts and example. Functionalists were often criticized for having too static a view of society, as privileging synchrony over historical development, harmony over dispute. Struc- turalists were charged both with ahistoricism, and with producing over-interpreted ethnographies of an almost geometric abstraction: their analyses appeared limited not by their fi eld data but their imaginative powers. The proponents of an anthropological postmodernism, which came to prominence in the mid-1980s, called for an end to “grand narrative” by claiming the equality and diversity of different theoretical approaches. They wished to usher in a new plurality, exemplifi ed by historically grounded, experimental, self-refl exive ethnographies. Instead of high structuralist accounts which bordered on the mystico-mathematical, they wanted to promote anthropological analyses about pressing issues in the here and now. One critic quickly observed that despite their call to let a thousand fl owers bloom, postmodernists failed to confess the supposed superiority of one approach: their own (Sangren 1988 ). A latter-day commentator damned their “narcissistic obsession with the self ” to the neglect of what was actually going on in the world (Price 2004 : 349). By worrying greatly about who could represent others how, postmodernists had inadvertently produced a recipe for disengagement. Worse, though they had wanted a more open-ended approach, most of their ethnographies usually proved even more unreadable than their precursors. In other words, they had not lowered the drawbridge, just rebuilt the ivory tower, higher. A coherent school of thought to replace postmodernism is still awaited.

Past Imperfect, Present Tense

If all histories are constructed, if all chronicles, however bland they might appear, are politically motivated, then I need to be open about my own attempt to trace the past of our pursuit. I write my account, above all, in reaction to conventional histories of anthropology written by anthropologists. Known as internalist accounts, these histories tend to read like intellectual evolutionary stories in a Victorian mode: always onward and ever upward as we progress to yet higher levels of anthropological perfection. A sequence of theories is highlighted, errors are isolated then castigated, shortcomings noted then sighed over in a counterfactual frame, while the broader contexts of the original intellectual activity are usually skimmed over. In other words, these works are more Whiggish historiography than properly anthro- Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 11 pological histories of anthropology. As Patterson, in his neo-Marxist history of US anthropology, argues, anthropological knowledge is produced dialectically: “it is shaped by what the world is and who the anthropologists and the diverse peoples they study are” (Patterson 2001 : x). For Patterson, a history of anthropology should be situated in the changing social, cultural, and politico-economic circumstances of the area and period studied. Similarly Dustin Wax, in his study of Cold War anthropology, notes that “the omission from our own ofﬁ cial histories of the political, economic, and ideological context in which ethnography takes place is surprising, even astonishing” (Wax 2008 : 2). Modern-day Whigs in anthropological garb usually write their accounts in a narrow-minded presentist mode, i.e., contemporary values and questions structure the analysis (e.g., Harris 1969 ; Service 1985 ). Their authors are guilty of an anthropological sin. They have not tried to understand the natives in the indigenous terms and values of their own time and space. Thus Kuklick, a historian of anthropology, points out that in social science debate a trio of fundamental theorists, Weber, Marx and Durkheim, are regarded as “still-active participants.” Of that trio, Durkheim in particular has “been subjected to scholarly scrutiny of extraordinary intensity.” What she calls a contemporary “Durkheim industry” displays, in her assessment, academic “presentism of an exceptionally high order” (Kuklick 1999 : 232–233). This industry is a peculiarly Anglophone phenomenon: when in 1993 a British historian of anthropology spent a year in Paris he found French colleagues were amused and surprised that their long-gone precursor was thought worthy of so much contemporary re-analysis (R. Parkin, pers. comm.). Even when they are not being overly presentist, Whiggish historians who script their account to a cumulative narrative still tend to parade successive theoreticians as vanquishing the errors of their predecessors as they march on. In fact, as a skim through the history of anthropology demonstrates, old problems are not usually closed, simply passed over by those who wish to cut a new theoretical road. The consequence is that the establishment of a new theory is less a revolution, more a change in fashion, with most of us still wearing at least a few hand-me-downs. For instance, Mauss never relinquished social evolutionism, nor did Lévi-Strauss, some of whose work may be regarded as teleological functionalist in tone, while Leach never completely renounced functionalism (Leach 1970 : 9; Parkin 2005 : 188–189; Herzfeld 2010 : 291). Indeed Leach, ever the enfant terrible of anthropology, liked to gibe, “I ’ m a functionalist three days a week, a structuralist three days a week, and the remaining day I don’ t know what I am” (P. G. Riviere, pers. comm.). Despite the high-blown rhetoric and grand theoretical aims of successful hegemons, previous approaches are not completely abandoned. In fact the reverse, their style and lessons may linger on, albeit at the margins, but still for a surprisingly long time, or in an even more striking turn, they can be reborn anew. For example, how many contemporary ethnographies are completely free of a restricted diffusionism, a trace of structuralism, or a nod to postmodernism? Evans-Pritchard, after all, was prepared to publish in the academic journal New 12 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Diffusionist (Evans-Pritchard 1973 ). Statements about the irrelevance of evolutionary theory to our pursuit are now regarded over-hasty, given the recent rise of an evolutionary anthropology. Above all, I have yet to read an ethnography whose author could dispense totally with the explanatory concept of function. Many ethnographers today smuggle that approach in, however mild their functionalism be, without naming it explicitly for what it is. In other words, except for a few methodological purists who wish to pin their colors to some high mast, usually for careerist reasons, most anthropologists produce works which bear clear traces of our pursuit ’ s past. Rather than goal-oriented theoreticians, most of us are but moderately disciplined eclecticians. A further downside of presentist excess is its tendency to stimulate blindness toward future possibilities. In 1991 Adam Kuper, author of the much-reprinted Anthropologists and Anthropology: The Modern British School (Kuper 1983 ), complained about the editor of the leading British journal of anthropology who had recently turned down a historical paper of his, because the man saw “little point in studying ancestral fi gures who did not anticipate current concerns” (quoted in Kuper 1991 : 127). This stance is based on the premise that one can foretell the future. Instead of indulging in premature foreclosure, it seems best to acknowledge none of us has a crystal ball. What may appear abstruse scholarship one day may become material of the greatest anthropological import the next. Another constrictive dimension to presentism is its occasional failure to regard long-dead authors as writers in the round. In the 1990s Alfred Gell gently criticized anthropologists of aesthetics for looking only at objects which could fi t into outmoded classifi cations of art (masks, fi gures, painted surfaces, etc.), as though non-Westerners were incapable of humorous invention or conceptual art (Gell 1999 ). In a similar style, Boon has chided his historically minded colleagues for not granting Victorian anthropologists a sense of irony (Boon 2008 : 53). For instance, according to his biographer, Sir James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, was so well aware of the impossibility of knowing anything for certain that he would at times engage “in a sort of twinkling delivery, a sardonic self-scrutiny, a cat-and-mouse game with truth. He was not above playing to the gallery in this respect” (Fraser 1990a : 210). On this historicist reading, a venerable ancestor from a supposedly strait-laced period was in fact a skilful exponent of dedicated playfulness. Closer to our own times, Lévi-Strauss is usually regarded as an austerely intellectual writer, a master of literary style. Yet even he peppered his prose occasionally with sly asides. At the beginning of his fourth weighty tome on mythology, he included a ribald comment from a magazine he enjoyed, Playboy (Lévi-Strauss 1971 : 25; Wilcken 2010 : 268). An early, powerful critic of presentism was George Stocking, today viewed as the single person who has done most to establish the history of anthropology as an academically reputable pursuit. Very likely, the main reason for this accolade is that he is, by training, a professional historian, not a fi eldworking anthropologist. To a degree until then unseen, Stocking was prepared to spend hundreds of Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 13 hours working through university archives primarily, as well as interviewing key, veteran participants in the chronicles he was examining. And, as he stressed himself, his institutional base, the Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, provided exceptionally generous sabbaticals, which allowed him to piece together over years in a painstaking manner his characteristically rich, dense essays, in a much pondered prose which he terms a “However, although” style of exposition (Stocking 2010 : 154). Arguing against the then dominant presentist style, Stocking counterposed his own, historicist approach (Stocking 1968 : ch. 1). In order not to misrepresent the dead, he has constantly tried to understand those he has studied within the context of their own times. Context is not singular, but plural, and he has consistently striven to provide a detailed, persuasive account of episodes in anthropology’ s past by, in each case, researching as many relevant contexts as possible. He calls this historiographical style “multiple contextualism” (Stocking 2010 : 152). Hancock ranks Stocking ’ s work as so foundational that all subsequent scholars involved in the history of anthropology, like myself, are obliged to enter into dialogue with it. He regards the result, whether dissent, disagreement, or subtle refashioning of key concepts, as benefi cial (Hancock 2008 : 171–172). For instance, Price has criticized Stocking ’ s historicism because it entails not considering questions that were not being asked at the period being studied. This is important because, in repressive times for instance, certain questions may have not been raised for very clear reasons, and they may still be very well worth asking. In other words, present values can be used to query why certain events happened and, just as importantly, why certain other events did not. Otherwise those uncritical about the past run the risk of repeating “past actions anew in similar and divergent contexts, without any hope of systemically repeating successes and avoiding failures” (Price 2008 : xiii–xiv). In reaction to Price ’ s comments Stocking, while still granting historiographical priority to perspectives on the past, has acknowledged “a necessary ‘presentist’ component of historical understanding” (Stocking 2010 : 155). Kuper argues even more strongly than Price the relevance of presentist concerns. For him, the past of our pursuit is worth researching for the explicit end of advancing anthropological theory. Thus, he tries to comprehend the contexts which shaped theories, as a central aid to evaluating them. “Wherever the theory comes from, you have to come to a view about how much it helps us to make sense of what people are up to” (Kuper 1999 : 2). It is germane that Stocking was employed as a historian and did not need to justify his practice in other than historical terms. Kuper was paid to be a university anthropologist, whose duties were teaching as well as research. Perhaps for this reason, he felt the need to justify his work in internalist terms. Kuklick tries to resolve this presentism vs. historicism debate by reworking it. She contends that these two terms are not mutually exclusive, or bipolar opposites, but complementary. She argues her case by undermining a pure historicist position: 14 Anthropology in the Public Arena

No matter what their professional training and special interests, historians must inevitably ask questions that are important in our age. They know that past concerns were different from our own, but they must also know how contemporary practitioners view their enterprise; the past may appear different in the future, but knowledge of a discipline ’ s present has some bearing on understanding its history. (Kuklick 2008 : 1)

To her, anthropologists can benefi t from both historical episodes of present interest and historicist studies which achieve anthropological levels of contextualized sensibility. Darnell has staked out a similar position. She contends that in our contemporary ambience of refl exivity and situated epistemologies the opposition between presentism and historicism dissolves. Instead, academics researching the history of the pursuit “are careful to situate themselves relative to their subject matters and favoured modes of interpretation” (Darnell 2008 : 36; also Darnell 2001 ). In fact the intellectual historian LaCapra had come to much the same stance over two decades before. Wishing to transcend the imagined opposition between internal and external perspectives in history, he styled purely documentary (i.e., historicist) and presentist extremes as both “monological.” What was needed was for the historical researcher to recognize her own historical position. She should acknowledge, not attempt to escape, her own historicity. The very process of interpreting historical texts involved her in an interaction among past, present, and future. LaCapra thus represented the intellectual historian as engaged in an essentially dialogical process, who had to write with both academic and non- academic audiences in mind (LaCapra 1983 ). It is diffi cult to disagree. These various studies have picked out the upsides and downsides of presentism, historicism, and a dodgem-car shuffl e between the two. It is by now time to leave this tired argument to one side. For so long as a writer is explicitly aware of the intellectual consequences of this debate for her historiographic practice, critical assessment of the results can be left to the knowledgeable reader. Deliberating the virtues of presentism vs. historicism need not lead to an impasse, rather further development in historiographical styles. We are all forced to live in the present and thus to acknowledge the existence of present-day blindspots though their number, nature, and identity will, by defi nition, only be visible to future readers. We have to accept a minimum of contemporary limitations as a necessary pre- condition for today studying the past. As for myself, I wish to be as historicist as possible, placing ideas and actions in their multiple contemporary contexts. At the same time I have to recognize the necessarily presentist dimension to my work. Since I am explicitly arguing a case against present-day styles of historiography in anthropology, this agenda of mine must infl uence my choice of topics from the past, and my selection of relevant details and events in each of those. Further, as a middle-aged anthropologist writing on history, and unlike a historian of anthropology initially trained in history, I am undoubtedly infl uenced by my own anthropological past. After all, Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 15 a small section of my store of evidence is autobiographical, gathered from events I have witnessed, processes in which I have participated, and comments that were made to me over the decades by veteran but fellow practitioners. If I cannot avoid an irreducible degree of presentism, nor can I escape a certain degree of Whiggishness, however minimal I strive to make it. If that is taken broadly to mean the overcoming of past historiographical errors while on the march toward enlightenment, then all works of history which proclaim a novel approach are by defi nition Whiggish. Imagine for a moment: it would be self- contradictory for a historian to advance a new historiographical style which she at the same time promoted as a backward step. On this interpretation “counter- histories,” such as those by Patterson and Wax, are almost as guilty as the established accounts they criticize. To a degree, this is unsurprising as the present construction of scholastic practice levers ambitious academics toward Whiggery. For to gain attention and kudos, they tend to state their arguments in over-positive terms, and to leave self-critical qualms to their private notebooks. Of course once their reputation is very fi rmly established, in late-middle age they may build on their fame for acuity by disputing logically the intellectual novelties they had earlier advanced. Exemplars of this style are the early-twentieth century anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and his later champion Needham (Lévy-Bruhl 1949 ; Needham 1983 ; MacClancy n.d.b ). If I cannot side-step this general problem, I can at least try to reduce its inci- dence throughout this text. Popularity is not in itself a necessary sign of virtue, but comes with its own benefi ts and biases. One way to keep Whiggery in its corner is to acknowledge that among the diverse varieties of popular anthropology some are at present more worthy of praise and attention than others. The genuinely popular compared to the poorly selling or the ignored seem better candidates for our research time, unless work into the latter can illuminate some key point. Political considerations are also at play: I do not examine or laud modern-day apologia for racism cloaked in anthropological vocabulary, again with the same caveat. Further, commercial publishing, like its academic counterpart, has its own set of possibilities and constraints, and the consequences of these have to be recognized. Just as motivated academics are pushed toward Whiggery, so popularizers may feel pressured toward sensationalism. To sell their product to the highest bidder, it needs to stand out. In these conditions selling may easily turn into selling out. Of course sensationalism is not confi ned to popularizers. Some notorious academics, such as Colin Turnbull, have been just as culpable. Many academics falsely equate the erudite with the dull, and the popular with the frivolous. They also worry that popularizers oversimplify their carefully wrought ideas. This may at times be true; it is not a necessary consequence. As Bourdieu ( 1988 ) exposed, too many academics feel obliged to write in an obscure, jargon-heavy prose. Yet good ideas are not in need of esoteric manner- isms, or the burden of endnotes and other tired emblems of supposed scholarship. The prose of Evans-Pritchard is famously limpid; Lévi-Strauss could write, when 16 Anthropology in the Public Arena the occasion demanded, with exemplary clarity and accessibility (Wilcken 2010 : 277). Making your prose fl uent does not mean your ideas are any the less serious, subtle, or complex. As Marrett commented in Edwardian times, “So long as he writes on [anthropological] topics, is profuse in facts, vivid in style, and not too technical in language – this last condition being not the least important – he may confi dently reckon on a fair sale” (Marrett 1910 : 299). In this book I have chosen to talk about certain writers, above all Layard, Gorer, Graves, and the leaders of Mass Observation, because I believe they are worth the candle, that their anthropological innovations and public effect are suffi cient to merit extended attention. For not all outsiders are interesting. Not all dissidents are geniuses. It seems best to leave some marginals to the margins, at least for the time being. The foci chosen and formats employed by historians are not common. Stocking is open that he has tended to produce essays, frequently centered on a particular individual, especially canonical fi gures (Stocking 2001 : 331). He repeatedly attributes this tendency to his avowed failure to produce what he terms a “grand picture” of anthropology. Mills, in his political history of British social anthropology, groups his interests into the “Four Is”: ideas, individuals, institutions, identities (Mills 2008 : 3). Sibeud relies on a similarly embedded set of conceptual tools, for she claims the metamorphosis of French ethnology can only be studied by a long-term examina- tion of theories, practices, institutions, and networks of the learned (Sibeud 2009 : 97). As a frank eclectician, I chose varied foci, for different reasons, and then seen where they led me. The most productive of those investigations have become the chapters of this book. Three of them are threaded on biographical lines, a fourth on the early years of an organization, the last on an anthropological theme. My general aim throughout has been to investigate an overlooked aspect of our pursuit and see what it might tell us about anthropological endeavor, and how we should understand that. But how to write a biographical chapter in an academic book? Traditionally, one concentrates on the character’ s work in their discipline and treats all else in the most summary fashion. But in a book like this one, where the very distinction between the academic and the popular is called into question, the conventional approach only reinforces the boundary I am keen to dissolve. It is therefore appropriate to maintain a consistently more open-minded style, focusing on the characters studied and their various activities in a much more rounded manner. The aim, after all, is to probe the ways they have practiced a productive anthropology, especially in unconventional, non-academic ways. Anthropology is, by defi nition, a moral pursuit. Everything we do is structured, ultimately, by ethical considerations. Though that stance may seem comfortingly laudable, even lofty, we have also to recognize that practitioners may use debates about ethics as cover for political sniping from their faction of the profession. Indeed Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, in a review of relevant debates within the Ameri- can Anthropological Association, goes so far as to state, “A uniquely political Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 17 history of the discipline can be discerned by examining closely the issues of ethics and professionalism in anthropology” (Fluehr-Lobban 1991 : 26). In other words morality, whether as structuring device, politically structured instrument or, more accurately, both concurrently, perfuses all our practice. The moral dimensions to the historiography of anthropology are just as clear, and as complex. Herzfeld, for instance, propounds that the only viable and ethically honest position for a contemporary anthropologist is “to maintain and even intensify” anthropologists ’ unease about the past of their pursuit: “Even the most progressive theories carry within themselves the taint of past colonial prejudices and supposedly outdated ideas” (Herzfeld 2010 : 291). Similarly Hancock, in his attempt to reconceptualize the historiography of anthropology, argues we must take into account the ethical orientations and consequences of different anthropological theories. Any assessment of our practice, whether former or actual, is at bottom grounded on one ’ s vision of anthropology. For him, the choice is whether to regard anthropology as a disinterested but rigorous pursuit, whose subterranean morality is never brought to the surface, or as an openly ethical practice, dedicated to the application of its knowledge for the betterment of humankind (Hancock 2008 : 175). Though it is easy to raise questions about every noun, not just “betterment,” in that last phrase, the thrust of Hancock’ s point remains: we fail to be mindful of morality at our own peril. A self-serving history of anthropology, put together by aspirational hegemons for careerist ends, is an ethical no-no. A carefully considered history, informed by presentist concerns, is as morally questionable as those concerns. Given these disputational positions, I have to be patent about my own ultimate aims, while recognizing that this book will further, or at least prop up, my own anthropological career. In the following chapters, I strive to give as much prominence to the popular as to the academic: I wish to open up our past, to make that “our” as inclusive as possible, to examine roads not traveled by the academically successful, to investigate who is judging “success” here, to see what difference these efforts make. I do not pretend to take this history out of the clutches of academics, but I do wish to steer it from an almost exclusive focus on academics. More generally, I wish to stimulate a much broader conception of anthropology, both democratic and democratizing, and written in a language which does not exclude the non-academically inclined. For a plural anthropology, as both a critical and self-critical practice, can provide us with an ever-revisable stance from which to view the world. As a cross-cultural exercise grounded on an informed understanding of different peoples, social anthropology can assist us in questioning conventional orthodoxies of the day; why, how they are still maintained, and to what effect. It can help us estrange the taken-for-granted, and tease out the natural from the social and vice versa, denying the force of those who wish to naturalize the social for their own particular ends. The specifi c foci and questions broached by anthropologists often depend on space and time. For example, Victorians worried in 18 Anthropology in the Public Arena particular about the status of religion in an age of scientifi c advance; in the interwar years, anthropologists advanced the idea of “culture” and “the social” as new ways to comprehend human nature and difference. In the mid-century, practitioners could assist, albeit indirectly, anti-racists by revealing the underlying logic to what Westerners might consider irrational behavior, e.g., witchcraft and the Mela- nesian modernization movements formerly known as “cargo cults.” These days, anthropologists can extricate the cultural values which structure markets, and so query the idea of a savage capitalism as the natural order of things; they may detail the varieties of sexes and genders by which peoples understand themselves and their behavior; they might overturn environmentalist orthodoxies and stimulate us to rethink just how and in what ways ecological life on the globe is and is not changing (MacClancy 2002a ). And so on. Certain grand themes seem to perdure: above all, what are the limits to and nature of human diversity in social and cultural terms? Do other peoples have similar concerns, how do they answer the enigmas of human existence? How are people grouped, and what are the consequences of that grouping? Queries about race, for instance, seem to linger on and on. In the late nineteenth century most anthropologists promoted the idea of race; a few decades later, many attacked it publicly; today, a good number work to expose modern, masked forms of racism. I wish to uphold a vision of anthropology where the academic and the public are not separate but feed, and feed off, each other. Thus new approaches generated within Academe can suggest novel ways for people to interpret the social and cultural dimensions of themselves and others, while public issues and popular concerns can impress themselves on those within the university walls. An example of the latter from a closely allied discipline: bestselling texts in popular primatology have different foci to their academic counterparts. Besides describing the lives of primates, their authors also attend to the interaction between these animals and their fi eldworker or their human neighbors. This broader approach has only lately been taken on board by academic primatologists who have come to realize their conception of the fi eld is misleadingly narrow (MacClancy 2011 ; MacClancy and Fuentes 2011 ). That is an example of the popular feeding the academic. An example in the opposite direction suggests how the academic might assist the struggles of the activist or the embattled. A longstanding distinction of anthropology is that it tends to investigate the view “from below,” bringing to broader fora the examined conditions and attitudes of those usually denied voice, linking reports from small places to grand issues. An anthropology which genuinely aspires to be both public and popular could build from this, supplying the conceptual tools for a socially analyzed self-representation, and so possibly assisting transcontinental coalitions of the oppressed. If the digital divide shifts signifi cantly, the Net may play a central role here. We have been near here before, but in a more radical version. Mass Observation’ s idea of a democratizing anthropology where Observers became incisive anthropologists of their own milieu is not an example of the academic feeding the popular, or even vice versa, but of an integrated process which transcends that division. Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 19

I want to be clear. I am not damning an exclusively academic anthropology, whose practitioners keep to themselves and colleagues in cognate disciplines. What I am attempting is to dislodge its hitherto central dominance. Chances are, sternly academic anthropological work will always be with us. This is appropriate for two immediate reasons: the further consequence of highly theoretical work may not be immediately apparent; what is defi ned as socially relevant is a shifting target. Studies viewed by many as abstruse scholarship today can quickly be reclas- sifi ed as of the greatest import tomorrow, as suggested by the increasing use of once-dusty ethnographies in indigenous rights cases brought to national courts. The question then becomes, who will fund this kind of research? The very format of anthropology chronicles, whether by historically inclined anthropologists or professional historians, is usually structured in exclusively academic categories. This integral bias comes with a price, as suggested by a parallel example from a neighboring discipline. In his pioneering study of Picasso as sharp- eyed co-promoter of his own career, Fitzgerald notes that conventional art historians divide up the course of his production in terms of style. However, one of his key dealers used very different criteria, partitioning Picasso ’ s progress according to his succession of dealers. Academic art historians wish to underline pain- terliness; this dealer questioned that excessively aesthetic view by underlining the very real signifi cance of fi nancial backing in building up the artist ’ s name (Fitzger- ald 1995 : 77). Academic insiders wish to write art history in their own internalist terms; a central player in their story demonstrates there are other, highly telling ways of plotting that tale. In anthropology, the sequential stages of its past are all too often based on pedagogical criteria: slicing continua into easily identifi able sections is a trouble-free way to teach. As outlined above, those stages are usually organized on the lines of theory: e.g., pre-Tylor, Tylor and his evolutionist times, Malinowski, the initial followers of Radcliffe-Brown, British structuralism, and so on up to today. Yet, once academically popular theories neglected by the succeeding generation may still experience a remarkably enduring half-life outside university departments. A thoroughly popular history of anthropology, keyed to criteria which only overlap with those from Academe, would have a very different time- line and set of stages. Since I am here looking at the interaction of the academic and the popular, I only hint at the possible structures of this alternative history, where, for some, evolutionism never died, Frazer remains exemplary, and anti-diffusionism is still contentious.

Bring Out Your Dead

If the idea of anthropology is so malleable, selecting intellectual ancestors is not an innocent trawl of the past, but a self-centered, tactical exercise. Choosing and lauding one’ s predecessors serves manifold functions, all potentially benefi cial 20 Anthropology in the Public Arena to the selector. If the ancestors are illustrious, these creative genealogists gain prestige by association, hoping to inherit some of the renown enjoyed by their putative forefathers. They are like kinship claimants in classical ethnographies who wish to align themselves with late lineage elders for their own advantage. However, if the ancestors are today unknown, their selectors can still gain prestige by their apparent abilities: their acuity in spotting what others have missed or misvalued, and the capacity to stimulate a Lazarus-like revival of the putatively long dead. These diggers for forgotten precursors may thus be seen as but latter-day body- snatchers in the graveyards of Academe. Either way, whether exhuming yet again the much-revived, or tomb-raiding the otherwise forgotten, constructing one’ s own family tree is an exercise in self-promoting partiality, underlining the con- structor’ s depth of historical knowledge, singularity of vision, and tactical prowess. It is yet another example of the tired self-interested strategy of those striving for hegemony (MacClancy 2010 : 256–257). It is also a surprisingly long-established practice: there was already a published “History of anthropology” by the early 1860s (Bendysse 1863 ). Of course, exposing the pretensions of the intellectual graverobbers among one ’ s colleagues is not a popular pursuit. For some, revealing the interests underlying the intellectual productions of schools of anthropology is a “scandalous” exercise (Watson 1984 : 361). When I reviewed the various modern revivalists of the mid-century French anthropologist Maurice Leenhardt, I argued that his biographer, James Clifford, was in effect exploiting the fi gure as a means to bring postmodernism into anthropology (Clifford 1982 ; MacClancy 2010 : 262). At the same time, he was also exploiting Leenhardt in order to advance his own academic career, to be recognized as a standard-bearer of the then anthropological avant- garde. I contended that this interpretation was not overly cynical because Sangren (1988 ), as mentioned above, had already exposed the hegemonic goals of Clifford and his colleague George Marcus. When he linked this to their own desire for institutional self-advancement, they protested against “innuendo about career strategies,” an “unsavory, ad hominem charge of bad faith, a totally unsupported charge of scheming careerists who wish merely to advance themselves” (Clifford 1988b : 425; Fischer, Marcus, and Tyler 1988 : 426). Collegiality can have real benefi ts, but not if it entails looking away from the work of self-seeking genealogists. In a republic of letters, all scholars are meant to be equal, and their publications equally open to scrutiny. Exactly who is plucked from the past is wonderfully various. As one sharp commentator on these resuscitators put it, the criteria employed to determine related- ness are so complex and fl exible that “anthropologists can advance plausible claims to be the intellectual heirs of almost anybody” (Watson 1984 : 355). Wendy James, a student of Evans-Pritchard, is candid that he promoted his version of social anthropology by inventing a history for it, lining up “a whole string of newly discovered ancestors in the tradition of the French and Scottish Enlightenment . . . as a genealogy of the discipline.” She thinks his All Souls colleague, the political Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 21 philosopher and Cold War warrior Isaiah Berlin, was a key infl uence here (James 2007 : 106). When I started anthropology at Oxford in the mid-1970s Ancient Greek and Roman historians, such as Herodotus, Tacitus, and Strabo, were frequently suggested as our earliest ancestors (see also Eggan 1968 ; Voget 1975 ; Honigman 1976 ; Erickson and Murphy 2003 ). Rosalie Wax chose a later group. For her, the fi rst Europeans “to collect and record genuinely useful ethnographic data about alien people were missionaries of the Catholic church and certain ambitious and imaginative merchants”: Marco Polo is her exemplar (Wax 1971 : 23). Hallowell chides those who cite Classical authors as constructors of “an over-simplifi ed linear chronology of name-dropping.” Instead he plumps for the Age of Discovery as provoking legitimate anthropological questions; explorers’ accumulation of data about other peoples led in turn to the emergence of the comparative method (Hallowell 1965 ; see also Pagden 1987 ). Some anthropologists, displaying their multicultural credentials, have cast their net wider. Launay, in his collection on the foundations of anthropological theory, takes in the Islamic traveler Ibn Battuta and the comparativist Ibn Khaldun (Launay 2010 ). When I proposed in 2010 producing a reader in the anthropology of food for a well-regarded series, its anthropologist editor immediately suggested I include Babylonian examples. Some anthropologists play a double role: attempting to mold their past, and to control their future. In the early 1970s a former student of Evans-Pritchard, now a distinguished practitioner in his own right, wrote to him stating his interest in writing his biography. Very shortly afterwards, he was witnessed at home burning a large pile of his papers and photos. Needham, who held the same Oxford chair, practiced a similar double strategy. He persuaded the University of Chicago Press to reprint a series of neglected texts in Victorian anthropology, each introduced by himself or one of his students. This series refl ected, and so further established, the singularity and historical depth of his own vision of our pursuit: who else had had the insight to realize the contemporary value of these forsaken classics? (Mac- Clancy 2010 : 256–257). Also like Evans-Pritchard, he was emphatic that he did not want a biography produced; on his death, he had his manuscripts and papers incinerated. Genealogies, because constructed, both include and exclude. Ancestors may comprise both the visible and the invisible. Even a partial list of the forgotten, neglected, or bypassed would be long, diverse, and forever open. An obvious omission in my own account is female contributors to my history.1 Mary Kingsley would be a good example: niece of the writer Charles, daughter of a doctor and amateur anthropologist, she won fame as a sympathetic African explorer and writer of travelogues rich in ethnographic insight. When she criticized the Colo- nial Offi ce for not valuing anthropological approaches, its offi cers branded her “the most dangerous woman on the other side.” Other potential candidates, besides women, for our roll of the overlooked and the unrecognized include gays, lesbians, the untenured, anthropologists from beyond the hegemonic centers of British, French, and American anthropology, learned practitioners of the occult, 22 Anthropology in the Public Arena missionaries, colonial offi cials, indigenous ethnographers and anthropologists, travel writers, explorers, and of course popular anthropologists of various kinds (MacClancy 1996a ; Handler 2000 ; Boskovic 2008b ; MacClancy and Fuentes 2011 ). My list, like the practice, could go on. The point, however, is clear: whenever delving among the dead, raising some razes others. Necessarily, I cannot avoid playing the same game.

Sketching a History of Anthropology, Popular or Otherwise

I am especially interested in the relations between the academic and the popular, but do not wish this chapter to dominate the rest of my text. Thus I provide only a sketchy history of anthropology, which starts with the decades immediately prior to the emergence of a professional version of our pursuit, i.e., from a time when there was no signiﬁ cant difference between the academic and the popular to a time when academics made sure there was, or appeared to be. In an effort not to repeat material already discussed elsewhere (e.g., Stocking 1987 ; MacClancy 1996a ), I pay particular attention to relatively neglected dimensions of this chronicle.

Anthropology as adventure: From reformists to F razer, via the A ran I slands

In the mid-nineteenth century British universities still conﬁ ned themselves to the teaching of a narrow range of subjects. They were primarily dedicated to ﬁ lling the ranks of the clergy and the civil service, and of relieving aristocrats of their inheritors for a few years. Those interested in studying what may be considered broadly as anthropological themes were educated gentlemen, who gathered in learned societies and prestigious male clubs. The atmosphere of these places can be estimated from the biography of one of this band, Edward Clodd:

He described in Memories the ﬁ rst club to which he belonged, the Century, one of the centres in which the cultivated rebels against tradition and convention eased their feelings. It met after dinner, on Sundays and Wednesdays, in an upper room at 6, Pall Mall Place. Along one side of the room was a large table strewn with long clay pipes, tobacco, cigarettes, whisky, brandy, and mineral waters. Your guinea a year paid for these luxuries. Books and newspapers, cards and dice, were not permitted to enter the room. You must talk; and the talk was worth-while when the members included Walter Bagehot, W. K. Clifford, Samuel Butler, Henry Fawcett, David Masson, Admiral Maxse, Goldwin Smith, Leslie and Fitzjames Stephen, John Tyndall, and Sir E. B. Tylor. Clifford and Tylor gave pledge that Clodd was a talker Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 23

worthy of the high company, and he became a member. All were heretics. (McCabe 1932 : 41–42)

Clodd had been inducted into an elite clubbable group of critical evolutionists, men renowned in a range of fi elds, literary and academic, and including Edward Tylor, the fi rst person to be employed by a British university as an anthropologist. These men (there were few female participants in these intellectual milieux) did not regard themselves exclusively as anthropologists or ethnologists, but as intellectuals or writers who occasionally studied anthropological or ethnographic themes. Their interests embraced prehistory, archaeology, physical anthropology, and the study of the customs of contemporary peoples, in both the West and beyond. The key general theme they addressed was the status and practical consequences of evolutionary theory, be that Darwinian, Spencerian, or some more home-grown variety. They may be considered the more anthropologically inclined within a loose but extensive network of intellectuals and writers who broached broader evolutionary themes, from the beginning of the universe to present times. To questioning Victorians, science was thought especially important, a new mode to truth, able to challenge religious certainties. Thus those who spoke on behalf of science won both cultural authority and intellectual prestige. Their words had weight and a broad readership, because rising levels of literacy, the development of the railroads, and an industrial revolution in publishing methods enabled the production of series of cheap books, whose market stretched from the middle- brow to sectors of the working class (Lightman 2007 : ch. 1). Anthropological evolutionists, who tended to come from dissenting churches rather than the ranks of Anglicanism, found a ready audience. Many Christians were gravely troubled by evolution so any anthropologically minded author “with something stirring or comforting to say on the great subjects of where we had come from, how we had arrived where we are, and where we might be heading was guaranteed a hearing” (Ackerman 2008 : 145). The better speakers and writers among them were remarkably successful at disseminating their views on this debate, selling thousands of copies of their books and fi lling even the largest of lecture halls. Tylor, who held a post at Oxford, used to give lectures to vast audiences, despite the fact that over time his talks lasted longer and longer, often terminating in their third hour. The names most commonly mentioned in histories of anthropology for this period are those of the intellectuals, such as Sir John Lubbock (later Lord Avebury), a natural scientist, politician, fi nancier, and social reformer, who married a daughter of General Pitt-Rivers, or Sir Henry Maine, colonial administrator and professor of jurisprudence (Riviere 1978 ; Cocks 1988 ; Diamond 1991 ; Patton 2007 ). Much less commonly mentioned are the novelists and travel writers who participated in these debates. Perhaps the key fi gure here is Andrew Lang, poet, novelist, 24 Anthropology in the Public Arena and literary critic. A prolifi c writer, his many reviews and pieces of criticism, appearing in both specialized and popular journals, widely read “for their style and sometimes for their acuteness and sarcasm, . . . had a large share in creating the conspicuous interest in anthropology and folkloristic problems which existed in England at the turn of the century” (De Cocq 1968 : 127). Within anthropology itself, he is best known for his works on the origin of totemism, and the relations between myth, ritual, and religion. As a dedicated evolutionist, he vigorously championed romance as a popular form of writing, to combat what he saw as the dangerous degeneracy of effete realist fi ction (Michalski 1995 : 14). Romance, as a literary genre, successfully served him as “a kind of sublimated anthropology” (Stocking 1996 : 52), as both a medium for the popularization of anthropological ideas and as an instrument to bring about his anthropological aims. To that end, as editor in all but name of Longman ’ s Magazine, he promoted authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle. These relationships were not merely professional: for instance, both Lang and Stevenson had joined the recently founded Savile Club in Mayfair, London, whose membership was composed of writers, editors, and publishers as well as prominent evolutionary scientists. Julia Reid, in her incisive analysis of Stevenson and contemporary science, argues convincingly that his fascination with and knowledge of “primitive” life, whether in the Scots Highlands or the South Pacifi c, led him to question evolutionist hierarchies and notions of progress. Tylor propounded a unilinear model of cultural development from barbarity to enlightenment. Stevenson did not accept this ethnocentric style of approach; living among indigenes led him to see a people ’ s way of life as a whole. He came to view local customs not as irrational “survivals” but as serving social functions; to interpret the branding of beliefs as superstitions as but a Western mode of social control; to value cultural differences in a proto-relativist manner; and to fi nd degrees of sameness between peoples, so cross-cutting evolutionist rankings of racial superiority and inferiority. Rather than uphold the common elevation of the written over the spoken word, he also learnt to appreciate the sophistication of oral culture. Stevenson transmitted these views in various novels and short stories, querying the common views about the supposedly civilizing process following the Union of Scotland with England or the cumulative colonization of once independent islands. Throughout his life he also continued to participate in anthropological debates in London periodicals (Reid 2006 ; see also Ashley 2000 ). While living in the South Pacifi c and investigating social life there, he chose not to focus on myth, religion, and folklore, the usual cynosures of Victorian anthropology. Instead he tended to study local legal cultures, comparing them with Roman law, following the example of Maine, whom Evans-Pritchard was to rank highly as a precursor (Jolly 2006 ). Once Stevenson had based himself in the South Seas Lang, among others, treated him as a resident ethnographer, for instance requesting information from him about the connections between upright stones and local religion in the Gilberts, because of a debate Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 25 he was involved in with Grant Allen, a fellow writer and evolutionist (RLS to AL viii 1890, AL to RLS 7 x 1890, in Demoor 1990 : 117, 155–156). Indeed, in one of his last works, the posthumously published In the South Seas (1896), Stevenson preferred discussion of local ways and predicaments over a personal travel narrative. At his end, anthropology was winning out over autobiography (Rennie 1998 ). Lang assisted Stevenson in his career; his effect on Rider Haggard was far greater. First meeting in 1885, they formed a close, mutually benefi cial friendship. Lang became his champion: as an editor of London periodicals and a popular critic, he was much able to help Haggard, publishing his works fi rst in serial form and praising his other novels. In a letter to Stevenson, Lang says Haggard “is uncommonly ‘bidable,’ and would let me take vast liberties with his things, I must say. I met him last night at Longman ’ s, and threatened to excise heaps of Alan Quartermain , and he seemed quite on” (AL to RLS, 27 i 1887, in Demoor 1990 : 106; also AL to RLS, 28 xi 1892, in Demoor 1990 : 141). Lang greatly developed Haggard ’ s interest in anthropology, co-wrote three novels with him, and would also provide him with plots drawn from his own studies in comparative mythology. In return, Lang saw Haggard as a writer “who was putting the lessons of contemporary anthropology to work in the service of literature” (Etherington 1984 : 10). In other words, Lang was the educated prompt, Haggard the interested purveyor. Haggard, like Lang, may be considered a signifi cant folklorist, as well as an important investigator of African totemism, magic, and religion: “In this capacity he is a forerunner of Sir James Frazer” (Monsman 2006 : 63). It is true that some of Haggard ’ s novels contain a surprisingly high amount of ethnographic detail, which can lend a striking verisimilitude to his portrayals of local individuals. For instance, chapter 13 of Allan Quartermain , “About the Zu-Vendi people,” is a thirteen-page potted ethnography of their social structure, modes of livelihood, religion, and laws, plus some diffusionist speculation about their Mesopotamian origin (Haggard 1995 [1887]: 152–163; see also Karlin 1991 : xvii). Haggard also liked to give his stories a semblance of authority by inserting explanatory footnotes, which place local customs in broader contexts. His references, usually from travelogues or classical accounts, are genuine (Street 1975 : 86). For example:

Mr Quartermain does not seem to have been aware that it is common for animal- worshipping people to annually sacriﬁ ce the beasts they adore. See Herodotus, ii. 42 – EDITOR. (Haggard 1995 : 148, n.1)

The sum consequence of sustained ethnographica, learned footnotes, and sympathetic depictions of indigenous protagonists can be regarded as the selective celebration, by Haggard, of the supposedly primitive. Haggard, by deploying this complex style, “was able to show an appreciation of the dignity and richness of African culture which was not to be surpassed until the novels of Chinua Achebe” (Butts 1995 : xiv). It was also a means for him to pass explicit comment on the 26 Anthropology in the Public Arena overly optimistic, ethnocentric evolutionism of his compatriots: Zu-Vendi, “free from the greed of money,” regarded crimes against the person as worse than those against property. In contrast to those who trumpeted the virtues of laissez-faire capitalism, Haggard viewed with tolerance a system of heavy taxation which enabled the state to support the misfortunate. In opposition to narrow-minded Christians, he approved of a carefully managed polygamy. Readers, Haggard told them, needed to note that pretensions to superiority were hollow because “Civi- lization is only savagery silver-gilt” (Haggard 1995 : 10). A regenerative cure for the present-day ailments of atavism and decadence, a corrective to the degenerative threat posed by the barbaric dimensions of the emergent mass society (Michalski 1996 : 92), was adventure fi ction which awoke deep-seated, universal desires. Haggard was magisterial at supplying that genre of fi ction himself; a prolifi c writer, he produced over 65 novels. Lang was very clear that Haggard’ s authority about Africans was grounded on his time in the fi eld, and that his work combated evolutionist fears about the degenerate state of the populace. In an open letter to Haggard which Lang placed as a dedicatory epistle to a collection of his adult fantasy tales, he states:

You, who know the noble barbarian in his African retreats, appear to retain more than most men of his fresh natural imagination. We are all savages under white skins; but you alone recall to us the delights & terrors of the world’ s nonage. We are hunters again, trappers, adventurers bold, while we study you, & the blithe barbarian wakens even in the weary person of letters. (Lang 1886 )

There is no doubt that Haggard did tap into something common (Gilbert and Gubar 1989 : ch. 2). King Solomon’ s Mines was the greatest bestseller then known in the publishing world, only to be surpassed two years later by She : it is estimated that over 83 million copies of that book have been produced in more than 43 languages. The centrality of his anthropological concerns to his success is suggested by the fact that it was only when he started to neglect these considerations in his writings that sales of his new work began to decline. Bowler, in his account of popular science writing in the United Kingdom, admits it is highly probable that only a small fraction of the British working class read the books he discusses (Bowler 2009 ). The record-breaking sales ﬁ gures of Haggard, and the impressive ones of Stevenson, suggest that popular anthropology reached a broader audience and more successfully transcended class divides. Similar but not quite such grand claims about the discussion and dissemination of anthropological ideas could also be made for a host of other authors, during this long period, stretching from Kingsley to the later cohort of Kipling, Conan Doyle, Buchan, and J. M. Synge (e.g., Monsman 2010 ). Kingsley, for instance, was an honorary fellow of the Anthropology Society; his 1862 Water Babies mytholo- gized evolutionary theory “with remarkable insight” and received one of its ﬁ rst reviews in The Anthropological Review (Beer 2009 : 128). One commentator on Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 27

Kipling’ s analysis of the social and cultural forces constituting Indian society was so impressed by its originality that he classed him “the sole analogue in England at the turn of the century to Durkheim and Weber” (Annan 1964 : 120). Kipling had made friends with the Savile Club circle only days after his arrival in England. Within three weeks of his appearance, he was writing jokey verse to Lang and Haggard about their joint trip to the United States to publicize a forthcoming book of theirs. In his poem the US public mistake the two:

In the ears of Mister Haggard whom they hailed as Mister Lang, The societies of Boston ethnologically sang, And they spoke of creature-legends, and of totem, myth and sign, And the stricter Law of Metre – Mister Haggard answered, “Nein ” (RK to AL and RH, 26 x 1889, in Cohen 1965 : 26)

Thirty-six years later, Kipling was still provoking anthropological debate with Haggard. In a 1925 letter where he referred to his friend’ s latest “tale of old Egypt,” he argued an anti-evolutionist line and gently ribbed his fellow-author about his learning:

It stands to reason old man that the world ’ s very limited modicum of thinking was done millions of years ago, and that what we mistake for thought nowadays is the reaction of our own damned machinery on our own alleged minds. Get an odd volume of Tylor ’ s Primitive Culture and see how far this squares with fact. (RK to RH, 28 ii 1925, in Cohen 1965 : 138–139)

The ﬁ eldwork conducted by Stevenson and Haggard had lent authority to their words: much the same can be said for John Buchan and Synge. Indeed the anthropologist Peter Pels sees Buchan as an ethnographer “of sorts” whose novels “reso- nate what we tend to regard as the more serious and professional work of Africanist anthropology” (Pels 1998 : 195). Like Haggard, Buchan had spent years as a touring colonial administrator in South Africa. Synge, in contrast, did not go south, but west, in a celebrated series of trips to the Aran Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Ireland. Synge used the Aran as the site for many of his plays and novels as well as his eponymous travel ethnography. He portrayed the islanders as embodying a savage but dynamic primitivism: but so too, according to Synge, did his main audience, allegedly civilized Dubliners (Robinson 1992 ; Garrigan Mattar 2004 : ch. 4). Little wonder, then, that the notorious opening night in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, of The Playboy of the Western World ended in riot. The irony was not lost on him. The key ﬁ gure in our tale from the 1890s to the postwar decades was without doubt a brilliant ambitious Cambridge classics don with a marked literary gift: James Frazer. Writing with the authority that came from membership of a prestigious ancient university, the industrious Frazer produced between 1890 and 1915 a much-revised, ever-lengthening compendium of ethnographic customs, The 28 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Golden Bough . The ﬁ nal version was twelve fat volumes long. A bestseller of its cross-century time, several publishers keep its popular one-book abridgement still in print today. Its spectacular success was importantly due to both his encyclopaedic range and his intellectual eclecticism. Frazer managed skillfully to weave together contemporary versions of rationalism, historicism, and evolutionary theory with the contemporary passion for classical and other mythologies. Placing customs of the Ancients, rural Europeans, and tribal peoples on a comparative par, he underlined their potential equivalences. In perhaps his most astute move, Frazer left it to the reader to decide what “savagery” and “civilization” might really mean. Similarly he never openly questioned the consequences of his evidence for belief in Christianity, though the point was not lost on many. The writings of Frazer greatly boosted the audience for anthropology created by his popular predecessors. In 1910 Marrett was able to complain, in somewhat self-pitying tones, just how fashionable the subject had become:

To show that anthropology is becoming popular is, perhaps, superﬂ uous. The fact is almost painfully borne in upon anyone who has allowed his anthropological leanings to become known to the world. Every headmaster would nowadays have you down to lecture to his boys. A provincial town will muster in hundreds to hear you discourse on totems and taboos. At the most old-fashioned of our Universities the youth of the nation delight in comparing the habits of primitive man with their own. In short, Anthropology is the latest form of evening entertainment. (Marrett 1910 : 299)

Frazer ’ s infl uence has been astonishingly deep, as well as broad: his ideas have permeated almost every area of the humanities and the social sciences, while in literature, the list of those indebted to him is staggeringly long (Fraser 1990b ). One literary historian has even stated that, given its effect on the content, structure, and rhetoric of twentieth-century novels and poems, The Golden Bough is “in a very real measure, responsible for the form and shape of modern literature” (Vickery 1973 : 120). His effect on attitudes to religion was similarly powerful. Hundreds wrote to him with their gratitude for opening their eyes and changing their lives, in some cases to occult Christianity (Ackerman 1987 : 3; Ginn 2010 : 134). Indeed his modern-day biographer ranks him and H. G. Wells as “the most important advocates of secularism in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century” (Ackerman 2008 : 149). In fact his infl uence was even wider: subscribers to a bibliography of his writings included the then political leaders of France, Poland, and Italy, i.e., Mussolini (Besterman 1934 : xi–xvii). A host of modernist authors used Frazer ’ s works in developing their own complex versions of primitivism, where the negative vied with the positive in mutually unsettling ways (MacClancy 2003 ). But most were not simply blind followers of Frazer or of anthropology. While several of these novelists valued ethnographic detail they could at the same time be skeptical of anthropological Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 29 styles. For instance, in Joyce’ s Ulysses certain sections can be easily regarded as ethnographic in intent, while some passages also show him as contemptuous of anthropology’ s positivist pretensions and its use in the Irish Revival (Spurr 1994 ; Castle 2001 ; Mottolese 2002 ). Similarly Robert Graves was deeply enamored of Frazer but was quite prepared, on occasion, to poke fun at his wilder claims (Vickery 1972 ). Further, writers of adventure and modernist fi ction were not just engaged with anthropological ideas. Many of them even included an anthropologist of one brand or another as a central character in their novels, often to unedi- fying end: for example, Colonel Creighton, the ethnographer–spy of Kipling’ s Kim ; Haines, the naïve, detached folklorist deployed satirically in Ulysses ; Sherlock Holmes, a doctor-cum-detective so learned he found time to publish in leading anthropological journals (Krogman 1955 ); the comical Professor Challenger, the comparative anthropologist of Conan Doyle ’ s The Lost World , who is in fact as much challenged himself as challenger of others. Most histories of anthropologies have either devalued or more usually ignored the part played by adventure and modernist writers in the development of anthropological ideas and ethnographic approaches. These histories tend to be written by professional intellectuals, chronicling the theoretical endeavors of those they regard as their intellectual precursors, and are usually written to train students in how to become intellectuals. But their sustained silence about the roles and effects of engaged participants such as Stevenson and Haggard impoverishes that history and, in the process, our own understanding of the development of anthropology. These novelists, though not professional anthropologists, did some fi eldwork and contributed to anthropological debates. On top of that, all these writers disseminated anthropological ideas in a considered, critical manner. There is a third group (if they can be isolated as such) to our tale at this point, besides the renowned intellectuals and the novelists: writers whose primary contribution to the development of our pursuit was avowedly divulgatory work. Edward Clodd and Grant Allen are two exemplars of this sector of our story. Clodd, whose reading of Tylor had freed him from Christian myth, was a prolifi c popularizer, penning numerous articles and reviews in leading journals (McCabe 1932 ). He was among the fi rst to incorporate anthropology into the evolutionary epic, an established genre of popular science, producing versions for both children and adults. The Childhood of the World (Clodd 1873 ), a juvenile primer on evolutionary anthropology which interpreted the Bible in anthropological terms, sold 20,000 copies in six years; his Story of Creation (Clodd 1888 ) sold over 5,000 in its fi rst three months (Lightman 2007 : 253–266; Haynes 2012 ). Clodd’ s gift for friendship was famed, bringing intellectuals and writers together to productive end. His circle included Spencer, Frazer, Haddon, Lang, Thomas Hardy, Yeats, H. G. Wells, Edmund Gosse, and George Gissing (Haddon 1929 ; Dorson 1968 : 249; Haynes 2012 ). Hardy was a friend of Pitt-Rivers, who established the anthropology museum at Oxford, and even wrote a poem for his daughter. At the annual gatherings at Clodd’ s holiday home Hardy might speak on magical practices in early 30 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Wessex, so rousing Haddon and others to discuss rites of propitiation (Rouse 1997 : 160–161). Clodd also shrewdly promoted anthropology via his chairmanship of the Rationalist Press Association, which published cheap editions of short books by leading academics, including several by Haddon. Unlike Clodd, who kept his position as a banker, his friend Grant Allen tried to survive by his writing. He was one of the fi rst professional writers of popular evolutionism. Even more prolifi c than Clodd, Allen produced a profusion of articles and stories for Longman ’ s Magazine and other periodicals, as well as a large number of books, both non-fi ction and fi ction. Allen was a “master of the short scientifi c essay”; his fi ction was both very successful and well-respected; he used both literary modes to promote an evolutionist agenda (Lightman 2007 : 266–289). Perhaps his most serious work was The Evolution of the Idea of God (Allen 1897 ), an evolutionary inquiry into the origin of religion (Cotton 2005 ). Allen was also the fi rst writer to make an anthropologist the protagonist of a novel: a satirical commentary on English society, The British Barbarians (Allen 1975 [1896]). The effect of Allen and his associates can be gauged by the reaction to a presidential address Clodd gave to the Folklore Society in 1895, where he openly demonstrated the animist dimensions of contemporary Christianity. Gladstone, the former Prime Minister and himself a writer on mythology, resigned from the Society in protest, while the Catholic Truth Society published a lengthy riposte against Clodd ’ s celebration of “man ’ s essential bestiality” (CTS 1896 : 1). Two years later the Catholic Month referred disparagingly to the “Clodds, the Allens, the Langs” and other popularizers of evolution as jackals in the lion ’ s wake, the lion being Tylor (Dorson 1968 : 256). Much anthropology and ethnography of the time was published in popular science magazines, such as the highly successful Discovery , which frequently included articles on the origin of races, and on cultures. As Bowler has uncovered, an important development was the exploitation, from the 1900s on, of new print- ing technologies which enabled the production of lavishly illustrated serial works. An early success of this new style of format was Hutchinson’ s Living Races of Mankind, released in 24 fortnightly parts. The 100,000 copies printed of the fi rst issue soon sold out, and the whole series was reissued twice. The great majority of its contributors, considered expert ethnographers of their day, were scientists from other fi elds, who only dabbled in anthropology; serving offi cers in the armed forces; and colonial administrators. The anthropological message was also disseminated in openly educational series of cheap editions, with the academic credentials of the author usually prominent: these included Benn’ s Sixpenny Library, Routledge ’ s Introduction to Modern Knowledge, and Harper ’ s Library of Living Thought, as well as Watts ’ Forum Series and its Thinker ’ s Library (Bowler 2009 : 49, 150–151). For the sake of their own survival, publishers had to pitch these at the right level. As Kegan Paul bewailed to Lubbock in 1891, sales of his Interna- tional Science Series were disappointing because the books were too specialized for general readers (Macleod 1980 : 79). Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 31

At much the same time as the novelists and writers mentioned above, it has to be recognized that their near-contemporaries, the fi rst generation of professional anthropologists in the United Kingdom, did not always proceed in what we would now regard as a professional manner. Take, for instance, Alfred Haddon: he was both employed as an anthropologist at Cambridge, and participated actively in Clodd’ s circle of evolutionists and writers (Haynes 2012 ). Among other places, Haddon carried out fi eldwork in the Aran Islands. But the resulting report of that trip is a curious hybrid of the quantitative and the qualitative, mixing measure- ments of cephalic indices with material from romantic travelogues, a civil servant’ s memoir, and popular novels (Haddon and Browne 1893 ; Rouse 1997 : 102–105; Ashley 2001 ). Over much the same period, Lady Gregory, Yeats’ s long-term collaborator, conducted extensive fi eldwork on the same islands and in the nearby mainland, close to where she lived (Pethica 2004 ). Though Lady Gregory had literary, not academic pretensions, her series of books on contemporary folkways are today better-regarded and much more authoritative than Haddon ’ s work on the area. While she was interested, among other procedures, in Aran notions of enchantment, the islanders themselves regarded cephalic measurement as a magical exercise, with Haddon as its practitioner (Robinson 1995 : 183). In payment for sticking the calipers on their heads, he gave each a photograph of themselves. With the assistance of locals, he also obtained further data by robbing crania from an island graveyard (Rouse 1997 : 102, n.45; 104, n.50).2 Thus, in three isles off the West of Ireland in the last decade of the nineteenth century, we have the encounter of a hardworking folklorist whose words endure, a Cambridge anthropologist whose work there has not, and a pervasive discourse of magical events, which Lady Gregory recorded, and in which Haddon, perhaps unwittingly, took part. She was an Irish national, dedicated to local ways; Haddon was a visiting outsider, of suspicious practices and the odd skullduggery. This particular example demonstrates how very blurred the boundaries could be between the academic and the popular, the downright discreditable and the patri- otically upright, where the questionable behavior is not committed by the popularizer but the supposedly professional anthropologist from an ancient and famous university. On this occasion, it is the non-academic who is saintly, and her counterpart the sinner: here, Haddon is the bounder within. This contradictory, miserable tale of magic and thieving by a corrupt academic who came, got the material, both verbal and physical, and then got out contrasts badly with the example of the literary lady, devoted long-term to the preservation of indigenous culture. Cases like this make it all the easier to agree with the historian Scott Ashley who, after teasing out the multi-layered nature of Haddon ’ s Aran work, stated,

The work of ethnographic ﬂ âneurs like Synge or, in the South Paciﬁ c, Robert Louis Stevenson, living among the people about whom they wrote over a space of years, learning the language, hoping for some kind of understanding from the inside, 32 Anthropology in the Public Arena

should be incorporated into the histories of anthropology, or the rich cultural context in which the discipline was founded risks being thinned. (Ashley 2001 : 18)

Strikingly similar comments can be made about sociology in its early years. For instance, H. G. Wells played a prominent role in its early establishment in the United Kingdom. He was a founding member of the Sociological Society, set up in 1903, contributed to its journal, and sat on its council in its ﬁ rst years. He argued that “the creation of utopias – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology” (Wells 1907 : 367). According to the British sociologist Ruth Levitas, Wells was so committed to working on this that he wrote to the Prime Minister for a special endowment which would enable him to put novel- writing aside. He also applied for the new Chair of Sociology at the LSE. But his vision, his plea, and his application all came to nothing, academically. Levitas contends that the whole of Wells ’ s writings, both ﬁ ction and not, should be regarded as an alternative sociology. She argues that Wells was “substantially right”: if sociology embraced his utopian format, “it would inform a greater range of social alternatives for confronting ecological and economic crises” (Levitas 2010 ).

Malinowski ’ s moment

From the 1880s to the end of World War I, a host of writers greatly expanded the market for a broad version of anthropology. Frazer is simply the most famous, and most academically grounded of them all. These authors proffered answers to popular queries about the origin, content, and purpose of religion; they provided ethnographic materials and interpretive schemes to help readers comprehend the nature and leading ideas of the peoples then actively being colonized and, in some cases, forcibly introduced to capitalist production, e.g., the slavery-like conditions on Congolese plantations. In the interwar years a new fi gure signifi cantly shifted the emphasis within anthropology by popularizing a fi eldwork-grounded style of the pursuit: Bronis- law Malinowski. In contrast with Frazer, he did not gently hint at the broader implications of his more controversial ideas; he provocatively broached and vigorously defended them in public fora. Until this time, a noteworthy difference between popular science and anthropology was that “the scientist,” as a learned person who devoted himself exclusively to scientifi c research and advance, whether funded by private means, industry, or university post, was an already established fi gure in the British imagination (Bowler 2009 ). By the end of World War I there was only the tiniest huddle of anthropologists who were viewed similarly, and they were greatly outnumbered by the literati who put anthropology to work in their writings. Malinowski and the cohort he trained would strive to change that balance, and to refi gure, in a professionalizing mode, the popular image of the anthropologist. Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 33

Malinowski was a deeply innovative anthropologist, a skilful academic entre- preneur, and a showman who relished polemic. Thanks in part to his ability to attract students and raise research funds for them, he succeeded in propagating his fi eldwork-based functionalism as the most promising version of anthropology within academia. At his famous LSE seminar, he welcomed a variety of non- academics, including missionaries, colonial offi cers, merchants, and Africans (most memorably Jomo Kenyatta). Extra-murally, he liked to engage publicly with opponents from across the disciplines and he put out a host of articles in non-academic periodicals, where he trumpeted the virtues of anthropology and its ability to help resolve moral and practical quandaries. As a canny missionary counseled a junior anthropologist, “Invite Malinowski to the opening session of a conference: half the audience will disagree with him violently, but the discussions will go with a swing from the start” (Richards 1943 : 4). Though Malinowski was ever keen to champion fi eldwork as though he had invented the practice, he and his disciples were equally unkeen to cite their ethnographic predecessors. The ignoble reasons for this institutional amnesia are only too patent. From the 1920s onwards the emerging, fi rst generation of professional anthropologists were over-ready to distance themselves from others with whom they could be compared. By downplaying the role of those who had gone into the fi eld, investigated, and written the experience up, such as military administrators, colonial offi cers, novelists, missionaries, and settlers, these up-and-coming academics helped to boost their own status, to make their own work seem that much more distinctive, and of course for those few who held down jobs, to justify their salaries (Herbert 1991 ; Pels and Salemink 1999 ; Buzard 2005 ; MacClancy and Fuentes 2011 : 15–16). For Malinowski and his epigones, books about peoples were not to be framed in the particularistic vocabulary so successfully employed by missionary ethnographers, but in a universal language with pretensions to abstraction. The books of this new generation may have been couched in an accessible style, but the novel disciplinary pretensions of their academic authors should have been obvious to their educated readership (Thornton 1983 ). Malinowski, for one, frequently took pains to underline how little valuable ethnography had been produced until very recent times, and so implicitly discredited the volumes produced by learned evangelists, e.g., Bishop Codrington in Melanesia, as of little account. For instance, in one public lecture, where he tried to sell the pragmatic value of a functionalist anthropology, he lambasted “practical” men (administrators, missionaries, and planters) as too wedded to Eurocentric notions to study local systems of land tenure. “Only the anthropologist, who specializes in the study of primitive legal ideas and economic conditions,” was up to the job:

Land tenure among primitive peoples is always very complex, and it is impossible for an untrained person not to be misled into some entirely inadequate translation of native ideas into his own terminology . . . and the uses of land are associated 34 Anthropology in the Public Arena

with the native systems of kinship [which are] utterly incomprehensible to the untrained European. (Malinowski 1929 : 31; see also Malinowski 1930 )

The professional pretensions of Malinowski today seem breathtakingly arrogant, for such a ﬂ edgling discipline:

The trained anthropologist has developed devices and methods which allow him to observe, to write down his observations and to formulate them much more rapidly than a layman can do . . . The methods and technique of anthropological observation are the only ones by which a competent knowledge of primitive social problems can be reached. (Malinowski 1929 : 25)

By the end of World War I, The Golden Bough had become essential reading for anyone with claims to an education or a critical attitude to life (Howarth 1978 : 131). Frazer had made readers aware just how diverse the customs of different peoples could be, and how underlyingly similar. Yet he had dealt with social and cultural rules in a piecemeal manner, tying them together according to his own intellectual schemata: the evolution from magic to religion to science; the difference between types of magic; etc. Tylor, though an evolutionist, had gone further, by formulat- ing a concept of culture as a complex whole of human institutions, customs, and practices. In contrast to Matthew Arnold’ s idea of culture as an elite product or pursuit, Tylor conceived of it as a common, shared system of values, and therefore universal to all human groups. A key advance of Malinowski’ s was to develop Tylor ’ s notion in the prolifi c course of his detailed ethnographies, and to dissemi- nate it by participating energetically in the general intellectual life of his day. Malinowski played “a formidable role in the rich cross-disciplinary conversation that created the modern conception of culture” (Manganaro 2002 : 57). He contributed a crucial chapter, on “phatic communication,” to I. A. Richards and C. K. Odgen’ s The Meaning of Meaning ( 1923 ), a book which helped establish English Literature as a creditable fi eld of academic study. In the introduction to her seminal study Fiction and the Reading Public: “An Anthropological Study of English Culture,” Richard ’ s student, Q. D. Leavis, states she had quickly found herself committed to an “anthropological” method of investigation (Leavis 1932 : xv). Thanks partly, but signifi cantly, to the work of Rivers, Malinowski, and their colleagues, alongside that done by the fi rst British sociologists, “the cultural” and “the social” were seen as new, enlightening, important foci of study and modes of explanation, as opposed to more established ones: psychological, economic, and geographic or climatological determinism. In the interwar period contemporary writers and literary critics came to regard above all anthropology, as well as associated social disciplines, as integral parts of a broad modernist program (High- more 2006 ). Anthropology became part of the almost required reading for an intellectual of the day. He (sometimes she) was expected to have a well-grounded Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 35 understanding of essential works in several key fi elds of scholastic endeavor. They would not have been considered serious men or women of letters otherwise. And since none of the social disciplines had yet hardened into policeable enclaves, their renovated, fashionable versions could be practiced as much by gifted literati and artists of a modernist bent as by the university-tenured. One badly neglected example of this time and genre is the brilliant, satirical study of middle-class morals by the left-wing writer Charles Duff, which he structured as an ethnography. His pseudonym for Anthropological Report on a London Suburb is Vladimir Chernichewski, a back-handed compliment to the expatriate Pole (Chernichewski 1935 ). In other words, just as Malinowski was trying to downplay the ethnographic efforts of a previous generation of anthropologically informed writers, such as missionary bishops, a new wave of literati rose to take advantage of a modernized anthropology. There is no sharp cut-off or break here; modernist writers did not suddenly stop reading Haggard, rather they absorbed lessons from both the older and the new, like Malinowski, for the sake of their own literary agendas. Malinowski ’ s self-promotion made him the standard-bearer of a popular, critical anthropology associated with the avant-garde generally. His views became slogans of progressive morality and education (Huxley 1935 ; Mitchison 1979 : 54). But though Malinowski gained some reputation as a moral crusader, a noteworthy section of his audience appeared to be educated laypersons interested partly in authoritative accounts of the exotic, especially the sexually exotic. As he himself recognized, putting “sex” into the title of a couple of his ethnographies only exacerbated this tendency (Malinowski 1932a : x; 1932b : xix). It is tempting to mock Malinowski ’ s excesses. All the more important then, to remember just how remarkably successful he and his circle were. According to the intellectual historian Reba Soffer, in the United Kingdom anthropology prospered while sociology fl oundered, because the fi rst, unlike the second, drew precise limits for its subjects, developed distinctive methods and theories, and successfully marketed its ideas to a responsive mass public (Soffer 1982 ). British sociologists failed to do any of that until the postwar period. Early issues of The Sociological Review , the leading British academic journal in the subject, launched in 1908, might contain almost as many articles by anthropologists as by sociologists. Even as late as 1969 British anthropology was said to “tower above its stunted sibling” (Anderson 1969 : 266). Conventional histories of anthropology tend to portray Malinowski’ s competitors, the diffusionists led by Elliot Smith at University College London, as a group of misguided academics whose anthropological approach was ultimately abandoned because it was too speculative to be of intellectual worth. Yet it is easy to forget how popular diffusionism was and how long it has survived outside academia. Perry’ s Children of the Sun (1923) was a bestseller of its day and much commented on, while the ever industrious Elliot Smith became a public intellectual: he toured the country giving public lectures and sent frequent letters to The 36 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Times . Regularly approached by newspapers and magazines for his comments, he wrote many articles for newspapers and respected weeklies, providing, for instance, the text to accompany pictures of fossil discoveries in The Illustrated London News. He also contributed to the forty-part serial, The Encyclopedia of Modern Knowledge. At the BBC, where he was considered to have a good “radio voice,” he readily participated in broadcasts and gave a complete series of talks (Kuklick 1991 ; Crook 2012 : 93; Bowler 2009 : 49–9, 211). Like Haddon, he took advantage of the market which emerged in the fi rst three decades of the century of people with a little money to spare and a strong desire to educate themselves, by producing short, relatively cheap books. His books, which include contributions to Watts’ Thinker’ s Library, had a high profi le and sold comparatively well (Haddon 1906, 1911, 1914, 1921 ; Elliot Smith 1928, 1931 ; Bowler 2006, 2009 : 48, 120, 159). His most popular production, however, a syncretic history of humanity, was a blockbusting 509 pages long (Elliot Smith 1930 ; Crook 2012 : 94). Elliot Smith also edited a series of popular books, In the beginning of things , most written by academics. In 1928 he and Malinowski laid out their differences in a short book aimed at the same readership (Elliot Smith et al. 1928 ). In the repeated skirmishes between diffusionists and functionalists over disciplinary prominence and securing funds, members of either faction often misrepresented their competitors. Elliot Smith tended to oversimplify his opponents, who in turn frequently stereotyped diffusionists ’ style on the basis of their wilder claims (Crook 2012 : 103–105). Yet functionalists ’ persistent caricaturing of diffusionist approaches has not pushed it completely offstage. Beyond universities, its enduring appeal is perhaps best illustrated by Robert Graves ’ s sustained and popular employment of diffusionism throughout his mythographic work up to the 1960s (see chapter 4 ). During the same postwar period, the distinguished but commercially minded London publisher Faber and Faber encouraged Eva Meyerowitz to produce her series of diffusionist-inspired African ethnographies (Meyerowitz 1951, 1952, 1958, 1960, 1962). Within academia, a more sophisticated version of this approach revived in the 1970s and continues to survive (Crook 2012 : 114–127). Though derided by textbook-writers, diffusionism appears one paradigm that refuses to die. Malinowski initially approved of and assisted another anthropological movement which arose in this interwar period. Mass Observation (discussed in chapter 5 ) aimed to use anthropology as an emancipatory device for the otherwise unheard in the stultifying environment of late 1930s England. Those who became Mass Observers wished, as a whole, to transcend existing divisions and hierarchies, whether social, political, aesthetic, or geographic (Savage 2010 : 64). Like anthropologists of earlier generations, the organizers of Mass Observation gained popularity, partly because publishers learnt to exploit a developing sector of their market, whose needs were then being met by only “Woolworth ’ s and the tup- penny libraries.” The most successful of these entrepreneurial publishers was Allen Lane, who in 1935 launched Penguin. The politically oriented Penguin Spe- Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 37 cials sold an average of 100,000 copies each: Lane’ s production of Mass Observa- tion’ s Britain sold that much in its fi rst ten days (Heimann 2002 : 149; Hubble 2005 : 105).

Postwar positioning: Withdrawal from the forum

The postwar decades are seen as a golden age for British social anthropology, as they were for much of UK academia. These years are remembered and portrayed as a time and place when the majority of social anthropologists there worked within a common paradigm, producing exemplary ethnographies which fl eshed out and developed a few particular lines of thought. Trouble is, of course, that a narrowly defi ned development excludes as much as it includes. What may seem a contemporary benefi t can later be viewed as an impoverishing constriction. By the early1950s more university departments of anthropology had opened, but the number remained relatively small. However, the departments in already prestigious universities were all led by world-class academics: Evans-Pritchard at Oxford, Fortes at Cambridge, Firth at the LSE, Gluckman at Manchester. They had powers unknown to modern-day academics: they might appoint whom they wished, without even advertising positions, and could distribute studentships as they judged fi t. In his analysis of 1960s British anthropology, the US anthropologist Robert F. Murphy described it as a tightly controlled face-to-face community where hierarchy, compared to its US counterpart, was rigidly maintained: “One receives a ‘call’ to join this or that venerable institution . . . The reality, of course, is that major appointments involve wonderful scheming and Byzantine political maneuvering, and much scholarly activity and deportment is anticipatory of an eventual ‘call’ ” (Murphy 1972 : 21). Evans-Pritchard, for instance, offered Godfrey Lienhardt an Oxford lectureship while he was still an undergraduate. Edith Turner, widow of Victor, recalled that Max Gluckman, while on a visit to London “spotted Vic as an upcoming man. Max had power. He was right up there in the British system of grant-giving and he gave Vic a grant” (Turner 2005 : 53). When, in mid-1950s Oxford, Evans-Pritchard became openly hostile to John Layard (as discussed in chapter 2 ), junior members of the department who had fraternized with Layard quickly learnt to avoid the man. According to Layard, they had been “schooled” and obeyed. One confessed he did not dare acknowledge his debt to Layard as Evans-Pritchard held “the purse strings and the preferments” (Layard to Evans-Pritchard 30 x 1957, UR6/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS). In these conditions the hegemons did not need to impose discipline in a nakedly tyrannical manner, as the up and coming, thinking of their future, learnt to step in line. Little wonder, then, that some professors, misjudging the extent of their powers, could overstep their authority, as appears to have occurred in the dispute between Evans-Pritchard and Layard (Veale to Masterman, 22 i 1958, UR6/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS). 38 Anthropology in the Public Arena

These hegemonic professors had persuaded the major government funding body, the Colonial Social Science Research Council, of the utility of their pursuit. The Council enabled the broad expansion of anthropology by awarding a fat series of grants, especially research studentships. Crucially, there were remarkably few ties on the nature of work done and, as at least one surviving member of this generation later confessed, the majority of the research carried out was oriented heavily toward anthropological questions internal to the pursuit and not toward the resolution of colonial problems (Firth Interview vi 1994). The leading anthropologists of this time perceived their primary task as the further development and refi nement of anthropological theory, at fi rst structural-functionalism, then a shift from function to meaning, and later an Anglicized interpretation of Continental structuralism. This redirection of CSSRC monies toward theoretical ends means there is a sense in which funding “was obtained under false pretences.” One consequence was that the standing of anthropologists “diminished in offi cial eyes” (Grillo 1985 : 16). Firth ’ s characterization of the hegemons ’ aims may be regarded as a retrospective response to criticisms by leftwing anthropologists (e.g., Asad 1973 ). If so, it would seem veteran anthropologists of the period later preferred to declare a dishonorable exploitation of the taxpayer than admit to connivance with colonialist agents. The risk they ran, of course, is that they would end up being found guilty of both. Perhaps the most binding of those few ties to the CSSRC money was political acquiescence to the colonial status quo. Fieldworkers were dependent on the goodwill of colonial district offi cers, who could have them expelled if need be. They had to keep mum about their own political opinions if they did not wish to endanger their own prospects or queer the pitch for their students or successors. As James remembers, “An anthropologist who turned out to be anything more than a mild social embarrassment could scarcely have been tolerated; and thus, for anthropology to continue at all, appearances of co-operation had to be kept up” (James 1973 : 43). It seems this self-imposed silence was a price the politically inclined were prepared to pay. The links here are signifi cant. “Anthropology is worth as much as fi repower,” states a character, based on counter-insurgency expert Major General Edward Lansdale, in Norman Mailer’ s Harlot’ s ghost (1991 : 933). And US paymasters seem to have acted on that belief: David Price has magnifi cently documented the miserable history of US anthropologists’ various involvements in the Cold War (Price 2004 ). A similar, though not quite so shameful history for British anthropology can be picked out from already available material. Many in the highest reaches of the institutional hierarchy ensured that activist leftwingers were not funded or hired, while the Colonial Offi ce at times debarred those committed to commu- nism from entering the fi eld (Kempney 2005 : 190). As one victim of this policy remembers, “If discovered to be a Marxist, one could not become an anthropologist in the Colonies” (Frankenberg 1983 : mins. 30, 57; see also Worsley 1989 : min. 54). In East Africa, anthropologists considered suspect were allocated to small Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 39 groups in out-of-the-way areas which were not politically sensitive (Pels 2011 : 798). This bureaucratic aversion to activists, grounded on a fear they would foment, in the terms of the time, “native agitation,” had in fact operated since the 1930s. Malinowski repeatedly warned the radically inclined attending his seminar that they had to choose between their politics and anthropology (Stocking 1996 : 412). In 1931 a promising student of his was refused entry to Malawi and then denied a fellowship in Australia because of his political views. Shortly afterwards, Malinowski had to campaign hard and exploit all his government contacts to help Fortes, suspected of communist leanings, get into Ghana (Goody 1995 : 44–51). A similar silencing, on similar grounds, was practiced by powerful Australian anthropologists in their homeland (Gray 1994 ). Evans-Pritchard, though initially open to leftish views, had by the postwar period come to directly oppose them. In 1951 he stated to a colleague that no leftwinger should be allowed into Africa (Goody 1995 : 62; Lienhardt 1997 : 70). Four years later Gluckman accused him of spreading rumors about the political affi liations of a promising scholar, Bill Epstein, in order to stymie his academic advancement (Mills 2008 : 105). Members of Gluckman’ s department, generally regarded as committed socialist intellectuals, faced particular diffi culties. Edith Turner remembered: “This was the era of McCarthyism and the antisubversive government group, MI5, in England, and progressives were suspect” (Turner 2005 : 55). Several members of the department had joined the British Communist Party; Victor Turner was even one of its spokesmen. When he later left the Party and became a Catholic, Gluckman “actually accused him of being a traitor.” Their conservative counterparts at the LSE considered their Manchester colleagues “a bundle of barbarians” (Smedal and Kapferer n.d. ; Frankenberg 2005 : xx; Turner 2005 : 89). The colonial authorities were similarly suspicious. Those controlling Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) declared Gluckman a prohibited immigrant; he only returned there on Independence. He was also barred from New Guinea purely because he was thought, incorrectly, a Marxist (Frankenberg 2006 : 211). Of his students, some were denied visas to sensitive zones such as the Copperbelt or the Sudan (Nader 1997 : 118). One, Ronald Frankenberg, was not allowed to dis- embark in the Caribbean, because of worries about his political views (Franken- berg 1983 : min. 4). MI5 blocked the appointment of another, Peter Worsley, to the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, a research unit in Northern Rhodesia with very strong links to the Manchester department (Worsley 1989 : Part 1, min. 44). Gluck- man told Worsley “that with my political reputation I would never get a job in anthropology” (Worsley 1989 : Part 3, min. 2). Gluckman also revealed to Worsley “that Evans-Pritchard . . . had said that he would do his best to ensure that I, as a Marxist, never got a post in anthropology – and he (and others) succeeded” (Worsley 2008 : 77). Worsley listened to the warning, and became instead a distinguished sociologist of the Third World, a term he said he coined. The restrictions to postwar British anthropology were not singular but multiple. They were theoretical, methodological, ethnographic, disciplinary, personal, and 40 Anthropology in the Public Arena social, as well as political. Moreover, they were as much self-infl icted as externally imposed. For instance British anthropologists, by complying with the unspoken strictures that came with acceptance of CSSRC money, did not investigate a host of themes. They paid no attention to socioeconomic types, failed to integrate historical dimensions into their works, did not study imperialism itself as a system, and failed to include colonial administrators within their fi eld of study. They also practiced a self-limiting form of participant observation. The knowledge gained by the anthropologist was “rarely returned or shared with the observed” (Feucht- wang 1973 : 100; also Pels 2011 : 795). The loser, of course, was UK anthropology itself, whose development in a variety of directions was thus thwarted. A crucial boundary was that drawn between psychology and anthropology. In the decade before Rivers’ death in 1922, the two had seemed to be “coming closer together” (Pear 1960 : 236). In the 1920s Malinowski integrated psychology in his early formulation of functionalism while Seligman fl irted with the possible application of Jungian concepts (Seligman 1924 ). Even as late as 1934, Haddon felt able to praise the “stimulating development” of the subject accomplished by Freud and his followers (Haddon 1934 : 64). But in the same book, he also noted the sharp division being advocated by Durkheim’ s disciples between sociological and psychological modes of explanation. Radcliffe-Brown and his students were keen to uphold that distinction:

Psychology and social anthropology study different kinds of phenomena and what the one studies cannot therefore be understood in terms of conclusions reached by the other . . . The psychologist and the anthropologist may observe the same acts of raw behaviour but they study them at different levels of abstraction. (Evans- Pritchard 1951 : 45)

Just how determined Evans-Pritchard became to exclude psychology was dramatically displayed in his fi nal, 1957 meeting with John Layard, a former friend and structural Jungianist (detailed in chapter 2 ), in which he refused to answer the latter’ s intellectual queries. Instead he ended the encounter by threatening to call the police, and then doing so (UR6/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS). At his funeral in 1973, as the cortege was pulling away, Needham asked three of his colleagues to give one adjective which characterized Evans-Pritchard: two of them said, “Ruthless” (Needham pers. comm. 2000). According to Audrey Butt Colson, who was a student in Oxford shortly after the war, Evans-Pritchard, Fortes, and Gluckman were then busy in trying to establish structural-functionalism, along Radcliffe-Brownian lines. “Anything in the way of Psychology and Psychoanalysis was shunned and disregarded. We were explicitly taught this and the grounds given were that Psychology was on constantly shifting ground and it would be a disaster to hitch our data and interpretations to it as a consequence” (Butt Colson email, June 21, 2011). The pedagogical analogy they employed to illustrate psychological thinking was that of a farmer whose Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 41 horse disappears. Leaning on the paddock fence, chewing a straw, he thinks, “If I were a horse, where would I go?” It was still being used thirty years later. Need- ham’ s well-selling Structure and Sentiment: A Test Case in Social Anthropology, his devastating critique of the psychologistic approach toward kinship of the US anthropologists Homans and Schneider, showed how enduring this anti-psychological trend was (Needham 1960 ). Furthermore, British anthropologists showed no interest, indeed antipathy to the culture and personality approach then popular with their US counterparts (Mills 2008 : 160). To Goody, for instance, it seemed “rather superfi cial” (Goody 1991 : min. 40). Lewis put it more strongly: “The growth of the American Culture and Personality school, with its prostitution of anthropological ideas and material, has proved an even greater irritant to British social anthropologists – partly of course because it is presented as a form of anthropology” (Lewis 1977 : 5). At the same time we should recognize the initial infl uence of anthropologists such as Gorer, a unique British proponent of Culture and Personality, whose books were available to British PoWs in Axis prison camps (Goody 1991 : min. 18). (Indeed the role of “the barbed-wire university” in the formation of Goody’ s cohort has been strangely underplayed [Gillies 2011 ]). Though many were interested in Freud, as a dominant intellectual fi gure of the time, they usually excluded his approach from their analyses. The most striking example here is Fortes. According to one of his students, Ray Abrahams, though Fortes fi rst trained as a

psychologist and a great admirer of Freud, he was extremely keen on the academic professionalization of social anthropology as a discipline . . . More personally, he was also conscious that in trying to give that study a ﬁ rmly established place in Britain, he had to counter assumptions by many outside the discipline that it was largely reducible to psychology and the psychology of sex at that. He seems to have kept his interest in Freud somewhat “under lock and key” till his later years when he produced a couple of papers explicitly exploring psychoanalytic themes in cus- tomary settings. I don ’ t want to exaggerate this but it is clear that even in his Frazer Lecture with the title Oedipus and Job, he steers away for the above reasons from direct Freudian analysis. I was always struck by his remarkable self-discipline in this regard. (Abrahams email, January11, 2011)

The only style of psychology the postwar Fortes was prepared to openly consider and teach was social psychology (Goody 1995 : 111). Of course it is easy to demonstrate that, despite their avowed aversions, most British structural-functionalists from Radcliffe-Brown on necessarily deployed in their texts their own, folk models of psychology whenever they wished to account for indigenous feelings. Similarly, a rereading of Durkheim reveals that a theory of sentiments is an integral underlay of his own sociological approach (Lewis 1977 : 6). This rhetorical rejection of psychology is yet another case of people loudly pushing something off the stage, only to usher it back in quietly through a side-door. 42 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Kuper suggests that the lack of cross-disciplinary interest cut both ways: like their anthropological counterparts, UK university psychologists were busy establishing their own subject in an exclusivist, professionalizing fashion at much the same time (Kuper 1999 : 95). As Gustav Jahoda, the only cross-cultural psychologist in postwar Britain, and Larry Weiskrantz, fi rst professor of psychology at Oxford, remember, many UK psychologists were then striving to fi rmly establish their subject as an experimental science. A common feeling was that anthropology was “a soft discipline whose fi ndings cannot be easily replicated” (Jahoda email, November16, 2011). When the Honours School of Experimental Psychology was established in Oxford in the late 1960s, tentative approaches were made to create a joint honors degree with anthropology, “but very little came out of that” (Weisk- rantz email, November 11, 2011). Certainly when, as a psychology undergraduate at Oxford in the early 1970s, I tried to develop my nascent interest in cross-cultural comparison I found little means to do so. While some dons expressed polite regret at the seemingly curious lack of contact between the disciplines, another was more blunt: “Studying the natives? We don’ t do that.” Tylor famously regarded anthropology as a “reformers’ science.” Many of his Victorian colleagues then practicing what would become known as the social sciences thought similarly. Making their work more rigorous would increase its social utility. Their task, as they saw it, was to identify and assist in the eradication of evolutionary survivals, i.e., obsolete, vestigial institutions and attitudes (Kuklick 2002 : 131–132). Seventy years later, Evans-Pritchard and his ilk would never even have conceived of such a program. Instead, they liked to sharply underscore a distinction between theoretical and applied anthropology or, to use a revealing metaphor, between “pure” and “practical” versions of the discipline. In 1946 Evans-Pritchard, who was then still portraying anthropology as a science, baldly stated how wide the gulf between the two was. For him, an anthropologist who investigated

practical problems . . . is no longer acting within the anthropological fi eld but in the non-scientifi c fi eld of administration . . . There is a grave danger that the pres- sure of political and administrative interests, and the allurements that accompany them, may draw away so many of our small band from the investigation of purely scientifi c problems that the advance of our science may be seriously retarded. I would urge all the more that the anthropologist should restrict his research to the investigation of scientifi c problems for the reason that the value of social anthropologists to the arts of politics and administration must depend on its theoretical advance. (Evans-Pritchard 1946 : 93)

He thought it would be “deplorable” if considerations of the utility of research led to the sidelining of subjects which did not promise an immediate dividend, e.g., the study of magic and religion. With an Olympian hauteur, he declared, “We are not social cobblers and plumbers but men of science” (Evans-Pritchard 1946 : 94). Evans-Pritchard ’ s phrasing may have been unfortunate, but his precur- Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 43 sors had already promoted a similar division of anthropological labor between the wars. Firth had proposed a likeminded distinction in 1936, while Radcliffe-Brown had argued the academics should give trainee colonial offi cers systematic training in theoretical anthropology, to fi t them for the practical decisions they would have to make (Firth 1936 : 487; 1981 : 195). The more pragmatic Malinowski had proposed that anthropologists, because detached outsiders, could provide impartial analyses of indigenous institutions, and so assist colonial offi cers in their decisions (Malinowski 1929; 1945 : ch. 1). The key difference between Malinowski and Evans- Pritchard was that he was keen to promote anthropology generally; come the end of the war, his successor ’ s priority was to get more anthropologists in post, not see them lured away by an intoxicating proximity to power. The legacy of these hierarchical attitudes was that applied anthropology, as it became known, was frequently regarded with condescension, as less rigorous, a mere second-best, a bolt-hole for those who had failed to get academic positions (Mair 1969 : 8; Feucht- wang 1973 : 96; Landman 1978 ; Grillo 1985 : 15; Wellin and Fine 2001 : 331; Tambiah 2002 : 447). In 1961 Kenneth Kirkwood, the fi rst professor of race relations at Oxford and thus very close to, but separate from, academic anthropologists, strongly criticized them in a public lecture in the town. For him, they had been “too timid in their approach to matters of public importance and instead had retreated with the plea of the ethical neutrality of their science.” This was “an abdication of their responsibilities.” They were too concerned with social cohe- sion, and he “asked whether they had done enough in recognizing the problems of plural societies” (minutes of the May 24, 1961 meeting, OUASP, Box 4). But none so deaf as those who choose not to hear. Theoretical advance, however narrowly conceived, not pragmatic benefi t, remained the gold standard for the professoriate of the period. In 1946 Evans-Pritchard thought social anthropology could by then “be considered an autonomous discipline” and that it needed an association to further its interests (Evans-Pritchard to Banton 10 xii 1961, Firth File 7/8/12, LSE Archives). The Royal Anthropological Institute could not fulfi ll this role as some of its offi c- ers were determined to maintain its broad-based anthropological appeal (Mills 2005 : 4). That year Evans-Pritchard, Radcliffe-Brown, and like-minded colleagues in academically dominant positions formed the Association of Social Anthropolo- gists. Its annual conference became a major forum for this group and a key mode of socialization for their disciples. The key aims of this new disciplinary association were to act as “a guardian of its practical and theoretical integrity,” and to further the professionalization of the discipline by forming a body only open to those they considered properly trained anthropologists (Lienhardt 1997 : 64). Those who, though with a doctorate or an ethnography already under their belt, were not of the same party were excluded. Firth recalled that membership was by invitation and the criterion was to be a maintainer “of the Malinowski-R-B tradition. Acceptance depended on personal judgement by members, and could be somewhat idiosyncratic . . . I remember some animated arguments about cases, with Fortes in particular vehemently protesting against certain names” 44 Anthropology in the Public Arena

(Firth 1986 ). Fortes was later candid to a junior colleague: he claimed one reason for setting up the organization was “to stop people like Geoffrey Gorer and Mar- garet Mead from calling themselves anthropologists” (Fox 2004 : 339). There was a further, deeply self-interested sub-agenda, as Leach revealed in 1983: “The ASA was started as a ‘professional trade union’ . . . to prevent the Universities from employing unqualifi ed refugees from the disappearing Colonial Service to teach ‘applied anthropology’!” (quoted in Grillo 1994 : 309–310). Consensus, however, costs. The very notion of discipline entails both a set of rules by which the discipline is constituted and the practice of those rules. In other words disciplines are disciplining, both for old stalwarts and new recruits. One mode of this self-disciplining was their sustained ability to maintain an outer show of unity, no matter how much they might have personally disliked one another. Public division was tabu, and published disagreement measured. “Thus a semblance of scholarly harmony reigned, and even mild deviations by juniors were met with heavy sanctions” (Barth 2005 : 47). When in 1950 Peter Lawrence returned from fi eldwork in Papua New Guinea with data about local social organization which questioned structural-functionalist orthodoxy, he was openly disbelieved and his analysis dismissed. He only dared publish his ethnography over thirty years later (Lawrence 1984 ). Some preferred to keep quiet, than break theoretical ranks: Fortes is the clearest example here, as mentioned by Abrahams, above. Also, Emrys Peters chose not to publish material of his which directly challenged a historical ethnography of Evans-Pritchard ’ s, and which the great professor held very dear. These chapters only appeared in print when both were long dead (Peters 1990 ; Barth 2005 : 45). Even by the end of the war, UK anthropology was still a small huddle of professionals with a pronounced class bias. Though many of its hegemons did not come from well-to-do backgrounds, a degree of snobbishness was evident in the ethos of some departments (Leach 1984 ; Lienhardt 1997 , pers. comm. 1989). John Barnes remembered a conversation with Fortes in the late 1930s: “He asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated. So I said I want to become an anthropologist. So he said ‘Oh really, have you got a private income?’ So I said ‘No.’ So he said ‘Well, you ’ d better give up the idea, hadn ’ t you?’ That was that” (Barnes 1983 : min. 5). These attitudes were still prevalent in the mid-1950s, when Firth warned a working-class undergraduate that “anthropology could be a diffi cult discipline to sustain if you didn ’ t have an independent income. It had always appealed to the upper classes as an offshoot of empire, and because they had the money to travel” (Fox 2004 : 159). As late as the 1960s a UK sociologist could confess that British anthropology, unlike his discipline, “has prestige. It is associated with colonial administration – traditionally a career for a gentleman, and entrance into the profession, and acceptance by it confers high status in Britain” (Macrae 1961 : 39). It is remarkable and telling that Leach ’ s perceptive commentary on the roles of class within social anthropology, informed by his own very well-to-do upbringing, has not been developed by others. To my knowledge, no one has picked up the Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 45 baton he brandished. It is as though, within a purportedly egalitarian discipline, with usually liberal leanings, informed (as opposed to merely statistical) talk about social class is seen as suspicious, as a breaking of ranks. The problem is compounded if, as is the case here, one rule of the elitists ’ code is not to discuss social class: only those unsure of their position do that. The point of this style of superiority is that it is meant to be effortless, not mulled over openly. It thus becomes another obstacle to our understanding of the exclusions of the period. In diverse ways much of the common style of these postwar anthropologists, as imposed by its hegemons, can be seen as their reaction to what they regarded as Malinowski’ s excesses and faults. They were well aware Malinowski’ s sustained interest in sexual customs had drawn a swathe of lay criticism (e.g., Barke 1936 : 81; Graves and Hodge 1940 : 92; Mitchell 1951 : 57; Huxley 1985 : 195). His successors, more circumspect, chose instead to speak of kinship and marriage (Lyons and Lyons 2004 : 216–217). Moreover, Malinowski was on occasion quite prepared to state nakedly anthropology’ s complicity, however humanitarian, in imperialist enterprise:

A study of primitive conditions shows that very efﬁ cient work can be obtained, and the Natives can be made to work with some degree of real satisfaction if propitious conditions are created for them . . . In every community I maintain there are such indigenous means of achieving more intensive labour and greater output, and it is only necessary to study the facts in order to be able to apply efﬁ cient incentives. (Malinowski 1929 : 36)

In sharp contrast, while anthropologists of this period were prepared to take the CSSRC’ s money, they did not openly promote colonialist ends. Malinowski had reveled in showmanship and polemic. As he himself put it, “Nowadays it is necessary to entertain in order to be heard at all” (Malinowski 1930 : 425). Also, in 1936 , John Layard gave several innovative radio broadcasts (Huffman 2010 : 224), much appreciated by at least one national journalist:

The BBC might well take counsel with anthropological authorities over the prepara- tion of other authentic glimpses of life equally remote from our own, but equally surely feeling the impact of the outside world. Social anthropologists may ﬁ nd in broadcasting an opportunity of reaching a larger section of public opinion than the administrators, missionaries, and students in their seminars. ( The Observer , June 7, 1936)

The comment was ignored. Unlike Malinowski (or Layard), the postwar professoriate focused on theoretical development, did not indulge in theatrics, and engaged in little popularization. There was, of course, the occasional exception. In the late 1940s, Paul Bohannan, an American then at Oxford, was said to “hog” a popular BBC radio channel (Paine 1986 : hr. 1, min. 14). His place was taken by Godfrey Lienhardt, whose broadcasts included several on the Dinka for 46 Anthropology in the Public Arena schoolchildren (Al-Shahi 1997 : 10–11). Gluckman, however, was the most successful, becoming very popular on British radio, even approaching celebrity status (Worsley 1989 : Part 1, min. 46). A student of his remembered:

Max could turn his mind to current social and political issues, e.g. in his very popular radio broadcasts which ordinary listeners found illuminating and exciting. Imagine, best sellers about the Zande etc., Max made them exciting. They could see common problems and the rational ways in which people in other cultures faced universal human problems. The classic anthropological message. (Worsley 1989 : Part 2, min. 41)

In perhaps a unique initiative for this period, Gluckman also vigorously promoted anthropology to schools and teacher trainer colleges, as well as to cognate social sciences (Mills 2008 : 103). Later, Leach actively blocked the introduction of anthropology to the fi nal years of British secondary school curricula (Mars, pers. comm.). Members of the broad age-set also reacted against Malinowski’ s multiple immoderations by deliberately writing in an unadorned prose style: at times ele- gantly so, but still very dry. Fortes told a promising anthropologist–poet “that he must ‘drop this poetry nonsense’ or have no future in anthropology” (Fox 2004 : 351), while both Franz Steiner and Evans-Pritchard chose to remain “closet poets” (Paine 1986 : 1 hr. 14 min.) Though at least fi ve Britons who would become well- established anthropologists contributed to Scrutiny , F. R. Leavis ’ s famed postwar journal of literary criticism (Leavis 1963 : 9), none of them subsequently published anything but sternly academic anthropology. Even the magisterial example of Lévi-Strauss, who celebrated his poetical proclivities and was in turn celebrated for his prose, was insuffi cient counter-weight. Indeed Needham repeatedly criticized him precisely for his rhetorical fl ourishes and proto-Surrealist tendencies (e.g., Needham 1984 ). Instead British anthropologists, in their academic articles, kept their literary pretensions under wraps. In 1986 the critic Mary Louise Pratt made her much-quoted statement that so many ethnographies were “surprisingly boring. How, one asks constantly, could such interesting people doing such interesting things produce such dull books? What did they have to do to themselves?” (Pratt 1986 : 33). The reasons listed above provide a partial answer. The sum consequence of this series of exclusions, prohibitions, and abreactions was, for a brief but famed period, a remarkably developed Anglocentric sense of tight community and disciplinary destiny. As Goody later confessed, British anthropologists in the 1950s formed “a close network. They thought they had the keys to unlock the secrets of the universe. They looked down on people who had trained in America” (Goody 1991 : min. 40). One downside of this is that, after the publication of their canonical ethnographies and collections, there is a noticeable lack of originality in much of their work (Barth 2005 : 43). Schooled conformity comes at a price. Needham remembered the scene in 1950s Oxford as “arid, staid, unexciting, dry” (Wilcken 2010 : 167); little surprise this ambitious academic shifted to structuralism so early. Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 47

By defi nition, the rise of professionalism creates a breach with what is seen as popularization. For some, this breach generates a creative tension, as they strive to straddle a fragmenting market. For others, it is an opportunity to develop academic distinctiveness and leave the popular to others. This difference of opinion is repeatedly exposed throughout the long period discussed so far. Haddon produced a sheaf of popular works which, he hoped, could boost recruitment into anthropology (Haddon 1898 : v). At much the same time, C. H. Read, then President of the Royal Anthropological Institute, proclaimed the opposite: “While it would be doing good work to popularize anthropology, I doubt whether it would benefi t anthropology to be popular, as a science” (Read 1900 : 9). Malinowski was very ready to popularize. Seligman counseled him against the practice (Mills 2008 : 37). The postwar professoriate had suffi cient access to funds for their aims, and their subject suffi cient prestige; other than give the odd radio broadcast, most felt they could afford to neglect non-academic audiences. Thus, by default, they left popularization of the subject to independent intellectuals such as Gorer and Graves. A similar tension is clear in visual anthropology. In the 1890s and 1900s some adventurous anthropologists rose to the challenge of the new technologies. Both Haddon and Baldwin Spencer, for instance, took movie cameras with them into the fi eld, to fi lm Australian Aborigines. The benefi ts were as big as the technical diffi culties: both ethnographers gave paid illustrated lectures to a series of huge audiences, the income helping to fund their fi eldwork. Ethical quandaries were equally large. Spencer worried about projecting images of naked Aboriginals in his talks. His colleague Lorimer Fison suggested:

The only way to deal with the [undress views] . . . is to say in plain terms before- hand in the paper and the ads what they are, and to tell the women not to come unless they are prepared in the name of science to witness painful sights. I think that this will ﬁ ll the Hall. (1902, quoted in Grifﬁ ths 2002 : 163)

By the 1910s, however, ethnographic ﬁ lms had become so widespread and so associated with mass culture, that many professionalizing anthropologists became uneasy that visual research might be tarred with downmarket sensationalism and so left their movie cameras at home. This general attitude prevailed until well into the second half of the century (Grifﬁ ths 2002 : 127–170).

Anthropology Foxed

The hegemons retired, or died in post. New regulations did away with professorial ﬁ at. The Government created more departments. It became harder for a distinguished individual, or a small clutch of them, to even think of dominating the university version of UK anthropology. However, a strong sense of disciplinary 48 Anthropology in the Public Arena identity proved notably resilient, though it is today based more on intellectual exchange, social interaction, and a common pleasure in a once-glorious history, than on purity of common theoretical line. British anthropologists’ sense of community, however fractured or nostalgic, is still central to whom they think they are. These professionals did not, as a group, collectively accept the US interpretation of postmodernism, though it was highly fashionable for a while. With its demise in the late 1990s, no single theoretical approach has come to be taken as the majority tone. If there is today a particular, identiﬁ able tendency skewing research toward a particular goal, it is the ever-increasing call for a public anthropology, accessible to the public and committed to social relevance. In step with this, and a new turn for British anthropology since the days of Malinowski, is the rising lament for the lack of any respected candidate for the role of anthropologist as public intellectual, a person able to show repeatedly how the discipline can contribute to our understanding of national and global issues of the day. There were few popularizers during the last decades of the old century. The most active, in the 1960s and 1970s, was Mary Douglas. Partly because she felt ignored by her colleagues, she strove hard to win a wider audience for anthropology, and expected her acolytes to do the same.

She saw anthropologists as narrow because they largely ignored the opportunity to demonstrate the wider utility of anthropology. She chaffed because anthropologists were neglecting an opportunity to demonstrate how the subject should be much more widely relevant – not just in the realm of ideas affecting different disciplines, but practically too, in forming policy. (Mars email, November 11, 2011)

Her professional constituency bypassed disciplinary boundaries, and her essays were published by popular British weeklies, which repaid the favor by reviewing her books. Her contacts with the then highly fashionable social sciences weekly New Society were especially productive. Though her writing could be demanding, her aim was to reach the educated populace, to join “a dialogue that is already ongoing” (quoted in Fardon 2010 : 154; also Fardon 1999 : 76–79; email October 10, 2011). On the bio-social side the only fi gure of note was Robin Fox, who in the late 1960s became a budding media don and, in his own terms, a “minor public fi gure” (Fox 2004 : 334–336): he appeared regularly on BBC TV current affairs programs, produced a BBC radio series, co-produced a TV series with Desmond Morris, and even contributed, with a cross-cultural piece on abortion, to the fi rst issue of Penthouse. Bowler argues that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, British scientists did not stop popularizing at the turn of the twentieth century. However, their participation in this practice did decline from the 1930s on, because they found it diffi cult to contribute to the increasingly professionalized fi eld of science journalism. Their participation only ended in the 1970s as the new forms of popular science became Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 49 heavily illustrated, and entertainment prominent. Anyway, the need for self-educational literature had declined in step with the rising postwar level of education (Bowler 2009 : 275). The history of popular anthropology during this period is somewhat different, as suggested above: steady, generous funding plus the prestige of their academic pursuit saved most from having to consider popularization. On top of that, postwar British publishers and booksellers created an almost rigid distinction between specialist and “trade” books, i.e., between those sold by catalogue or by specialist outlets and books aimed at a broad readership and sold in commercial booksellers. Ethnographies, written in an ever more technical form, were only considered by university presses, not major publishers. During the boom in British higher education in the 1960s and early 1970s, there were attempts to bridge this divide and exploit the extra-academic prestige that structuralism had lent anthropology. They failed. The Penguin “Anthropology Library,” which published basic texts such as Douglas ’ s Purity and Danger , closed within a few years, as did the Paladin paperback series which included books by Bateson and Fox. There were only very few magazine serials, e.g., Man, Myth and Magic, to which anthropologists could contribute. The one signifi cant way anthropologists have been able, since the 1980s, to write books for a popular market is with accounts of their own fi eldwork. Unlike scientists, anthropologists have found in this genre an effective way to gently instruct while they proceed to entertain. Sensitively penned, not misrepresenting the people they lived among, these personal narratives of lessons learnt in the fi eld have become increasingly respectable and recognized within academic anthropology (e.g., Connell 1991 ; Gardner 1991 ; Beattie 2009 ). An outstanding example of this genre, which is predictably as controversial as it is bestselling, is the work of Nigel Barley, who aimed primarily to entertain his readers in a series of humorous, iconoclastic accounts of his times in the fi eld (Barley 1983, 1986, 1988 ; Mac- Clancy 1996b ). But as the acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh, who studied anthropology at Oxford, shows in a commentary on his own fi eldwork in Egypt (Ghosh 1991 ), in a globalized world of increasing mobility, those accounts need no longer be about the West encountering the Rest. Indeed, in a contemporary anthropology, that distinction becomes increasingly out of place, as Western countries defi ne themselves as multicultural, their main cities become sites of super-diversity, and the economic imbalance between blocs shifts violently. Given that Robin Fox wrote a highly successful textbook on kinship, fi rst published in 1967 and never out of print, it is serendipitous that the author of the bestselling work of Anglophone anthropology in the last 65 years, i.e., since Ruth Benedict’ s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946 ), is his daughter (Fox 1967 ). Sales of Kate Fox ’ s Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour have now reached the half-million mark, and it has been multiply translated (Fox 2004 ). Academic reactions to her work starkly illustrate tensions within university based anthropology today. First, most ignored it. Then David Mills, in an effort to promote popular anthropology, reviewed it in the widely circulated Anthropology 50 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Today (Mills 2006 ). In its next issue, Keith Hart accused him of condescension and precipitate dismissal of the book. He defended her work as a creditable challenge to the guilds of academia which should help us “rethink the discipline ’ s object, theory and method” (Hart 2006 ). In response to both, Fox catalogued her methods and why they might annoy:

• Give both the ﬁ ndings and a ﬂ avor of how they were found. • Make the information and analysis both enlightening and entertaining. • Absolutely no showing-off; deliberately hide cleverness or expert knowledge, no matter (or especially given) how much reading and original research you have done. • If you have to use jargon, introduce it in a self-mocking manner. • Choose whatever research methods you like; invent them if need be; do not worry about boundary disputes between disciplines; revel in this freedom. • Deeply swallow your pride; steel yourself against academic prejudices.

The ﬁ rst point guild-members are already taking on board; the next four may irritate them; the sixth is her palliative to their abreaction. This is not always successful: as one academic to whom I showed her list commented, “ ‘Absolutely no showing off ?’ Ha!” For Fox, it is small consolation that Watching the English is now being used in the introductory courses offered by several anthropology departments (Fox 2006, n.d.). In the thick of this controversy, Hart’ s point is key: given the book’ s continuing success, and the truly pitiable sales of most ethnography today, what sort of anthropology should we practitioners today be producing, and for whom?

Anthropology Netted, and Other Pagan Practice

Some may suspect that Hart ’ s point is central, but only if it is taken broadly. Readers today can choose between opening a book or plugging into the Net, a technology with its own raft of benefi ts, downsides, and unexpected consequences. The explosion in its use has to be considered in any account of the present possibilities of future anthropology, whether academic, popular, or novel combinations of the two. Here I have only the space to touch on already identifi able, emerging aspects of this rolling process. First, IT ideology states that anything up on a website is available anywhere, anytime, to anyone on this globe, so long as they are on the right side of the digital divide. At a stroke, both the modes and the economics of getting the message across are fundamentally refi gured. Our words need no longer be confi ned to expensive tomes in specialist bookstores or university libraries with restricted access. Instead the adventurous and technologically literate can cut loose from the Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 51 constraints of conventional academic publishing and release their material and opinions to the world, all for the ever-decreasing cost of creating and maintaining a website. Of those sites dedicated to an anthropology of the contemporary and the socially relevant the best known so far is the cooperative savageminds.org. A provisional catalogue might also include anthropologiesproject.com, LivingAn- thropologically.com, and culturematters.wordpress.com. Doubtless, more could be listed by the time it has taken for this book to reach your hands. Second, any sense that those studied are inhabiting a distant space or living outside Western time evaporates in the ether. Thanks to the global reach of the Web, Fabian ’ s famous distinction (Fabian 1983 ) that anthropologists are “here and now” and those they study “there and then” collapses, as we all edge toward the coeval. The much-vaunted new freedoms of the Web mean that studied peoples with access to a computer can now respond immediately, easily to whatever is written about them. Third, if the Net allows new modes of debate, at a faster rhythm, it also enables new causes of confl ict. The authority of academic writing is questioned in a new manner. For example, I am a member of an e-discussion list dedicated to a particular ethnographic region. In November 2011 a fi eldworker, based in a local capital, posted in a report about political unrest and a gathering of the angry that had the makings of a riot. Within hours a national of the country, an academic in a discipline close to anthropology, replied complaining about the misrepresentation of local political life. When colleagues of the fi eldworker quickly came to his defense, the national responded again, arguing that academics often peddle mis- representations as truths. He was unhappy that, using the Net, anthropologists had created a forum where they could comment on his compatriots but which most of his fellow nationals had no access to. In other words, a novel technology has led to the creation of both a new style of arena and, for the moment at least, a new mode of potential exclusion. Fourth, the Web has also become a fresh way to bring out our dead, in a wardrobe-wide range of new clothes. But here resuscitation of the long-gone is not restricted to only their anthropologist successors. Today descendants of the described can themselves revive the embalmed, in their own way, and according to their own agendas. For example, the legacy of Geoffrey Gorer is disputed by people within Sikkim, the Indian province where he did fi eldwork in the 1930s. This is not especially new. Thanks to republication in India of his ethnography, locals, both pro and anti, had already been deploying his work in arguments about ethnic rights and representation. What is novel is the much, much broader avail- ability of this material, the creation within the Net of new fora for debate, and the enhanced possibility of local activists engaging easily online in informal alliances with the like-minded in other regions, countries, even continents. Many of these points and their potential dovetailing are exemplifi ed in the practices of present-day paganism. Arguably the fastest growing religious phenomenon in the world today, paganism is a conceptual space where distinctions between the 52 Anthropology in the Public Arena academic and the popular have long been particularly blurred. For here, despite the usual disapproval of their university bound peers, a series of protagonists have been, at different times or simultaneously, academics, popular anthropologists, and practitioners (Messenger 1989 : 46, 77; Pels 2000 ; Blain, Ezzy, and Harvey 2004 ). Moreover some academics, though keen to retain their status, have been ready to confer with and assist believers. Further, the rise of the Net has particularly benefi ted pagan practice. Gerald Gardner, a former civil servant who called himself an anthropologist, is generally credited as a co-originator and main publicist of Wicca, modern witchcraft (Hutton 2009 : 380). His foundational Witchcraft Today exploits an anthropological vocabulary and is introduced by Margaret Murray, an anthropologist who wrote academic and popular works to argue that mediaeval Christians used accusations of witchcraft to suppress widespread paganism (Gardner 1954 ). Graves met with Gardner, among other witches; his The White Goddess was particularly infl u- ential in the establishment of US neopaganism (Harvey 2004 ). On top of that, Frazer’ s Golden Bough remains a key infl uence on pagan thought and activity. This deployment of anthropological materials and methods in the construction of pagan creeds continues today. In 2001 I was very surprised when four students on a course of mine carried out a fi eldwork project into paganism in Oxford. Some of the ritual practitioners they interviewed turned out to be graduates of the same course, and to be far more informed of anthropology than the fl edgling fi eldworkers. In fact fi eldworkers generally recognize the ethical dilemmas raised by the fact that pagans studied become appropriative consumers of the research done on them, so making their researchers complicit in the development of their creed (Jencson 1989 ; Blain 2004 : 235; Salomonsen 2004 ; Wallis 2004 ). According to one pagan website, these times are exciting for co-believers because

Borders are erased by electronic structures . . . giving rise to a Gaian entity, while at the same time we teeter on the edge of chaos, looking into the Abyss yet never, quite, falling into it . . . I see this time as evidence of a blurring of the line between normal and irrational. ( www.cybercoven.org , accessed December 13, 2011)

Without having to agree wholesale with those sentiments, it is still clear that the Net has boosted paganism for manifold reasons. Because some still brand pagans as deviants or diabolical, those not yet out of the broom closet may explore their emerging spirituality by going online. In this relatively safe environment they can choose not to reveal their quotidian identities. Most do not (Cowan 2005 : 36). Further, the Net enables solitaries, those not members of covens, to meet and converse with fellow faithfuls they would never have encountered otherwise (Grieve 1995 ; Cowan 2005 : 61). Pagans talk, thanks to the Worldwide Web, and so act as what IT scholars term “networked individuals,” who develop themselves by the creation of specialized “weak ties” (Wellman 2001 ; Haythornthwaite 2009 ; Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 53

Elliott and Urry 2010 ). On top of that, Web-savvy pagans provide access to a remarkably broad and ever-expanding list of online texts, many anthropologically grounded, while various forms of fora extend discussion. For instance, in the 2010 conversational thread “Must we love the Golden Bough?” a series of pagans analyzed diverse formal similarities between Frazer ’ s methods and their own. Accord- ing to one, “Frazer had a big hand in the ‘pick ’n’ mix’ approach to mining ‘magical traditions’ which is nowadays primarily associated with Chaos Magic” ( www. enfolding.org, accessed September 20, 2011). The contrast is stark between sites dedicated to the dissemination and discussion of paganism, and those created to promote public anthropology. A brief comparative survey I conducted, in December 2011, of both types of websites suggests that neophyte pagans are quite ready to go online to seek advice; I have yet to fi nd an anthropology site with a response or query from someone who was not an academic or a research student. Their target audience were either reading without replying or just staying away. The moral seems to be that anthropologists need to put their expertise to work, in the right way, in the right place. To gain an audience, they have to fi nd and show the populace what it needs or wishes to know. Our Victorian precursors commented on evolution and religion. They fi lled some of the largest meeting halls of their day. Malinowski ’ s public renown is well established. In the postwar period, Gluckman dealt persuasively with social and political issues important for his radio listeners. Both Foxes, each in their own way, contributed to debates of their time. They responded to questions people regarded as important: to what extent are we but animals? In a time of increasing devolution, what does English- ness mean? Journalists are already very well aware of this general point. As one stated in 1994, at a “Meet the press” encounter staged by the RAI, attended by myself, “We are not interested in anthropology. We are interested in issues. If an anthropologist can use his expert knowledge to contribute to a debate, we ’ re interested. If not, it’ s not news.” For anthropologists who want to put the message across and engage in new forms of interaction, the provisional conclusion has to be that the Net remains an as yet underexploited medium.

Contrasts, Continuities

The chapters of this book follow divergent paths. Each of the next three focuses on an individual, the penultimate an organization, the last is thematic. John Layard, the subject of chapter 2, started in anthropology at what was then the national center for the pursuit, Cambridge, yet ended up virtually forgotten at its very margins. A student of Rivers, who did fi eldwork in Melanesia at the same time as Malinowski, he eventually produced a brick-sized ethnography 54 Anthropology in the Public Arena which was well received, then little referred to. The core reason for this neglect was that Layard integrated Radcliffe-Brownian structural-functionalism with a Jungian vocabulary into an innovative mode of analysis, “structural Jungianism,” at the very time, the 1940s, when university based anthropologists were staking their independence from academic psychology. If they were committed to making Freud more tabu than totem, use of Jung was even further out of the question. First a patient of Jung ’ s, he then became a fellow analyst, and in time a distinguished, if unconventional one. Jung tended to use ethnographic gobbets to feed his theories; Layard showed how a broader, more structured analysis, grounded on his integrated approach, could extend the reach of Jungianism. In this way he successfully introduced a modern anthropology into therapeutic practice, which he disseminated to his colleagues, students of analysis, and his many patients, some of whom still regard him as the greatest single infl uence on their life. In the 1930s, together with Tom Harrisson of Mass Observation, he produced innovative ethnographic programs for BBC radio, while the value and sensitivity of his visual anthropology are fi nally being recognized. Today his ethnographic materials are being made a key component of a restitutive anthropology while, on the Net, psychotherapists, New Agers, and pagans are reclaiming his later structural Jungian analyses of dreams and Welsh folklore. The case of Layard underlines the price paid by British social anthropology for its postwar exclusionary style. Seen as something of “a wild man” by both his anthropology and psychotherapy colleagues, professional Jungians were able to make a space for him, in a way that the academics of his time felt unable to. His case also indicates how little control an anthropologist or institutional anthropology can have over their own words, as new audiences fi nd new uses for his writings, turning otherwise academic articles into popular prose. In chapter 3 the focus is on Geoffrey Gorer, a writer who turned anthropologist, only to fi nd anthropologists turned against him. Educated in the United Kingdom, trained by Margaret Mead in the United States, he returned to postwar Britain, where his “culture and personality” approach was deeply out of favor. Spurned by most colleagues, he shifted his focus to neighboring disciplines (humanist psychology, sociology) and to social scientifi c work for national newspapers. The rejection of Gorer by most UK anthropologists underlines both their anti-psychological bias and their Anglocentricity. For him, it appears this rebuff was more than counterbalanced by his popular success, which led to him becoming known as “Britain’ s Margaret Mead.” His case exposes just how hide-bound, in manifold manner, British anthropology was during this period. Mead had tutored Gorer because she was so impressed by the ethnographic quality of his travel accounts. One reason these books, still kept in print today, remain of such worth is that they exemplify the ways modernism criss-crossed intellectual terrain: in this case blending anthropology, travelogue, and a knowing disingenuousness. Unlike his ethnographer contemporaries, he took advantage of his trip to the fi eld to discuss and comment on the styles and consequences of colonialism; Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 55 instead of skirting the issue, he exposed it. Further, since much of Gorer ’ s highly imaginative work can now be viewed as a fertile precursor to the rise of cultural and media studies, his example also suggests that British anthropologists, by refus- ing to step beyond their self-imposed limits, by default left it to others to exploit their fi eld methods in local settings. On this reading, if UK anthropologists wish to complain about the nature and style of cultural studies, as currently constituted, what justifi cation do they have? Robert Graves is the subject of chapter 4 . An astonishingly productive writer, he won fame as an autobiographer and then highly innovative historical novelist. But he was also well known as a mythographer, translator, literary critic, and perhaps above all romantic poet. A friend of Rivers, he was deeply learned in the anthropology of that time, applied anthropological techniques throughout his writings, created para-anthropological methods of his own, and even funded anthropological research by others. His The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948 ), a consistently imaginative, at times idiosyncratic interpretation of mainly British folklore, was a major publication of the postwar period which, among other effects, stimulated the rise of modern paganism. His very successful, very well researched historical novels, especially those set in biblical or Roman times, both established a new sub-genre of literature and seductively presented to the reader at times astonishingly large amounts of ethnographic detail and interpretation. His highly popular translations of the Greek myths, each with its own lengthy, learned commentary, did the same, but here with comparative mythography. Both these genres, which he made his own, were important, hitherto unrecognized modes of disseminating anthropology from the 1940s to the late 1960s. An anthropologically oriented estimation of his life also underscores how anthropological modes of explanation may be long dismissed by the university tenured, yet enjoy a protracted, productive existence in non-academic life. Further, it demonstrates how independent scholars can create and participate in their own networks of the learned, at times carrying out profi table research into anthropological topics academics have not thought of broaching seriously. His later, collaborative research, for instance, into the ritual use of hallucinogenic fungi for a time helped to push that topic from the margins of scholarship onto the academic agenda. Professors might have worried about his logic but denying the evidence he amassed was much more diffi cult. Chapter 5 is an investigation into the early years of Mass Observation: “arguably the most important, social research institution of the mid-twentieth century” (Savage 2010 : 57). Set up in 1937 by a self-trained anthropologist and two surrealist poets, this immediately very popular organization wanted to turn thousands of Britons into anthropologists of themselves and their local society. Marrying anthropology and surrealism, this trio wished to produce ethnography of the people by the people for the people, to generate a democratic and a democratizing anthropology by giving an empowering, therapeutic voice to the populace. In this sense, they fulfi ll Price’ s conception of a properly practiced anthropology as 56 Anthropology in the Public Arena threatening to hierarchical powers that be, as an intellectual pursuit whose open- ness and egalitarianism poses a challenge to elitist claims of legitimacy and domi- nation (Price 2004 : 29). Though a hundred years earlier, Clodd, Allen, and Lang would have well understood Price’ s point. Malinowski and some of his colleagues were at fi rst open to and intrigued by this novel body, which they were ready to openly support. But its leaders ’ refusal to kowtow to any academic and their lack of rigorous method, as university-bound anthropologists understood it, led Malinowski to turn away and for his disciples to openly criticize the endeavor. Today Mass Observation, which was revived in the 1980s, is a treasure-trove for social historians and practitioners of cultural studies who continue to work through its archives; the resulting books usually sell well. In contrast, even today many anthropologists remain uncomfortable with the idea of Mass Observation, except as a historical event or as a marginal practice. For them, this popular, popularizing branch of their pursuit is too nebulous an intellectual exercise to engage with seriously; the rationality of its methods is weak and its analysis shallow (see, for example, Pocock 1991 ; Hannerz 2010 : 143). The disciplinary drawbridge stays up. Since Mass Observation, especially in its early form, is the most radical, most suggestive form of popular anthropology yet practiced in the United Kingdom, the obvious question posed by this chapter is, isn’ t it high time for anthropologists to build bridges, not withdraw them? Throughout the fi rst fi ve chapters I have discussed the work and roles of anthropologists who did not get university posts. These independently minded characters were variously self-marginalized, pushed into the margins, or deliberately antagonistic to the existence of such margins. Yet in each case they deployed innovative methods, executed benefi cial research, and in many cases won large readerships. However, a recognized incognito (Sutton 1991 ) remains: these days for whom, exactly, do popular anthropologists write? In most cases they launch their products into the unknown and await, with ignorance, their public reception and news of their sales. Other than the occasional linking of particularly successful books with key issues of their day we have little idea of what market sectors or interest groups are reached by non-academic anthropology. Partly for these reasons chapter 6 tackles, not an individual or an organization, but a theme: the literary image of anthropologists. Here I analyze the most widespread motifs in popular accounts of anthropologists. In these works anthropologists, the most popularized academics in fi ction, are portrayed as either heroic or (much more common) pathetic. Fieldwork marks them out as distinctive; it makes ordinary anthropologists odd and the already odd ones even odder. Writers of fi ction exploit these characters to enable geographical shifts, debate cultural relativity, poke fun at the discipline, discuss anthropological ideas, and detect crimes. Usually, these images of anthropologists are Anglocentric, fundamentally atem- poral, gender-blind, and apolitical. If publishers can be said to represent public interest, for should their books fail to sell they go bust, then scrutinizing the styles and contents of these novels can Beating the Bounds of Discipline? 57 offer us a reasonably good idea of how our pursuit is viewed by others. Given the sententiousness of some celebrated anthropologists, it is not surprising that this image turns out to be often very unfl attering. Taking these popular versions even somewhat seriously helps to dislodge the otherwise almost unquestioned hegemony of academic anthropology, for these works, via the literary device of an anthropologist as key character, also demonstrate some of the myriad ways in which anthropology is used and developed in non-academic arenas to provide possible answers to some of the most common of questions: “Who are we?” “What is common?” “What are our limits?” “What can we know of others?” “How, why, and to what effect do we group ourselves in the ways we do?” They are a yet further reminder that anthropology is not singular, but plural, and that only a section of its history is decided within the cloisters of Academe.

Notes

1 My rationale that I could not ﬁ nd in time an accessible archive for a suitable candidate will not satisfy some. 2 I am at present (December 2012) investigating the possible repatriation of these ﬁ lched skulls to their home island. 2 John Layard, “Study of a Failure” An Innovative Integrated Approach from the Psychoanalyst

To study unconventional characters is to throw into relief the conventions of their day; to defi ne the nature of their eccentricity is to illuminate the central concerns of their more orthodox colleagues; to detail the reasons for their failure (if indeed they fail) is to make plain how others were held to have succeeded. If this be true of modern social life, it is no less so for the smaller social orders constituted by professional disciplines: especially, perhaps, in the formative periods when their intellectual conventions and institutional structures are being molded. For the academic British version of social anthropology that process took place above all between the world wars, when the fi eldwork tradition we associate with Malinowski was informed by the social structural concerns of Radcliffe-Brown, culminating in the formation of the Association of Social Anthropologists at Oxford in 1946 (see Stocking, HOA 1 & 2). John Layard was among the thirteen present at the founding meeting. But he was already then marginal to social anthropology, despite the fact that he had fi nished a year’ s intensive fi eldwork before Malinowski arrived in the Trobriands. As a student of Rivers and a colleague of Jung, Layard was both anthropologist and analytical psychologist. Like Rivers, he thought that anthropology could provide materials for the consideration of mental processes. Unlike Rivers, he thought of these processes in terms of “archetypes,” which “anthropologists, although surrounded by them in every aspect of their work, have so curiously ignored through concentration on external factors as opposed to internal ones which always go hand in hand” (Layard 1956 : 353). Toward the end of his life, Layard attributed his diffi culty in putting over his ideas to anthropologists to the fact that “they didn’ t know psychology” (n.d.a ). But the state of affairs Layard lamented was the outcome of a historical process; and although that process

A Life

The Layards, of Huguenot stock, were “gentlefolk” rather than “landed gentry,” “South Kensington” not “Mayfair people” (Layard n.d.a : 96). Many were exemplars of the Establishment, providing distinguished service for the nation, as scholars, colonial or civil servants, academics, clergymen. John ’ s remarkable great-uncle, Sir Austen Henry Layard, was a highly successful travel writer, politician, art historian, diplomat and archaeologist, famed for his discovery and excava- tion of Nineveh in the 1840s. Sir Austen’ s brother, Edgar Leopold Layard, Governor of Fiji, was an renowned ornithologist of Melanesia and South Africa. John was particularly close to his aunt, Nina Layard, one of the fi rst eminent female archaeologists in Britain (Plunkett 1999 ). John ’ s father, with whom Layard seems to have had a diffi cult relationship, lived the life of a “literary gentleman” of private means, who besides his novels and learned works, invented systems for the federation of private libraries, and the distribution of kitchens in London (Obituary, The Times, June 1, 1925, No. 43976, p. 12; June 2, 1925, p. 15). Born in 1891, John Willoughby Layard was educated at Bedales, a progressive boarding school, and after spending a year abroad learning French and German, went up to Cambridge in 1909. As an adolescent he had accompanied his aunt on searches for paleoliths; she also introduced him to some of the leading archaeologists and anthropologists of the day: Haddon, Ridgeway, von Hügel, founder of the Archaelogy and Anthropology Museum at Cambridge, and, in Germany, Leopold Pfeiffer, the Imperial Surgeon and paleoethnographer. Thanks to these contacts, Layard was intimately aware from an early age of archaeological and anthropological interests and procedures. While at King’ s College, he read Modern Languages, and joined a “humanistic, anti-establishment” group called the Her- etics Society, which met in the rooms of C. K. Ogden and discussed such issues as the psychological basis of linguistics. Through a friend in the Heretics, Layard became involved in, and later secretary of, the university’ s Anthropological Club, where W. H. R. Rivers was a frequent speaker (Langham 1981 : 202–203). Rivers, trained in neurophysiology and psychology, had become involved in ethnology while on Haddon’ s expedition to Torres Straits, going on to achieve recognition as the premier fi eldworker of his day; by 1912, his analysis of data collected in Melanesia had led him to abandon the still-prevailing evolutionary interpretations for a diffusionary view of the development of culture. Layard was “overwhelmed . . . by the aura of this marvellous man,” who “could do anything” – and whom he soon “adored” and “worshipped” as a “kind of male mother” ( n.d.a : 16, 44, 100). Rivers persuaded Layard to stay in Cambridge for a fourth year 60 Anthropology in the Public Arena to study anthropology. To Layard, this was one of the most pleasant times of his life; although he attended some of Haddon ’ s lectures on race distribution, he later recalled avoiding anthropology for more hedonistic pursuits. In 1914 Layard went out with Rivers to the British Association meetings in Australia. (Malinowski was with Haddon on another boat.) Although he traveled with Rivers, Layard recalled that his mentor spent all his time correcting proofs for The History of Melanesian Society, in which he interpreted the varieties of Mela- nesian social organization as the end product of a series of invasions by “relatively small bodies of immigrants” (Rivers 1914 : 11, 5), each with different social institutions and cultural practices, including sun worship and the building of large monuments of stone. Layard later recalled fi nding the proofs “quite incomprehensible” when he tried to read them ( n.d.a : 13), but he was in fact to be much infl uenced by the book; and it is clear that he also got from Rivers some idea of what was involved in Rivers ’ “concrete method” for the study of culture through the collection of kinship data. While they were on board ship, war was declared in Europe. Rivers and Haddon decided to delay their return to Cambridge, which they expected would be disorganized by mobilization. Haddon wished to mount a survey expedition to Papua New Guinea, with Layard as his fi eld assistant, but the boat promised by the colonial government was stranded up a river (Quiggon 1942 : 109). Rivers, intrigued by a Swiss ethnologist ’ s recent report about a living megalithic culture in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), decided to go there (Speiser 1913 ). He invited Layard to accompany him and, on Haddon ’ s advice, Layard accepted. After consulting with the British Resident Commissioner for the island group, they went in late September to work in Atchin, one of the Small Islands, off the northeast coast of Malekula (now Malakula), where, they were told, native culture was least corrupted by European infl uences. What they had not been told was that an Irish trader on the islet had recently been forced to fl ee. The Atchinese concluded that Layard was the trader ’ s brother, and kept well away from the two researchers. Rivers, unused to such sustained unfriendliness, decided to leave on a mission boat that happened to call ten days after their arrival. Although Layard “expected Rivers to come back” ( n.d.a : 27), he never did, instead conducting his fi eldwork from the relative comfort of a mission station on another island. Layard, deserted and isolated, gradually began to make friends among the Atchinese, especially the younger men. According to his accounts, Layard tried to carry on fi eldworking as best he could with the minimal training he had received from Haddon and from Rivers, who had refused to discuss such matters while they voyaged together. He started to learn Atchinese by writing down the names for material items and transcribing myths from informants; he also surveyed the villages on the island, collecting genealogies as a basis for the study of their social organization. But he fell ill with a variety of tropical diseases, and left to spend the fi rst months of 1915 recuperating in Norfolk Island. He returned in April and, apart from a sojourn in southwest Malekula, and brief trips to Vao and Oba (now John Layard 61

Ambae), he remained there until October 1915. In all, he spent over nine months based on Atchin. Reading his autobiography, it is patent that he delighted in the life that he led: transcribing their songs, participating in the male initiation ceremonies as an honorary novice, pleasuring in the complex rhythms beaten out by slit-drum orchestras, thrilled by their dancing – in which he once joined, painted black with charcoal and clad only in a penis wrapper. There is none of the ambiva- lence of Malinowski ’ s diary, none of the aggression, none of the yearning for white womanhood. As Layard later remembered it, Atchin was “my paradise – the one place I’ d been really, really happy . . . , living with these natives and enor- mously enjoying life with them” (n.d.a : 331). Though Layard remembered Atchin as a tropical island paradise, he also found fi eldwork both very tiring and very testing. He had worked incredibly hard there, amassing an extraordinary amount of fi eld data. Now exhausted, he returned to a civilization in violent upheaval and a nation engaged in a war from which he was excluded: the recruiting authorities in Sydney having turned him down for fl at feet. It seems that he suffered severe cultural shock, which was aggravated by the recent death of his only brother on the battlefi elds of France, compounded by the mental breakdown, then death, of his father. Layard later concluded that his father’ s illness had somehow been transferred to him. Be that as it may, he experienced a series of severe mental crises and long bouts of feebleness that left him physically unable to cope (Parker 2004 : 219). The next several decades of his life may be regarded as a series of efforts to cope with his recurrent psychic diffi culties, through which, working with a series of therapists, he achieved both an ambiguous personal adjustment and a hybrid intellectual style. The fi rst of these therapists was in fact Rivers, whose contribution to the British war effort took him back from anthropology toward psychology. In the course of treating shell-shocked soldiers, Rivers developed his own somewhat desexualized and pragmatically oriented version of psychoanalysis, which emphasized the problem-resolving function of dreams (Rivers 1923 ). Rivers ’ approach worked very well for the poet Siegfried Sassoon, whom the war had made pacifi st, but whom Rivers “bucked up” to rejoin his regiment (Sassoon 1936 : 3–72). But it did not work so well for the culture-shocked young anthropologist, who later claimed that Rivers exacerbated his condition of nervous exhaustion by suggesting that he start to write up his fi eld notes. Furthermore, Rivers would not “take the transference”: he would not respond emotionally to Layard’ s statements. When Layard, during one of his crises, declared his love for his mentor, Rivers, “blanching” and “almost trembling,” left the room, never to return. “Rivers had obviously not recognized the whole homosexual content of our relationship, probably on both sides” (n.d.a : 116). Layard, practically bedridden, spent the next few years being looked after by friends in Hertfordshire. In 1924 Layard began a period of consultation with the unorthodox US psychologist Homer Lane, at the suggestion of one of Lane ’ s former patients. Lane, who had gone from railroading to grocery clerking to working with delinquent 62 Anthropology in the Public Arena boys, had settled in England in 1912 to become superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, a self-governing reformatory school in Dorset. Although his unorthodox methods worked very well for a time (and seem to have been an important infl uence on the progressive educationalist A. S. Neill), the school was forced to close in 1918 when two runaway girls charged Lane with assault. For the next few years, Lane supported himself as a therapist, melding the infl uences of Freud and Jung into his own American romantic celebration of the release of impulse and the fulfi llment of the natural creativity of man (Bazeley 1928 : 7–24). Here was a very different pragmatism from Rivers’ : when Layard complained that he could not walk, Lane suggested that he should buy a car. And, within three months, Layard was leading an active life. He could “relate” to Lane, and was deeply infl uenced by his theories, which included the idea that all disease was psychosomatic in origin, and that every external event had an internal cause (Layard n.d.a : 137–160). Layard edited a collection of Lane’ s “lectures on the self- determination of small people” for publication, although owing to disagreements with other Lane supporters, his contribution was not acknowledged in the published version (178; cf. Lane 1928 ). Layard ’ s treatment by Lane abruptly ended in 1925 when Lane, suspected of sleeping with female patients, was forced to leave England on an immigration-law technicality. He died soon after. Although Layard worked for a brief period in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge, arranging Malakulan materials he had brought back, the aftermath of Lane ’ s departure and death saw the return of his psychic and physical symptoms. Dissatisfi ed with analysts he was seeing in London, he left for Vienna, where he was treated by the heterodox Freudian Wilhelm Stekel, before moving on for three years in Berlin, where he tried unsuccessfully to write up some of his fi eld notes. Once there, he met up with his friend David Ayerst, future editor of The Guard- ian, who introduced him to W. H. Auden. Layard seems to have then become part of the late Weimar bohemian and homosexual scene immortalized by Christopher Isherwood: the “Cosy Corner” in which he and Auden found an uninhibited “amusement park for the fl esh” (Mendelson 1981 : 55). Younger than Layard by almost twenty years, the two poets were for a time held spellbound by both his ideas and his personality; when Auden took a boyfriend on a mountain-holiday Layard was invited along as well (Carpenter 1981 : ch. 5; Bucknell 1996 : xiv; Parker 2004 : 174). But there was no relief for Layard ’ s depression, and when the painful memory of an earlier unrequited love for a female patient of Lane’ s was compounded by the failure of a homosexual relationship, he put a pistol in his mouth, horizontally. But, thinking that might only injure him, he turned the barrel to vertical, and pulled the trigger. Coming to, with a bullet lodged in his forehead, Layard staggered to Auden ’ s fl at and asked him to fi nish the job. Auden refused. Instead, he took him to a hospital, where the bullet was extracted. With his brain miraculously undamaged, John Layard 63 and his immediate obsessions dispelled by the suicide attempt, Layard soon recovered and returned to Britain (Gardiner 1976 ). Back in London, he began working on his Malakulan material: “pouring over my anthropological notes and writing them out on a typewriter, all day long, until I got absolutely exhausted and couldn’ t go on anymore” (n.d.a : 212). In order to talk about his anthropology, he started visiting the University College seminar of Grafton Elliot Smith and William Perry, which, following Rivers ’ death in 1922, had become the British center of diffusionist anthropology (Langham 1981 : 160–199). Until the early 1930s, the University College seminar attracted as many students as Malinowski’ s competing seminar at the London School of Eco- nomics, which Layard also occasionally attended, although he was not “particularly interested.” Among the people he became friendly with at University College was Doris Dingwall, the Demonstrator in Human Anatomy and then wife of Eric Dingwall, a survey anthropologist and psychic researcher. Layard remembered that Doris was in fact “the moving spirit” in the actual running of Elliot Smith ’ s department and the organizer of its seminars (Layard n.d.a : 213). Layard’ s return to academic anthropology was largely due to the attention that she paid to him. Her encouragement helped him to give his fi rst paper at the Royal Anthropological Institute (Layard 1930a ). He found new strength from being with her (n.d.a : 220), and within several years they were married. They had one son, and later separated. After years of isolation, Layard was becoming a participant in the small band of academically oriented British anthropologists; in his own words: “I was waking up, I was beginning to come into the world” ( n.d.a : 218). In the mid-1930s he worked productively with Tom Harrisson, a popular anthropologist who had spent much time in Vanuatu, on three highly innovative BBC radio programs. In one Layard read out his poem “Cannibals and Cannon Balls,” in which he compared favorably Malakulan warfare against its modern Western equivalent. In another, he and Harrisson discussed Atchin life, including pig sacrifi ce, and sang alternate lines of local songs, interspersed with Layard’ s fi eld recordings of slit-drum orchestras and squeals of an English pig (Heimann 2002 : 116–119; Huffman 2010 : 224– 225). Among others, he conferred with Gregory Bateson, who assisted him with the modeling of his kinship diagrams (Layard 1942 ). Furthermore, with Dingwall’ s encouragement, he applied for and won a two-year fellowship from the Lever- hulme Foundation to write up his fi eld notes. He had managed to overcome his interviewers ’ concern that he might have forgotten a lot in the intervening years by reassuring them that the experience he had since had of life had enabled him to understand ethnographic statements he had not understood at the time he collected them ( n.d.a : 288). That same experience had also made him “intensely interested” in the anthropological relevance of psychology. But he was not satisfi ed with “the conventional schools” and “certainly not [with] the Freudian sort” ( n.d.a : 218). It was not until 64 Anthropology in the Public Arena he suffered another breakdown in 1936 that he found a theory which satisfi ed his intellectual curiosity. This time he was treated by H. G. Baynes, who had been a supporter of Lane, and who, “more than any other individual, established the roots of [Jungian] analytical psychology in Britain” (Prince 1963 : 41). As before with Rivers, Layard could not “relate properly” to Baynes, who seemed simply an imitator of Jung. So he got Baynes to introduce him to the master when Jung came to London to deliver a lecture on “The Concept of the Collective Uncon- scious” in October 1936 (Prince 1963 : 45; Layard n.d.a : 300). This meeting was to be the fi rst of many between Jung and Layard over the years immediately before and just after World War II, Layard often taking a house in Zurich so that he could be even closer to the founder of analytical psychology. Although Jung agreed to accept Layard as a patient, he was interested more in learning about anthropology than in the state of Layard ’ s psyche. He would see Layard only during term, no more than twice a week, and refused to discuss sexual matters. Like Rivers, he refused to “take the transference” (Layard n.d.a : 313); Layard reciprocated by regarding Jung as “quite an unpleasant person” (n.d.b ). After a series of conversations in 1950, consisting mainly of a Jungian monologue about his intellectual distinctions and his triumph over the myopia of Freudian psychotherapy, their relationship was fi nally ruptured by Jung’ s refusal to see or to speak to Layard. Although Layard later claimed that the only thing he got from Jung was the idea of archetypes, which he then applied both to himself and to his ethnography (Layard n.d.b ), it is clear that Jung’ s ideas were a tremendous intellectual stimulus. Layard led a somewhat peripatetic existence, periodically moving home. In the postwar years, when he was not in Zurich, he practiced privately as an analytical psychologist in London or in Oxford, where he held weekly meetings of an “Ana- lytical Psychology Club,” a lively discussion group attended by some of the university ’ s leading intellectuals (Weindling 2010 : 267). During the 1940s Layard had counted Evans-Pritchard among his friends but on his return to Oxford in 1955 his attempt to reestablish productive contact with him failed disastrously. Layard thought his specialist knowledge in Melanesia and psychology could benefi t Oxford anthropology. But Evans-Pritchard was by this time much less tolerant of approaches outside the tradition he was molding. According to Layard, “When- ever I have tried to raise [anthropological topics] with you in private you have only sneered, and when I attended your seminars and ventured to speak you have displayed the same compulsive rejection and by this same attitude have caused most of your subordinates blindly to follow this lead” (Layard to Evans-Pritchard, 30 x 1957, UR/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS). When, in 1957, Layard fi nally forced an encounter between the two, to discuss their common interest in, but different approaches to, sacrifi ce, Evans-Pritchard received him to his

astonishment . . . with icy looks, displayed no interest at all in this new information but on the contrary showed signs of extreme uneasiness, laid down the law as John Layard 65

though he had written the last possible word on this complex subject, refused absolutely to discuss it, and with an air of utmost boredom closed the interview. . . . Within a few days I heard that he was telling his staff and students that I had no evidence to substantiate the facts I made or the conclusions I drew. (Layard to the Visitatorial Board, 18 i 1958, UR 6/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS)

Evans-Pritchard, complaining that Layard was “pestering,” “insisting,” and “inter- fering with the work of the department,” banned Layard from entering the departmental library at Oxford. In the early 1960s he was on the move again, this time settling in his Cornish cottage, near the artists’ colony of Mevagissey. In 1965, though now aged 72, Layard moved into Kingsley Hall, the controversial therapeutic community run by the antipsychiatrist R. D. Laing; Layard saw it as drawing on the legacy of Homer Lane’ s Little Commonwealth (Weindling 2010 : 301). By the late 1960s he was back in Cornwall, this time in Falmouth, where he stayed as a house-guest of the painter Lionel Miskin, and lectured in the town ’ s Art College (Roberts 2012 ; Newman n.d.: 127–134). In 1970 he planned to found an institution for “third- world” health, i.e., one which united the mental and the physical. But his plans came to nought and he retired to a rest-home before returning to Oxford in 1972. Here he was fi nally reconciled with Doris, who had become a psychotherapist herself, and they lived together until her death a year later. Layard had a long but spasmodic career as a highly regarded Jungian analyst (Scarlett 1991 : 261). When his colleagues launched The Journal of Analytical Psychol- ogy they chose to put him fi rst: his paper on Boar sacrifi ce in Malekula was made the lead article in its inaugural issue (Layard 1955 ; Fordham 1979 : 290–291). Layard had a distinguished role-call of patients. Among others, he treated Lionel Miskin, the composer Sir Michael Tippett, the psychotherapist Derry Macdiarmid, the poet Peter Redgrove, and the novelist D. M. Thomas, as well as the Seligmans’ son and Isherwood’ s brother, both unsuccessfully (Parker 2004 : 190; Roberts 2012 : 159–173). It is a sign of the regard in which he was held that in the late 1960s Layard, in otherwise relatively straitened circumstances, was being “kept afl oat by an annuity provided by a grateful, wealthy couple whose son he had treated” (Roberts 2012 ). Redgrove remembered, “Layard, in his eighties, was still full of intellectual energy, psychological insight, and the kind of danger that transmutes people, as his pupils of that time, myself included, can testify. Knowing him, for many of us, was a watershed in our lives” (Redgrove 1980 ). He was “a huge infl u- ence” on Macdiarmid, who considered him “a genius in his understanding of the human psyche, notably the importance of symbolic ritual” in his Malekulan study, and in his work on dreams as a therapeutic tool, which rivaled Freud’ s (“Dr Derry Macdiarmid”, obituary, The Scotsman , September 29, 2006). It seems the kernel of Layard ’ s intuitive psychoanalytical style was a bold interpretation of his patients ’ dreams, and forthright comments about their condition. In the 1930s Auden and especially Isherwood had been for a time mesmerized by Layard ’ s “X-ray eyes, his 66 Anthropology in the Public Arena mocking amusement, his stunning frankness, and his talk about Lane” (Isherwood 1977 : 6). In the postwar period, the frankness of his talk appears to have cut through the stifl ing conventionality of the times, enabling patients to say out loud what they had always suspected but maybe not articulated explicitly. This freedom in itself appears to have had great therapeutic effect for some of his patients. For example, shortly after his treatment began, Redgrove wrote “The Idea of Entropy in Maenporth Beach”: according to his biographer, a “pivotal” poem in his oeuvre (Roberts 2012 : 163). Layard’ s unorthodox, idiosyncratic style as an analyst could also involve forms of bodily contact which, if deployed today, would prevent him from practicing. Although Layard also played a highly active part in the Oxford University Anthropological Club (of which he was president and his wife secretary in both

Figure 2.1 John Layard at the 1936 Eranos conference (Eranos Foundation). John Layard 67

1941 and 1944 [OUASP Box 1, 6]), the bulk of the publications of his later years, including the ethnography of Vao discussed below, were oriented toward Jungian psychology. In addition to the therapeutic and mythological study he published in 1944 (The Lady and the Hare ), a number of his postwar articles, based on papers he gave at the (Jungian) Éranos Institute in Zurich, were Jungian analyses of Malakulan rituals. He did also write a lengthy introduction to Homer Lane ’ s psychology, exhaustive case histories of two of his patients, an introduction to “primitive kinship” for psychotherapists, an analytical essay of historical anthropology about the early contacts between Westerners and Atchin Islanders, and a Jungian analysis of Welsh mythology, but he saw none published.

Stone Men

The ethnography of Vao, where he had in fact worked only for three weeks, was to have been the fi rst of a four-volume series on the people of the Small Islands. Although Layard did write up much of his fi eld notes (including an 800-page manuscript on kinship of Atchin, where he had spent the bulk of his time), the other three projected volumes did not appear. Even so, Stone Men of Malekula is a deeply impressive book, not least for its size: its 800 pages have the volume and the density of a brick. Layard had wanted to divide the text into two books, but wartime considerations foreclosed that possibility (Layard to Secretary of Facul- ties, Oxford University, 24 xi 1943, FA 10/10/11, OUAS). Writing in a leisurely discursive style, Layard detailed the full range of Vao cultural fashions, including social organization, kinship, and ritual life, all the while arguing his diffusionist and Jungian points. The volume closes with three chapters of comparative survey with the world as their limit. The core of the book is an account of initiation rites and of the maki , the Vao version of the graded society then common to most of the north and central islands of Vanuatu, which had become the main interest of Layard ’ s fi eldwork. He characterized the maki as “a propitiatory rite in which, through the sacrifi ce of tusked boars,” the sacrifi cer took in the ta-mat (soul, spirit, ghost) of the boar, so ensuring against annihilation by the Guardian Ghost after death. “In so doing he at the same time honours the ancestral ghosts, and gains for himself a place by their side in the hereafter by gradually rising in rank through each successive sacrifi ce.” Each sacrifi ce represented a rebirth signifi ed by the assumption of a new name and title, and was followed by a period of seclusion (Layard 1942 : 270). The rite itself took from fi fteen to twenty years to perform and was “divided into two main parts, each part culminating with the same set of ceremonies, at the end of which all the sacrifi c- ers” took new names and began a period of seclusion (271). The two parts were called ramben and maki ru : in the former the only stone monument erected was a single large dolmen; in the latter the main stone monument was a stone platform. 68 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Both dolmen and platform were used in the respective parts of the maki as “sacrifi cial altars” (272). In Vao, the maki was performed by each village, where each “line” (as Layard called the unnamed groups consisting of alternating generations in the male line of descent) performed the rite in alternating succession. The “maki-men” were the candidates and their “fathers and sons” were the introducers who organized the maki for their fathers and sons (294). Life on Vao, or elsewhere in north and central Vanuatu, however, was not sus- pended in some mythical ethnographic present, but was in constant fl ux, its rate accelerated by the indigenous institution of cultural “copyright.” Every rite, subrite, dance routine, song, and many other cultural aspects, was owned. Since prestige, when performing ritual, came from staging some innovation, people preparing to undertake a ceremony had to buy the copyright to perform some cultural novelty, or invent one themselves. So the content of rituals changed rapidly and, for Malakulans, “hardly a single element of megalithic culture is indigenous” (15). Though Layard wrote his ethnography more than two decades after his fi eldwork, time enough for his approach to have been affected by many infl uences, that of Rivers was still clear, especially in Layard’ s diffusionist passages. Layard thought that since there was a “close similarity” between Vao stone monuments and their associated ideas and similar combinations in Indonesia and Nagaland, Assam, and since many of the “most important” words used in the maki had Indonesian roots, there could “be no doubt whatever of the immediate origin of the megalithic culture of Malekula and the surrounding islands from the Malay archipelago and the neighbouring mainland of South-Eastern Asia” (20). Even in his seventies, Layard remained convinced that the elements of civilization were taken round the world by a maritime megalithic culture originating “somewhere” in the Near East (Layard n.d.a : 19). To him, parallels between biblical mythology and Malekulan statements about the journey their dead had to make “point so clearly to a generic connexion with Near Eastern practice and belief that I have no hesitation, where any given element in this layer of Malekulan culture receives no local explanation, to seek one in those areas in which the culture- complex to which it belongs appears to have originated” (Layard 1936 : 127). Following Rivers’ History of Melanesian Society (1914), Layard argued that “a megalithic stream” of “dual nature” had come to Vanuatu, “representing in all probability two separate migrations, having their origins in the ancient centres of civilization” – the fi rst, predominantly matrilineal, the second, predominantly patrilineal (Layard 1942 : 340). Thus he saw the present twelve-section system of matrilineal and patrilineal moieties plus patrilineal trisections as derived from a hypothetical, earlier twelve-section system which had matrilineal trisections: matrilineal descent “is less obvious on the surface but nevertheless forms the foundation of the whole social system” (104). Since Vao Islanders “affi rm that at one time the dolmen was the only stone monument erected [in maki] and that in those days the rite was similar to that practised at the present time in the matrilineal John Layard 69 island of Malo immediately to the north,” Layard argued that the dolmen was the chief sacrifi cial monument for the matrilineal culture, and hence the stone platform was the main monument for the patrilineal culture (274, 340). Similarly, because on Atchin it was said that the dead live in the volcano on Ambrym, an island nearby, whereas on Vao the dead were said to live both in a cave on the east Malakulan coast and in the Ambrym volcano, Layard argued that “when the matrilineal element predominates the Home of the Dead is conceived of as being in a cave; while in those areas where patrilineal infl uence was on the increase, the cave came to be looked on as a fi rst stage in a longer journey to the volcano” ( 1937b ). In a likewise fashion, he contended that the circumcision and the organized homosexuality found in northwest Malekula were “an expression of the triumph of patrilineal descent over the former matrilineal system” ( 1942 : 489). Other anthropologists had been diffusionist. What marks Layard out as distinctive is his marriage of analytical psychology and anthropology, his interpretation of social function in Jungian terms, his “structural Jungianism,” as it were. To Jung, the psyche is a dynamic self-regulatory system, one in constant movement. The creative energy of the mind, the libido, travels between pairs of opposing poles, complementary opposites, which have a regulatory function. Unconsciously produced symbols attract libidinal excess and so possess overtones: their full signifi cance cannot be understood in purely intellectual terms. Exactly what Jung meant by “archetype,” however, is diffi cult to convey adequately. Storr, comparing it to a fl exible mold, says it “does not correspond to the actual manifestation as produced by any particular culture; yet it underlies all manifestations produced by all cultures” (Storr 1973 : 40). Both myth and religion, fundamental expressions of human nature, are direct manifestations of the collective unconscious, which is the home of the archetypes. The central fi gures in all religions and myths are archetypal in character, though the archetypal material has been consciously modifi ed to some extent. In “primitive cultures” there is less of this modifi cation, making the archetypal character of their myth and religion that much clearer. For an individual, the point of all this activity, his (or her) supreme value, is the achievement of “wholeness,” a satisfactory conclusion to one’ s development (to Jung, “the process of individuation”), a sort of rebirth in which opposites are reconciled and after which the newly integrated person can be at peace with the world (Fordham 1953 ; Storr 1973 ). In a key shift, Layard transposed Jungian psychology from the level of the individual to that of the social. Thus he regarded kinship as “an externalized form” of the self, and the voyage from male initiation through the maki to fi nal rest in the Ambrym volcano as but a Malakulan process of individuation (Layard 1959 : 102). Thanks to the prescribed arrangement of intermarriage between moieties, which Layard called “circular connubium” ( 1956 : 364), the Vao kinship system could be depicted as a circle, an “externalized psychic mandala,” symbol of the basic order of the psyche as a whole ( 1959 : 102). And like the archetypal foundation of the psyche, Vao kinship rested on quaternity: the four kinship sections resembled 70 Anthropology in the Public Arena the four basic functions of the self structured in pairs (102), while the four psychological functions, intuition, thinking, feeling, and sensation, corresponded inter- nally with the overt behavior prescribed toward the members of the four sections (1944: 131). Just as the permanent and creative tension between complementary opposites of the psyche was essential to one’ s existence, so the hostility evidenced between pairs of complementary opposites at any level of Vao social organization was “essential to the health and well-being of the race” (1942 : 593). Layard discovered death and rebirth symbolism in all male rites de passage performed on Vao. Thus initiation into manhood was a rite of symbolic death and rebirth (Layard 1942 : 521); penile incision was a sacrifi ce performed on the body, conferring spiritual power that was located in the mutilated part (478). Killing pigs in the maki he also called sacrifi ce, “for the ultimate purpose of everything in life is sacrifi ce, which means transformation, the transformation of something ‘natural’ into that which is ‘supernatural’ ” ( 1945 : 264). Sacrifi ce in the maki constituted the symbolic death and rebirth of the sacrifi cer, who was infused with the power and soul of the boar; each man passed through a succession of these rebirths as he entered new grades. Layard regarded the boar’ s specially cultivated tusks as symbolic of the vagina dentata, so that the tusked boar (a female symbol in male guise) represented both the devouring-mother archetype and man ’ s own desire to be devoured by her ( 1952 : 294; 1955 : 30). The devouring mother and the man ’ s self-devouring regressive passion, both symbolized by the tusked boar, were overcome ritually by the sacrifi cial act, out of which emerged the good mother in the form of the sacrifi cer’ s own more integrated personality (1952 : 294). Since the founding of civilization and the differentiation of man from nature were the result of the transformation of incestuous desire toward one ’ s sister (1945), the boar, when sacrifi ced, “yields up the ghost” of this transformed desire (1956 : 382). Vao Islanders repeatedly affi rmed that they used to sacrifi ce men, not boars, in the maki . The sacrifi cer of a human victim, together with all the members of his clan who partook with him of the fl esh, was thus ritually reborn, “becoming almost a god” ( 1942 : 623). Men, after death, proceeded to the Ambrym volcano, which symbolized the mother–child relationship, female sexuality, and male sexuality (1952 : 297). The volcano symbolized a totality, a womb to which the well- integrated personality returned, where the most earthly and the most spiritual symbolically unite (298). Thus, successful Vao men, after undergoing a series of symbolic deaths and rebirths, completed their life cycle as whole personalities, integrated in a totality.

Diffusing Jung

In the January 9, 1943 issue of the New Statesman , Tom Harrisson suggested that Stone Men of Malekula contained a “vivid, exact elaborate insight” and would surely John Layard 71 take its place “among the foremost contemporary studies in social science.” But it did not, and reading it forty years later, one can fi nd many reasons to justify that failure. Layard’ s diffusionist explanations often create their own anomalies, giving the whole argument a somewhat contrived character. Thus when Layard, after drawing parallels between the uses of labyrinths in both Malakula and the Near East, wished to argue that labyrinths have the same meaning in the two areas, he had to admit that the Malakulans have “lost the realization of the meaning” of their labyrinthine designs (Layard 1936 : 140, 144). Similarly, after arguing that upright slit-drums were “originally associated” with circular dancing grounds, Layard had to state that, while the Small Islands appear to have derived the upright slit-drum from Malakula, “this infl uence was not strong enough to alter the whole shape of the dancing ground” ( 1942 : 317–318). When speaking of initiation, he noted that the operation of incision combined with a ten-day period of seclusion “occurs in the overtly patrilineal islands of Malekula, the Small Islands, Ambrym and South Raga (an island north of Ambrym)” (1942 : 474), but that the hoaxes initiates played on novices and the building of a special lodge in which the novices were secluded for thirty days were both items of culture that had been transmitted from northerly isles of Vanuatu to the southernmost of the Small Islands, from which they had proceeded further northward (499). Similarly, Layard showed that in every place where boys ’ penes were ritually incised, the right to perform the operation was bought from the mother’ s brother, and that “in most parts of the group except the Small Islands, North Malekula and South Raga, the mother’ s brother plays an important and often preeminent part in the rite” (500). But he was then forced to admit that “far from incision being originally a patrilineal institution, as would at fi rst sight seem to be from its geographical distribution, it is in fact a matrilineal trait in which the function of the mother’ s brother has, in North Malekula and South Raga, been taken over by the boy’ s patrilineal kin, though the mother’ s brother continues to exact payment as in all childhood rites de passage” (502). Thus, in the Small Islands, when the mother’ s brother came to inspect the boy immediately after the operation, “the fury of the boy’ s patrilineal kinsmen at the tribute they are . . . powerless to with- hold vents itself in the severe beating he receives when he does so.” Layard went on to explain “the fact that the beating of the boys’ mothers’ brothers is so much more severe on Atchin than it is on Vao” is “clearly due to the much greater hold that patrilineal institutions have gained there than on this island” (502). In short, to maintain his migrational-diffusionist hypothesis, Layard had to construct a series of ad hoc explanations. Layard ’ s Jungianism, however, is even more open to criticism. He explicitly insisted that the death and rebirth symbolism of the maki was “no arbitrary interpretation made by the anthropologist” but rather “a fact of native thought” (1952 : 291). He adduced two “facts” to support this. First, a reed enclosure was placed around the sacrifi cial stone monument a few hours before sacrifi ce in the maki, only to be torn down a few minutes before the sacrifi ce actually occurred ( 1942 : 72 Anthropology in the Public Arena

389, 423). This enclosure was called hu ni-ar, which Layard translated in inverted commas (a rare practice for him) as “birth-enclosure” (389). Special lodges in which women give birth were also called hu ni-ar (73), as was the fence forming the triangular forecourt in front of a ghamal (the men’ s house in a village, on the construction of which a special maki was performed) to hide its front dolmen from casual view (44). Layard noted that ni-ar meant “reed-fence” and hu-hu meant “to suckle” (760, 764), but he gave no meaning for hu alone. On this basis, hu ni-ar could well be translated rather as “suckling enclosure,” and one might instead regard the ascription of hu ni-ar to the fence used in maki as an indigenous metaphor expressing similarity between a sacrifi cer who draws in strength from his victim, a baby who draws it in from its mother while at teat, and a ghamal which also draws it in from a victim, so becoming prohibited to women. (It is interesting to note that on Atchin, where the single large dolmen had been superseded by other forms of stonework, the fence erected before these was called ni-er merer, which has nothing to do with birth [389 n. 2].) Second, Layard referred to the female nature of the dolmen upon which boars were sacrifi ced in ramben , stating that it was simultaneously a womb and a dolmen (368). Evidence that this symbolic equation may be an ethnographer ’ s inference rather than “a fact of native thought” comes from his statement that “according to Dr. A. Capell” na-vot , the Vao word for dolmen, is philologically derived from the Indonesian batu , meaning “to be born” – in this case with the connotation of “rebirth” (367, 705). But, in a reply to a letter of mine, Dr. Capell says that the word Layard read as batu was a misprint. It should read b әtu , which in Proto- Austronesian means “appear, come into sight.” “If Layard read ideas of rebirth into that, it is his own concern!” (Capell pers. comm. 1978). There is also a Proto-Austronesian wordbase batu meaning “stone” (Dahl 1973 : 36); thus, the Atchin word for “stone” is bat or wat, and the Vao word is vat, vet, or wet (Layard 1942 : 761–766). The particular philological derivation that Layard propounded was meant to support his idea of symbolic rebirth rather than vice versa. But, given that this derivation is only one of two plausible derivations, and given the degree of phonetic similarity between vat and -vot, it seems reasonable to assert that the philology of na-vot cannot be used to support a particular symbolic interpretation, since it is itself in doubt. But even if we suppose that the dolmen had a female nature and did symbolize a womb, and that hu ni-ar does mean “birth enclosure,” this still raises as many problems as it solves. For instance, if the dolmen did symbolize a womb through which one was reborn, then the stone platform used in maki ru should also be regarded as symbolizing a womb, since one undergoes ritual death and rebirth in performing a sacrifi ce in maki ru in the same way that one does in ramben , but Layard did not even make a suggestion about the sexual nature of the stone platform. Similarly, if hu ni-ar did symbolize a birth enclosure, why was it torn down before the sacrifi ce? And what death and rebirth were meant to be symbolically undergone behind the hu ni-ar of a ghamal? There is nothing to suggest that any John Layard 73 such “rebirth” occurred – which implies that the fact that a fence was denoted as a hu ni-ar does not necessarily mean that a sacrifi ce behind it was symbolic of death and rebirth. Following this logic, that the fence was called a hu ni-ar during the performance of a maki cannot be used as an intellectual prop for supporting the statement that a maki sacrifi ce was symbolic of ritual death and rebirth.1 Layard also argued that the ceremony of initiation into manhood was one of ritual death and rebirth. While he admitted that much of the evidence regarding such symbolism in the Vao version of the ceremony was lacking, he promised that it would “be given in my more detailed account of initiation of Atchin” ( 1942 : 521). However, in his unpublished notes concerning initiation into manhood on Atchin, which, admittedly, do not appear to be fi nal drafts, the only evidence I could fi nd of ritual death and rebirth was the novices’ seclusion in the initiation lodge for thirty days. Layard thought it “signifi cant” that this was the common period of confi nement for women who had given birth, for boys whose penes had been incised, and for men who killed pigs in the maki (521). But the common use of a thirty-day period in a number of ritual processes does not allow one to ascribe priority to the symbolism of any one of those processes. In pointing out the common use of a thirty-day period Layard may have been doing that, and nothing more. One might argue that he was simply repeating the Jungian formula: “basically every transition . . . signifi es a kind of ‘rebirth’ ” (Jacobi 1951 : 178). But this redefi nition of rites de passage, because universal, tells us nothing about Small Island ceremonies in particular and would be an “arbitrary interpretation,” something Layard wished to avoid.2 The detail of Layard ’ s ethnography and the frequency of his arguments preclude a more comprehensive analysis in the space of this chapter. One must note, however, that in addition to the anomalies they separately created, there are also various points in Layard ’ s account where the diffusionism of Rivers and the psychology of Jung pulled in different directions: as when he confessed that he could not decide whether incision was a degraded form of circumcision, or circumcision an exaggerated form of incision (Layard 1942 : 490). However, there are many places where the Jungian and diffusionist strands seem deftly woven into the rich detail of life on Vao, and we can still appreciate how the reviewer for The Listener (November 19, 1942 ) could have found the book “fascinating” and “enthralling.”

The Psyche in British Academic Society

Nonetheless, the book seems to have been “politely ignored” by the community of British social anthropologists (Allen 1981 : 1), and a consideration of some possible reasons for this may tell us something about the way in which that community was historically defi ned. As Edmund Leach ( 1984 ) argued, that community was long one of “outsiders” marginal to the dominant British academic 74 Anthropology in the Public Arena establishment: led by a Polish émigré and a lower-middle-class Englishman who had endured two decades of colonial exile, it included a number of colonials, South African Jews, and other “foreigners,” along with educated English women who were outsiders by gender if not by class. Layard, in contrast to most of the leading members of this group, was (by ethnic, family, class, and educational background) relatively an “insider” to that establishment. Paradoxically, this fact may have heightened his marginality vis-à-vis the emerging social anthropological community, although others, notably Evans-Pritchard and Leach himself, were to overcome this relative disadvantage. During the period in which Layard might have become a full-fl edged member, this community was beginning to achieve a hard-won, if still marginal, place within the British academic and intellectual establishment, a process which involved the setting of many different intellectual and social conventions. In this context, Layard ’ s multiple and uncompromising unconventionalities become a kind of contrapuntal commentary on the way in which the boundaries of the social anthropological community were being defi ned. In the fi rst place, we must put Layard in a certain perspective, as one of a cohort of anthropologists who, after some academic training in English universities, went out before or during World War 1 to do ethnographic research in the more methodologically self-conscious mode that had emerged in the aftermath of the Torres Straits expedition, and which was at fi rst articulated and exemplifi ed by Rivers. That cohort, which was larger than we often recall, included, in addition to Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, Gerald Wheeler, A. M. Hocart, Diamond Jenness, Gunnar Landtman, Rafael Karsten, Barbara Freire-Marreco, and Marie Czaplicka. While sex and nationality account for the exclusion of some, it is worth noting that only two on that list were eventually successful in establishing themselves in English academic life (see Stocking 1983 : 83–84). To have been a member of this group was to have been historically and bio- graphically predisposed to academic marginality: all the more so, if one spent the postwar years coping with personal psychological diffi culties. The heritage of those diffi culties was without doubt a further factor in Layard’ s particular marginality. Like Rivers, who fi gured in Sassoon’ s autobiography and in other literary works of the late 1920s (Sassoon 1936 ; Graves 1929 ), Layard was incorporated into British literature. Unlike Rivers, his literary apotheosis took place while he was still alive: by the early 1930s he had already fi gured in works by Isherwood and Auden, both pseudonymously and by name: as “loony Layard” in Auden ’ s Orators, and as inspiration for “Edward Blake” in Isherwood’ s The Memorial (Auden 1932 : 88; Isherwood 1932 ). The poet Philip Larkin was very infl uenced by a series of lectures Layard gave in Oxford in 1940, especially his valuation of the unconscious and his portrayal of women, and included him, as John Barnyard, in his unpublished novel Michelmas Term at St. Brides . His friend Kingsley Amis was less impressed; he thought Layard “loonie” (Motion 1993 : 29–32). In the 1960s Evans- Pritchard used unkindly to say, “Of course John Layard ’ s mad. He put a bullet John Layard 75 through his head and it made no difference. He must be mad” (J. Pitt-Rivers, pers. comm. 1984). To put that comment in context, it was said that while the members of the Oxford committee who investigated the 1957 dispute between Evans- Pritchard and Layard found in favor of the professor, they could not in the end decide “who was the madder of the two” (Needham, pers. comm. 1987). Psychological problems aside, Layard was by his own admission an unconventional and sometimes diffi cult personality: a rebel, “up against the social system” (n.d.a : 302, 62). As A. S. Neill said to Layard in politely turning down his offer to help at Neill ’ s Lane-inspired Summerhill school, he was “too much of an individu- alist” (Layard n.d.a : 305). When in the late 1940s Layard joined the staff of the Davidson Clinic, Edinburgh, he “changed our peaceful and mild weekly Clinic meetings into dynamic gatherings which proved almost too much for some.” Its medical director, while recognizing his lasting contribution, told him “that our kingdom was too small for him – go and seek a greater one” (Kraemer 1980 ; see also “Dr. Derry Macdiarmid,” obituary, The Scotsman, September 29, 2006). Simi- larly, veteran members of the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford remember that he could be “very diffi cult” to work with, too “possessive,” often thinking up projects and then wanting to control them (G. Lienhardt, R. Needham, pers. comms. 1983). Though he and Harrisson had cooperated well in the 1930s, he later warned other researchers the man was “a thief ”; in his personal copy of Harrisson’ s bestselling Savage Civilization he included a long list of “Items stolen from John Layard” (Harrisson 1937b ; Huffman 2010 : 222, pers. comm. 1978). In 1950 he had quarreled defi nitively with Jung; in 1957 the same occurred with Evans-Pritchard. Even sixteen years later, after the death of Evans-Pritchard, when Layard enquired whether the ban on him entering the library had been lifted, the new professor, Maurice Freedman, was reluctant to admit that the prohibition had lapsed (University Registrar xii 1973, UR/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS). Layard did inspire discipleship in some, above all among his patients, but no anthropologist became his acolyte, though several continued to visit him at his home in Oxford. Being a diffi cult personality was not, however, a bar to discipleship in British social anthropology; and, in Layard’ s case, other factors were at work. One was of course his tie to diffusionism. When Bernard Deacon ’ s Malakulan fi eld notes were to be edited after his untimely death from blackwater fever, Layard was an obvious candidate for the job, despite his failure to fi nd the six-section system which was Deacon ’ s great discovery on Ambrym. But although Layard volunteered himself in 1927, Haddon and the neo-Durkheimian Radcliffe-Brown gave the job instead to Camilla Wedgwood, because they feared that Layard was “working in conjunction with Elliot Smith,” who had already entrusted him the task of “whipping Rivers’ Ambrym material into shape” (Langham 1981 : 237). As it happened, Deacon had carried into the fi eld copies of large portions of Layard’ s fi eld notes without labeling them as such, which Wedgwood then attributed to Deacon. She compounded the insult by her “habit of inaccurately paraphrasing such material as Layard had then published about his Malekulan experience.” In 76 Anthropology in the Public Arena the event, Haddon was forced after all to include Layard in Deacon’ s posthumous publication, in a “Supplementary Preface” in which Layard detailed some of the inaccuracies (Langham 1981 : 242). On many pages of his own copy of the book can be seen the annotation, “I told him this.” Others, after early diffusionist beginnings, went on to become integrated into the social anthropological community, e.g., Daryll Forde, who also attended the seminar at University College. But Layard, far from shedding his diffusionism, compounded his theoretical heterodoxy by persisting in a second fading fashion: the psychological interests that for a time in the 1920s had seemed to mark the future direction of British anthropology (Pear 1960 ; Stocking 1996 : 235–244; ch. 1 of this volume). Not only Rivers, but also Seligman and Malinowski, were infl u- enced by psychoanalytic theory; members of Malinowski ’ s seminar read Freud and Jung and argued about their theories (Powdermaker 1967 : 39). But although several of the members of that seminar after 1930 (notably Fortes and Nadel) were in fact recruited from backgrounds in psychology, Fortes later recalled that by that time most of his colleagues were ambivalent toward, if not suspicious of, psychoanalysis (Fortes 1977 : 130–132). By then, they were devoting their attention, not to psychology, but to Radcliffe-Brown’ s version of Durkheimian sociology; in the case of both Fortes and Nadel, psychological interests were put aside for social structural analysis, appearing only occasionally before reemerging late in their careers. If many anthropologists continued to interpret behavior in terms denoting psychological states, they did so without reference to an explicit, developed theory of personality and motivation. By 1951, Firth spoke for most British anthropologists when he described psychology as “a strange, rather diffuse territory” (1951: 487). In contrast, Layard had chosen to remain interested not only in psychological issues, but also in a psychological theory which, since Seligman ’ s dab- bling with the idea of “extravert” and “introvert” back in 1924, had come to seem to most anthropologists perhaps even more dubious than orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis. The anthropologist of comparative religion, E. O. James, external examiner of Layard’ s Oxford doctorate, delicately assessed his psychological interpretations in the most polite but distanced terms: “Doubtless there will be a variety of opinions, but in the less precise aspects of his work, Mr. Layard is certainly stimulating and provocative” (Reports of the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, 1944, p. 145, FA 4/2/2/1, OUAS). But worse, and to Layard’ s chagrin, was Evans-Pritchard’ s terse comment on Stone Men. Layard considered it “a large anthropological volume full of original fi eldwork and containing some theoretical conclusions”; all Evans-Pritchard had to say was “It was a good idea to have paragraph headings” (Layard to Evans-Pritchard, 30 x 1957, UR/ANT/8, File 1, OUAS). The cumulative resistance to psychology can be linked with the strong empiricist strain that characterized the British social anthropological tradition, established by Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. Psychology, especially in its dynamic John Layard 77 forms, came to be regarded as vaguely speculative. At a multidisciplinary conference held in London in 1936 , Firth argued that anthropologists should keep their assumptions about human psychology to a minimum (Firth 1937 : 89), while Evans-Pritchard insisted that anthropologists, as practitioners of a “purely inductive science,” subordinated theories to facts and not vice versa: “One of the main deterrents to our acting in closer collaboration with other branches of Social Science is that they have not cut adrift from philosophical speculation” (Evans- Pritchard 1937 : 66). In the same conference Layard argued a very different thesis. He propounded the interdependency of apparent opposites: diffusion and function, self-preservation and sex, the collective and the personal unconscious, the individual and society, children and adults, the dolmen representing the female principle and the monolith representing the male, an all-embracing binary table that seems to catalogue the legacy of Layard’ s mentors. To him diffusionism and functionalism were valid only when taken in conjunction with one another, not when they were opposed (Layard 1937b ). Throughout Layard ’ s published work, we can see him playing with idea after idea, no matter what their intellectual source, setting them against the ethnography, and proffering hypotheses for further investigation. In contrast to the prevailing functionalist rationalism of social anthropologists, he was even willing to consider seriously the “possible effi cacy of weather magic” (Layard 1942 : 576). Layard ’ s unfashionable joining together of opposing categories, his eclectic playfulness, and his willingness to conjecture could be problematic even for non- anthropologists. Reviewing Layard ’ s Lady and the Hare , John Wisdom, professor of philosophy at Cambridge, felt that “in some degree he spins the interpretations out of his ‘inner consciousness’ . . . There is, I know, no harm in that if there is a check-up process – but is there?” ( 1953 : 191). If Layard ’ s methodology disturbed some non-anthropologists, it disturbed even more the leading anthropologists of the day. They were at the time deeply concerned with establishing an academic base for an intellectually and institutionally marginal inquiry. This process of disciplinary establishment went hand-in-hand with an insistence on boundaries, with the felt need to mark off a well-delimited intellectual fi eld, within which concepts could be clearly defi ned and methodologies honed, in order to make sense of a particular sphere of empirical phenomena. Promoters of this Britannic version of social anthropology relied on a Durkheimian approach, with a narrowly focused but systematic analysis of kinship, politics, and social organization. This style of research could then be promoted as producing a body of knowledge which could be utilized by colonialist governors and district agents. It promised a rigor and an objectivity that contrasted dramatically with the conjectural hypotheses of diffusionism and dynamic psychology, whether in the Freudian or the Jungian modes. Thus, in a period where funding was limited, and most of that justifi ed in pragmatic terms, this self-acceptance of blinkering conventions became 78 Anthropology in the Public Arena a key means by which leading British social anthropologists defi ned the emerging character of their discipline, and so won it a certain status among more prestigious, well-established sciences (see Kuper 1983 ; Stocking 1985 ). For Layard, who considered himself basically a rebel, “up against the social system” ( n.d.a : 302), this establishment of disciplinary conventions was, given his character, particularly uncongenial. And unlike the “foreign” outsiders who “eventually assimilated into the life style and cultural conventions of Oxbridge academics” (Leach 1984 : 11), he even claimed not to regard anthropology as an academic study (Layard n.d.a : 305). Should he have wanted a university appointment, the analytic practice by which he supplemented his private means usually made such a post unnecessary. The response to Layard ’ s major ethnographic opus is thus not surprising. When he returned to anthropology in the 1930s after having been away from it for fi fteen years, people were not too sure how to assess him. If the little that he had published seemed a mixture of good ethnography with unconventional psychological interpretation, the disciplinary conventions by which the latter might have weighed heavily against him were not yet so clearly defi ned. But by the time Stone Men of Malekula fi nally appeared, Layard had come to be regarded as something of a “wild man,” despite his obvious intellectual gifts. Furthermore, his major orienting assumptions were now being pushed beyond the conceptual pale. The book was, according to Firth, “an odd mix of Atchin and Layard.” British social anthropologists paid little attention to it. Instead they got on with their own work (Raymond Firth, Rosemary Firth, pers. comms., June 1995) The work of John Layard did not end with his death, on November 26, 1974, in Oxford. Indeed a signifi cant amount of his material has since come out or reap- peared. His Jungian analysis of one of the stories in the mediaeval Welsh text the Mabinogion (fi rst translated by his grandfather’ s cousin, Lady Charlotte Guest), which he had started in the mid-1950s, was fi nally published in 1975, followed by a revised version in 1991 (Layard and Bosch 1975 ). Five years later the linguist Arthur Capell produced a co-authored grammar of Atchin (Capell and Layard 1980 ). Almost thirty years after that, Layard ’ s case history of a young woman he had treated in 1950, illustrated with paintings that were part of her therapy, was published (Layard 2009 ). 3 In 2010 two museum anthropologists published a large, profusely illustrated volume of his fi eld photos, arguing for both their historical and contemporary importance, and publishing for the fi rst time his incisive essay on the early contacts between Atchin Islanders and the few Westerners who came to reside there (Geismar and Herle 2010 ). On Vao, where he is still remembered, Layard’ s ethnography has now become part of local life, used for cultural revitalization and as documentary evidence in land disputes (Geismar 2009; 2010 : 268). The Lady and the Hare , reprinted in 1988 in the United States and in 2006 in the United Kingdom, is praised and discussed on varied websites; in 2004 a group of London-based psychotherapists dedicated a memorial seminar to it, as a pioneering account of what actually happens in the John Layard 79 course of a Jungian analysis (Stadlen 2010 ). 4 He appears, under his name, in Pat Barker’ s prize-winning novel about Rivers, Regeneration (Barker 1991 : ch. 9). John Layard was not an archetypal popular anthropologist, in the ways that, say, Harrisson and Gorer so clearly exemplify, though his 1930s broadcasts were both highly original and much appreciated in their time. Rather, outside academic anthropology, he is most highly regarded today as a pathbreaking, anthropologically grounded psychoanalyst, “greatly respected though somewhat feared in analytical circles” (Redgrove 1980 ). A Jungian colleague, in his obituary to Layard, highlighted “the brilliance of his insights, and his deft and erudite management of symbolic material” (Fordham 1975 ). Unlike Jung, whose knowledge of anthropology was broad but not very deep, Layard’ s profound understanding of one particular society enabled him to make Jungian analyses of a hitherto unforeseen anthropological subtlety. In this sense, in his writings and his therapeutic practice, he could make fellow analysts and his patients aware of the explanatory potential of anthropology, some of them going on to popularize it in their own work (e.g., Shuttle and Redgrove 1978, 1995 ). In Redgrove ’ s later assessment, “I personally think that he has been of more lasting use to the world than ever Auden was, who was probably jealous of Layard’ s vigour and commitment” (Redgrove 1980 ). As a grateful former patient, Redgrove ’ s judgment might be a little over-generous, but his point about the continuing worth of Layard ’ s work is still well placed. At his funeral, Meyer Fortes gave a memorial address, thus reaffi rming Layard’ s connection to the community of British social anthropologists. Today, social anthropology in Britain is no longer a small face-to-face community in which one intellectual strategy is the dominant convention. Since the 1950s, new theoretical orientations and methodologies have tended to come from abroad. If British anthropology is now an institutional collection of diverse approaches, in which no “school of thought” has hegemony, and theoretical distinctiveness (if not con- tentiousness) is valued, then there may yet again be space for such an imaginative speculator as Layard. There may even be a place for Jungian psychology, especially if the attempt were made to compare psychologies, Western and non-Western, rather than to talk of one in terms of the other. Such a comparison might tell us as much about Jung as about more traditional exotica.

Notes

1 It is surprising that, in an area of such great cultural diffusion as north and central Vanuatu, this claimed rebirth symbolism appears peculiar to Small Islands life. Only in north Ambrym and south Pentecost have anthropologists found even a suggestion of rebirth symbolism in graded society ritual (Lane 1965 ; Patterson 1981 ), but none of this work supports Layard’ s argument. 2 Layard ’ s ideas about social groups also require reexamination. Dumont ( 1966 ) argues that what he construed as “matrimoieties” should rather be called “alternate 80 Anthropology in the Public Arena

generations.” If one pursues this argument, then Layard ’ s dichotomy of ni-Vanuatu societies into “matrilineal” and “patrilineal” collapses, as does his kinship mandala, and hence the quaternal foundation of society. 3 For laudatory reviews of Layard ’ s Mary, see layardsmary.com. Accessed January 26, 2012. 4 Online reviews of the book include www.spiritwatch.ca/LL8(2)dec89/WLREV082. W50.htm; www.doylectics.com/arj/ladyhare.htm . Both accessed June 29, 2011. 3 Geoffrey Gorer, “Britain’ s Margaret Mead” Blending Anthropology and Travelogue

In the 1960s The Sunday Times called him “the most popular anthropologist of our time.” Retired notables in the discipline, Jack Goody and Jeremy Boissevain, among others, cite him as an important initial infl uence, igniting their interest in the subject. 1 His pioneering infl uence is recognized in a variety of anthropological domains and associated fi elds: cultural studies, media studies, death studies, studies of national character, and the ethnography of Sikkim. Yet today Geoffrey Gorer is almost unheard of. Most British anthropologists under the age of 50 look blankly when his name is mentioned. Exactly why he gained renown, how he did so, why his star has fallen so quickly, and why his work should be reassessed are the main themes of this chapter. Gorer was also classed as “Britain ’ s Margaret Mead.” He was a life-long friend of hers, and their letters cover almost four decades. Mead valued writing letters very highly. They were “a very real part of my life.” In particular, she prized her letters to Benedict and Gorer, as “linking my life to theirs” (Mead 1972 : 81). Ana- lyzing Gorer and Mead’ s extended association, primarily via their correspondence, becomes a revealing, exemplary manner of following the ways a distinguished anthropologist may guide a neophyte in his traversing the no-man ’ s land between the strictly academic and the highly popular. For in her letters she explicitly, repeatedly explains, with personal examples, how he should develop his reputation without displeasing or disappointing those on either side. Gorer fi rst gained fame as a writer in the United Kingdom. He established his anthropological reputation in the United States and, postwar, returned to Britain as a professional intellectual. Back in his homeland, he at fi rst continued to practice his own version of a Mead-inspired anthropology, a variant of the “national character” approach he helped found. This work was usually received well by the public, but not by academic anthropologists. The changing course of his life may

Anthropology in the Public Arena: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, First Edition. Jeremy MacClancy. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 82 Anthropology in the Public Arena thus highlight the benefi ts and downsides of a transatlantic career, shuffl ing ideas between different schools, whose national profi les were then distinctively different. In the fi rst half of the twentieth century many writers in the United Kingdom strove to exploit anthropology as an avenue to social therapy. Among others, that list includes Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, and Yeats. These novelists and poets, though of different styles, commonly recognized the value of cross-cultural comparison to illuminate people’ s understanding of Western ways. They also wished to realize what they saw as the potential of anthropology to help heal the ills of Western society. The fame of some may have become great, their therapeutic success is more questionable (MacClancy 2003 ). Without too much diffi - culty, Gorer can be slotted into this context, broadly conceived. He was a writer, with sustained social and political concerns, who became an anthropologist and took on board neo-Freudianism in the process. Though rich enough not to be confi ned by the intellectual constraints of an academic post, he remained concerned that anthropology be put to work at home. He hoped it could provide “an adequate description of our own culture.” This “might disclose the origin of many of our present discontents, and by comparison, with other cultures, suggest possible remedies” (Gorer 1937a : 7). Remedies, he did certainly propose. Their degree of success is not so clearly discerned. To these varied extents, examining Gorer’ s life as an anthropologist becomes a test case in several dimensions: the velocity of celebrity; the academic/popular meeting-ground as a mid-century career map; the Atlantic passage, or sinking, of Anglophone ideas; the lessons of the discipline as an inspiration to cure the ills of society.

A Life

Born on March 26, 1905, Geoffrey Gorer was the son and grandson of Jewish art dealers (Taylor n.d. ). His ambitious father, “the meteoric rival of the Duveens,” won an international reputation for dealing in Chinese art (Reitlinger 1963 : 213– 215). In 1915 he went down with the Lusitania. His widow, Rée Alice, “a formidable mother,” brought up Geoffrey and his two younger brothers in London, where she patronized avant-garde artists (P. Gorer, pers. comm. April 4, 2010). Gorer was sent to Charterhouse. He chose to leave early, and went to live in France. Two years ’ study of French literature led him to think he wished to be a writer. He decided to get an education at Cambridge, where he read French. Leaving with a double fi rst, he lived in Berlin for a year. Back in London, he spent three years writing plays, two of which came near to production. But their failure and an increasing interest in politics led to his fi rst published work, The Revolution- ary Ideas of Marquis de Sade (Gorer 1934 ). This critically acclaimed study, prefaced Geoffrey Gorer 83 by the communist biologist J. B. S. Haldane, was the fi rst in English to take the man seriously, as more than a pornographer. It was Gorer ’ s fi rst attempt, employing a Freudian vocabulary, to explain in psychological terms modern social phenomena: in this case, the popular vote for the Nazis. From his Cambridge years on, Gorer enjoyed the lifestyle of a wealthy, highly cultured young Englishman. He was part of that interwar generation Martin Green dubs “Children of the Sun.” The talented, literary-minded wing of the Bright Young Things, they were dedicated to the cultivation of a distinctive mode of experience, whether as dandy or aesthete (Green 1977 ). Gorer’ s blending of a humor-infl ected sensibility and a developed concern for wider social issues fi ts the 1930s evolution of this loose band particularly well. In London, he participated fully in literary and artistic circles.2 His close friends, many of them poets, included Edith Sitwell (a friend of his mother’ s), W. H. Auden, Somerset Maugham, and, later, George Orwell (Pearson 1978 ; Crick 1980 ; Taylor 2003 : 360). Some of these friendships were lasting: in 1962 he was delighted that Auden had dedicated “a very good poem to me – ‘Thanksgiving for a habitat’ ” (13 ix 1962, MMP, B6, Folder 5). He also started to invest in paintings, which proved a “fantastically successful investment” (CV, GGA). Gorer was always to claim he had a good eye. In 1934, in what he described as a chance encounter in Paris, he and an African ballet star spontaneously decided to spend three months touring French West Africa. The result, Africa Dances (Gorer 1935 ), was a bestseller. He spent the following winter in the then Dutch East Indies, producing a political satire while on the boat (Gorer 1936a ). The account of that trip, Bali and Angkor: or, Looking at Life and Death (Gorer 1936b ), “made a great deal of money” (CV, GGA). At Cambridge Gorer had studied a little social anthropology with William Ridgeway, whom he classed “the most inspiring teacher I ever had” (Gorer 2003 : 246), read a “good number of books” in the discipline, and attended lectures by James Frazer and A. C. Haddon (Gorer 1951 ). One section of his unpublished novel, Roderick Cantilever, is a barely disguised adaptation of Kula ring material (ms. GGA, B3, pp. 278–285). Despite these initial excursions into the subject, his African journey had left him frustrated, and well aware of how little he had understood of local ways. He was also very conscious of the urgent need for protracted fi eldwork among indigenous groups whose society and culture were gravely threatened by colonialist expansion (Gorer 2003 : 207). He thus decided to learn social anthropology in a more systematic fashion. In autumn 1936 he went to New York to promote the US edition of his African book. On arrival, he contacted Margaret Mead. She was already primed as Benedict had written a laudatory review; she thought Gorer had “a wonderful eye and ability to recognize patterns” (quote from Howard 1984 : 181; Benedict 1936 ). Mead and Gorer got on very well from their very fi rst meeting (see 8 xii 1935; 31 v 1936, GGA, B91). Though Mead was preparing to leave for Bali, she and Benedict agreed to train him, so long as he was prepared to commit himself, which he accepted. They also wished him to assist Benedict fi nish a commissioned report on “Psychological Leads for Field 84 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Workers” by the end of the year (Howard 1984 : 181). According to him, they “put me through a most strenuous course in social anthropology” (Gorer 1951 ). To round out this crash course, Mead had J. G. Dollard tutor him in a neo-Freudianist version of contemporary social psychology. Then, while Mead was on fi eldwork, Gorer did some of his own: plying taxi drivers with drink and getting them to accompany him to burlesque shows. The resulting account of these events, Hot Strip Tease (Gorer 1937a ), was his fi rst study of contemporary Western life. At Mead ’s suggestion, he went to do fi eldwork in western Nepal, with C. J. Morris, a former major in the Gurkhas, who knew the area. But on arrival in India, they failed to get permission to enter the kingdom, then closed. Instead they chose to study the Lepchas, the aboriginal people of Sikkim. Its maharaja had been persuaded to establish in his territory a special Lepcha reserve, and he was similarly acquiescent about the work of the two budding ethnographers (Kennedy 1991 : 74). Together they did about seven months’ fi eldwork. Gorer wrote up his material as a large monograph, Himalayan Village (Gorer 1938 ). Its publication led to two invitations for work in the United States. The Rock- efeller Foundation asked him to conduct a survey of the mass media. He then joined the Institute of Human Relations at Yale, where Dollard was based, as an Instructor. During the war, he worked for three months at the Offi ce of War Information (OWI), then was attached to the British Embassy in Washington, where he lived and looked after his mother. After the war, the two returned to the United Kingdom. Gorer decided to remain, partly because of his mother ’ s failing health. He would make only three, further extended sojourns abroad. In 1946 he worked briefl y for the British authorities in occupied Germany, but quickly became frustrated at how little he thought he could contribute. Back home, he produced a study of American character. Another bestseller, it was reprinted by book-of-the-month clubs in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and much translated (Gorer 1948a ). At the invitation of Mead, he spent the winters of 1948 and 1949 at Columbia University, New York, as Convenor for their Research into Contemporary Cultures group. This body, funded by the US Navy and RAND, was fi rst headed by Benedict and, after her death in 1948, by Mead. Gorer primarily intended to study Soviet Russia, but also investigated some other cultures. He used some of his Russian material in his co-authored The People of Great Russia. A Psychological Study (Gorer and Rickman 1949 ), which proved the most controversial of all his works. In 1950 Gorer bought a William and Mary manor house with grounds, in Surrey, where he resided for the rest of his life. He managed the grounds, with additional land he obtained over time, as a mixed farm. Inheritance from the death of two uncles and of his mother, in 1954, left him with “plenty of money.” Now able to do as much or as little as he wished, he spent the next two decades publishing anthropological and satirical works on contemporary England, academic papers for various symposia, and reviews and other journalistic pieces for the quality British press. Thanks to these newspaper articles and his appearance on Geoffrey Gorer 85

BBC radio and television broadcasts, he became a postwar public intellectual. Cultivating his garden, he also became a prize-winning breeder of rhododendrons. Gorer died in 1985.

Africa Sells, Bali Too

Africa Dances immediately established Gorer as one of the foremost travel writers of his day. The reasons are manifold. He wrote in an unpretentious but effective and often amusing style. He traveled with a local who introduced him to a variety of Africans. He lived in villages as much as colonial guesthouses and was keen to experience local ways, especially their dances, rituals, and magical operations. A fl uent French speaker, he was able to interview French colonials as much as English ones. His critical, knowledgeable comments on the effects of colonialism informed readers otherwise ignorant of African realities. His castigation, in particular, of French colonial practices fed English prejudice against their fellow African overlords. Most reviewers praised his account highly. They singled out his unorthodox blend of humor, indignation and pathos, were grateful for him opening “a window on a world that most of us hardly realize exists,” and valued his refusal to overplay adversities or to indulge in the “distressing exhibitionism of the usual travel- writer” (New York Herald Tribune December 24, 1935). Many lauded his outspoken- ness; even the reviewer for a colonial newspaper thought it an “investigation of extraordinary interest. One of the best travel books of the year” (Rhodesia Herald July 7, 1935). Criticisms were few: in The New York Times he was accused of over- statement and crabbed for his “vehement attitude” toward those exploiting Afri- cans (November 24, 1935); Graham Greene challenged Gorer’ s reliability as an observer of missionaries and French NCOs (Greene 1935 ); in West African Review he was attacked for “an excessive negrophilism” (July 3, 1935). Academic anthropologists were more ambivalent. Malinowski recommended it as a study of “primitive life.” Van Gennep thought Gorer’ s comments on French colonial practice were “too severe” but valued the details he provided about fetish- ism in Dahomey and sympathized with his attitude toward self-satisfi ed, hypocriti- cal Europeans (Van Gennep 1935 ). Nadel, however, thought it “a diffi cult book to review.” He found it charming, very amusing; he praised Gorer’ s “real gift for observation” and “clear insight into theoretical problems.” But he worried about Gorer ’ s disposition to make grand generalizations on little evidence and, in a confessional moment of disarming frankness, feared it made “painstaking scientifi c anthropology look foolish” (Nadel 1936 ). The Times thought Bali and Angkor “vigorous and unorthodox” (May 5, 1936: 22). Gorer, in his later years, dismissed it as a “pot boiler.” This is over-harsh, and probably his way to distance himself from some of the more abstract ideas he 86 Anthropology in the Public Arena plays with toward its end. Though he did not have the diverse benefi ts of traveling with a local on this trip, the book still has multiple strengths. The opening sections are peppered with strikingly prescient comments on the future of commu- nism and the effects of colonialism; the bulk of the text is a speculative but sensitive assessment of indigenous art, architecture, and religion; he concludes with a historic theory of art. Most critics liked this second travel book of his very much. Again, they noted his great style, scholarship, and aesthetic discernment; they praised his attempts to interpret the roles of art and religion in local life (Manchester Guardian June 30, 1936; Observer August 16, 1936). The New York Herald Tribune called the book “a revelation of varied beauty in strange and moving forms” (September 9, 1936). A US literary magazine thought it made Gorer the “leading exemplar” of the “conventionally unconventional type” of Englishman (John O’ London ’ s Weekly May 30, 1936). It appears British anthropologists did not review it, most likely because there were so few working in the then Dutch East Indies.

Low Living on High Ground? Gorer Does Fieldwork

Gorer and Morris timed their trip badly. They arrived in India at the end of 1936. Wintry weather prevented them proceeding straight to the Lepchas’ heartland. Instead they stayed for three months in a Lepcha monastery in Kalimpong, a hill station in the Lesser Himalayas, where Gorer passed his days trying to learn the language and gather initial data. They then spent four months, upland, in a Lepcha village in central Sikkim. Gorer was deeply ambivalent about ﬁ eldwork: he thought he had “never been so consistently irritable” (17 v 1937, MMP, B5, Folder 6). On many important points the locals’ answers were “self-contradictory; and to so many other questions the answer is ‘ket manin’ – it doesn ’ t matter” (26 v 1937, MMP, B5, Folder 6). The apparent simplicity of local ways simultaneously charmed and repelled this sensitive aesthete:

My type picture of Lepcha life is this happy-go-lucky slovenly party, with prayers being mumbled and sacrifi ces made in the background, of which nobody takes the slightest notice . . . Their disgust reactions are extraordinarily low: menstruating women simply drip all over the fl oor (no taboos of any sort); they will walk in excrement, handle mucus and pus . . . They are physically fi lthy (a pity; they would be very pretty otherwise); some children are taught sphincter control, some not, and some quite big children will excrete in the middle of the room . . . The culture at the moment seems to me dirty, untidy, and extremely lovable and generous. (31 iii 1937, MMP, B5, Folder 6) Geoffrey Gorer 87

Working hard, Gorer produced his ethnography within a year of return. It is a remarkable work in several different dimensions. First, given the relative brevity of their stay, Gorer amassed an astonishing amount of material. His book is over 500 pages long, about a quarter of a million words. Second, unlike most ethnographies of the time, Gorer does not present the Lepchas as a closed, ahistorical, social unit with clear cultural boundaries. Instead he makes the historical development of the area, since the seventeenth century, a central structuring device for much of his account. From the beginning he integrates the history of Lepcha life into the evolving play of broader forces, whether south Asian or colonialist, in the general area. Third, he takes pains to separate out the varying infl uence of different forces, in particular the effect on local religious life of partial conversion to Lamaist Buddhism, which had started three hundred years before. Fourth, the very format of his ethnography was unusual for its period. Gorer structures his text into three sections, “each of which represents to some extent a different method of description” (Gorer 1938 : 33). The fi rst section is concerned with relations: with the environment, foreigners, other Lepchas outside his fi eldsite, and with the supernatural. He does not broach kinship and marriage regulations until chapter 6 , almost a third of the way into the text. The second section concerns the rhythm of Lepcha life, from birth to death. The third contrasts local conceptions of the ideal personality with the reality of individual, detailed life-histories. Fifth, reacting against “the many sociological works” which seemed to neglect the individuals who composed the society under study, he tried to let the Lepchas speak for themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, or more indicative of the New York training he had received, he regarded this as the major novelty of his ethnography (Gorer 1938 : 33). Gorer concludes with a speculative chapter on “Social evolution and aggression.” Here he summarizes, then criticizes, Engels’ account of the causes for the transformation from barbarism to feudalism. Because the Lepcha do not fi t Engels’ model, Gorer seeks a further cause, and argues it is their lack of competition and aggression. He accounts for this in neo-Freudian terms: Lepcha parents satisfy all their infants ’ expressed physiological desires; they also constrain them physically, strapping them tightly to their backs. They do not give priority to the learning of sphincter control, and train their babes that social approval is gained by passivity, not self-assertion. The result is a society of non-aggressive people who strive to downplay all forms of difference, whether of character, wealth, gender, age, or religious training. Gorer closes by stating that if the excess of aggression in our society is a major social ill, should we not consider following the example of the Lepcha? (Gorer 1938 : 438–451). Even though the book was produced by a London publisher, it is in many ways a very un-British ethnography for its time. Its sustained consideration of historical factors and its relative downplaying of the role of kinship were then anathema to most of his compatriot colleagues. At a time when British anthropology was trying to develop its disciplinary distinctiveness, Gorer, in sharp contrast, was open 88 Anthropology in the Public Arena about his eclecticism: “I have employed, to the best of my ability, the various disciplines, anthropological and psychological, functional and Freudian, which seemed apposite to the aim I had in mind” (Gorer 1938 : 33). One reason he and Mead had chimed so well from the very beginning was their common interest in the potential application of Freudian approaches to social problems. In the mid- 1930s, Mead was already intellectually engaged with US theorists striving to rework Freudian theory in sociological terms and to uproot its links with biology. They wished to undercut the explanatory role of instincts and to examine, instead, the ways social structure determined psychic structure. It is probable that Gorer learnt of Freudian applications to social issues via the work of W. H. R. Rivers, a pioneer of marrying anthropological and psychoanalytical approaches: “As an undergraduate at Cambridge I was much impressed by the work and legend of W. D. H. Rivers [sic ], who had died shortly before I became a student” (Gorer 1938 : 29). A critical reader of Freud, Rivers propounded a hydraulic theory of psychological energy, a then relatively common idea, which Gorer applied to his Lepcha material (Slobodin 1978 ; Kuklick 2011 : 19–22). Gorer had already essayed this style in his de Sade commentary, while comments about the social roles of “mental energy” pepper the more speculative sections of his travelogues. He was thus very open to deepening his knowledge of neo-Freudianism in tutorials with J. G. Dollard. But this interdisciplinary blending no longer appealed to his colleagues back home: the highpoint of British anthropologists ’ encounter with Freudianism had already passed by the time Gorer fi rst met Mead (Stocking 1986 ). A further source of cleavage between Gorer and his British counterparts was his patent interest in the life-course and life-histories. Here again his concerns closely mirror the interests of Mead, and not of contemporary British anthropology. Furthermore, almost all British ethnographers of this period could not stand comparison with the velocity with which he amassed data. Mead, a famously rapid fi eldworker, however, does. Haddon privately praised Himalayan Village as “an important contribution to ethnology”: “the personal histories . . . give an insight into social conditions and native psychology that is rarely found in ethnological literature. I hope your example will be followed by other fi eld-workers” (28 ix 1938, MMP, B5, Folder 6). His colleagues disagreed. The book might have established Gorer as a worthy anthropologist capable of effective fi eldwork, but it did not place him within the then academic mainstream. J. H. Hutton, the new professor of anthropology at Cambridge, wrote an introduction so mealy-mouthed it did Gorer little favor: he praised this detailed study of a previously neglected group but distanced himself from the style of the last chapter, and was openly skeptical of its worth other than as a debating position. He seemed to regard Himalayan Village as an odd mix of weighty ethnographic data and a spasmodic psychologism. Perhaps a painstaking but uninspiring ethnographer like Hutton was wary of a populist like Mead or her followers. Geoffrey Gorer 89

If Gorer’ s ethnography did not please compatriot colleagues, nor did its format appeal to a mass market. In his last chapter Gorer explicitly lauds Mead as an exemplar who seeks to answer anthropological questions similar to his own. But Gorer had been disappointed to learn polyandry was not practiced at his fi eldsite, only by Lepcha further north in the territory. This deprived his book of a potential selling-point, and him of a chance to emulate his mentor by describing a distinctive variety of sexual behavior, whose appeal to a popular readership could have been great. Moreover, Mead tended to write up work on the same people in separate books: one patently academic, the other popular and addressed to comparable Western concerns. Gorer, in his ethnography, tried to combine the two approaches. However, instead of making the Lepchas ’ lack of aggression a key point throughout his lengthy book, he only tackles the topic head-on in the last chapter, and its comparative possibilities in the very last paragraph. The sum result is a peculiar hybrid which did not appeal to British anthropological tastes yet could not match his mentor’ s populism. To put that another way, the book is an Anglo-American product penned by a transatlantic Englishman, and it did not travel well. Reviewers in quality newspapers and periodicals singled out Gorer ’ s mastery of accessible literary style, and they accepted the weight of detail and direct quotes because it brought Lepcha individuals to life ( Manchester Guardian September 23, 1938; The Scotsman September 29, 1938; Time and Tide December 1, 1938; Listener December 7, 1938). Many focused on Gorer ’ s accounts of Lepchas ’ vigorous and pervasive sexual practice, which appeared remarkably permissive, if not excessive to contemporary readers ( Observer October 16, 1938; New Statesman and Nation October 22, 1938). Several engaged with the thesis of the conclusion, pleased to see Gorer attempting to draw out general lessons from Lepcha ways (Sunday Times October 9, 1938; Spectator October 14, 1938). Some underlined the interest of the book to old India hands. In sum, the book held popular appeal for several reasons, but its bulk (510 pages) and price (25 shillings) thwarted wide sales. Mead’ s popular books were far shorter, and to the Occidental point. Gorer realized he should do lengthier fi eldwork, in an exotic distant setting or, closer to home, in Bermondsey, “the poorest and toughest London neighbour- hood; it is almost a completely alien culture very shut away from the rest of London, . . . with a great number of odd institutions . . . The chief disadvantage is that the Arapesh or West Africa will seem like the Ritz in comparison with the available food and lodging” (16 x 1936, GGA, B91). But the tropical sprue he con- tracted while in India delayed those plans; he never fully recovered from this ailment. On top of that, a fall while with the Lepcha had fractured a vertebra; an operation in 1940 in the United States to fi x it, instead left him with “more or less constant” pain and the need to wear a corset when not sitting, for the rest of his life. The idea of further fi eldwork became unrealistic, though he did consider it from time to time, e.g., among the Ibo or the Danish (27 viii 1938, GGA, B91; 10 xii 1955; 8 xi 1955, MMP, B6, Folder 3). 90 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Allying Anthropology and Neo-Freudianism for the Allies

In early 1940 Mead and Bateson, along with other social scientists, started to work informally together in a general attempt to mobilize the behavioral sciences for the war effort. More specifi cally, Mead and like-minded colleagues started to apply the culture and personality approach to predict national behavior. In the ensuing months, they developed methods for, as they put it, “studying culture at a distance”: analyzing a imaginative diversity of printed materials and fi lms, as well as interviewing both expatriate natives and people who had long and deep experience of the nations being investigated. Their initial objects of interest were the Germans and Japanese; later they studied other national populations which, because of the war, were then not directly accessible (Yans-McLaughlin 1986 ). With the sudden entry of the United States into the confl ict in December 1941, the ability of Mead and her associates to produce rapid cultural assessments of other lands was quickly appreciated by the national administration (Mandler 2011 ). The central idea guying down the culture and personality approach was that particular cultures could produce distinctive personality types among its members. Mead and some of her colleagues differed over how, exactly, this process was to be studied, over which facets were to be most scrutinized. Gorer, who was perhaps the most neo-Freudian of this anthropological group, focused on early infantile experience and modes of upbringing. In 1941, while still based at Yale, he produced the fi rst study of national character, on the Japanese. In this document, which especially pleased Mead and Benedict (Howard 1984 : 224), he underlined that early, severe toilet training was “the single most important infl uence in the formation of the adult Japanese character” (Gorer 1942 ). The main, enduring effects of this stern disciplining were outwardly conformist attitudes and stored-up frustration. This store could easily be converted into aggression, which helped to explain “the overwhelming brutality and sadism of the Japanese at war” (Gorer 1942 ). This document, the “single most infl uential academic analysis of ‘Japanese character structure, ’ ” reached “a signifi cant and varied audience” and was quickly picked up by the press, Time newsmagazine regurgitating it under the headline “Why are Japs Japs?” (Dower 1986 : 124). His next two studies, on “Burmese character” and “the Greek community and the Greek child,” were similar exercises in the imaginative application of anthropology along neo-Freudian lines. Gorer ’ s fi rst postwar excursion in the culture and personality style was The Americans (Gorer 1948a ). Inspired by Mead ’ s own analysis of the US (Mead 1942 ), he characterized the nation as a society of immigrants. Members of the fi rst generation, because brought up elsewhere, failed to become fully American. Their children, born and socialized within the country, gained that status, but only by rejecting the authority of their insuffi ciently acculturated fathers. This reaction against authority was a general moral principle, manifested in the Constitution. Mothers, in contrast, were the dominant parent in families. However, this female- Geoffrey Gorer 91 grounded training meant that boys had to learn to be independent seekers of success in order to prove they were not sissies. Moreover, thanks to the continuing power of the frontier mentality, American males had a purely instrumental, non- affective relationship to materials, especially the land. Yet, this competitive urge to dominate and be successful was tempered. In this relatively uniform society, men strove to do better than the standards of their peers but only a little better. One might say the underlying rule was that all men were equal, but that each, through his efforts, tried to be a little more equal than others. Gorer openly admitted the limitations of his work: his ignorance of large swathes of the country; his neglect of class, religion, and race; his nonchalant disregard of political, economic, and historical factors. Still, his vision of this vast, variegated nation in neo-Freudian terms of simple family structure proved a great popular success. British reviewers rated it very highly, as “fascinating,” “brilliantly intelligent,” “provocative,” “profoundly interesting.”3 Some did worry that his statements were at times too sweeping, too far-fetched. But these qualifi ers were usually outweighed by plaudits. Even a communist daily noted the praise being lavished on the book ( Daily Worker August 12, 1948). Reviewers in the US press were a similar mixture of a few qualifi ers amidst much praise. Academics were a little more discerning. A few saw the book as unpretentious, friendly, and half-humorous; most of Gorer’ s generalizations might be valid, but none was grounded in data (Brown 1948 ; Chase 1948 ; David 1948 ; Hofstadter 1948 ; VSY 1948 ; Dicks 1949 ). Most were not so charitable, accusing him of ignorance, “cavalier” assertions, and a polemical, Freudian approach which predetermined his questions, collection of data, mode of analysis, and conclusions. His psychoanalytical bias was at times “positively ludicrous,” and the meaning of his work “opaque and highly ambiguous” (Ackerknecht 1948 : 281; Fitzsimmons 1948 ; Lewis 1948 ; Powdermaker 1948 ; Kallen 1949 ; Lowie 1949 ; Singer 1949 : 66). As he later confessed, The Americans was “fi ne from many points of view, but quite disastrous to any thought I might have entertained of pursuing an academic career” (CV, GGA). In fact, Gorer deeply underestimated the disaster he could court. For his next book badly damaged support for the entire “culture and personality” school. The People of Great Russia (Gorer and Rickman 1949 ) is Gorer ’s most controversial, indeed notorious work. In his section of the book, Gorer generalizes about all non-elite Great Russians, taking 1930s peasant society as his model. For him, the key component of childhood training is the very tight swaddling of babies for the fi rst nine months of life. This physical inhibition has multiple consequences: intense rage, directed at the constraint; feelings of numb loneliness and pervasive, unfocused guilt; a shift in emphasis from the body, which cannot be used, to the workings of the soul and inner nature. The teachings and practice of the Orthodox Church had bolstered many of these attitudes and behaviors; the Communist regime was then attempting to channel these for its own ends. Thus guilt generated fear, once personifi ed as the threat of devils, now of secular 92 Anthropology in the Public Arena enemies. Expressing rage at the enemy cathartically dissipated guilt, for a time. But this guilt and its consequence were contained by an idealized Leader; he and his controlling elite, who subordinated the people completely, imparted the Truth, so binding the Great Russians in the sure, rigid belief of their rightness and superiority. Given this schema, Gorer derives ten political maxims. One is that the people will, at all times, go to the limit of their strength. Thus, he concludes, the only political behaviors which will contain Russian expansion are fi rmness, strength, and consistency. If Western powers sustain these behaviors, a tolerable, durable peace was possible. Gorer ’ s thesis is nakedly speculative. He repeatedly confesses his lack of contemporary data, and so appears to rely all the more on folktales and nineteenth- century novels. Much of the text is written in the conditional, and many sentences larded with “it is assumed,” “it seems probable,” “it appears plausible,” and so on. At times it is diffi cult not to think that he is engaging in an imaginative post hoc rationalization which merely justifi es historical stereotypes (Neiburg and Goldman 1998 : 76, n.21). Though Gorer underlined that swaddling was only one behavior contributing to the formation of Russian character, he was in fact prepared to repeatedly stretch the extent of its relevance by far-fetched analogy. For example:

The mass of the people apparently feel that those in authority are “apart” from themselves. This would seem to be a derivative of the fact that the earliest constrain- ing “authority” – the swaddling – is not part of the self, and is not personiﬁ ed. (Gorer and Rickman 1949 : ch. 4, sect. 3)

Not surprising then, that if The Americans was seen as a “Just so story” (Singer 1949 : 66), many thought this text just too much. Fellow anthropologists, some of them angry Mead had allowed Gorer to rise so fast without slogging through the usual graduate program, complained about much of his approach: untested assumptions, inadequate research techniques, lack of evidence, and his “particularly crude” inference of causality from analogy (Goldman 1950 : 159; Schneider 1950 ; Golden 1952 ; see also Harris 1969 : 443–448). More importantly, Cold War warriors, who saw the confl ict in ideological terms, were incensed by Gorer ’ s cultural interpretation. To them the only important difference was that the Russian people were suffering at the hands of a murderous tyranny (Goldfrank 1983 : 6–11; Mandler 2009 : 159). To the shock of both Gorer and Mead, their concern with the formative role of swaddling was widely and energetically caricatured as “diaperology.” Though Mead tried valiantly to rebut these criticisms and correct the lampooning, the public and academic damage was done. Funding for her “culture and personality” approach, hitherto generously provided by military sources, began to dry up (Price 2008 : 264; Mandler 2009 : 160–162). Gorer made one last, major excursion into this fi eld. In 1950 he collaborated with The People , a Sunday newspaper which had then the second highest circula- Geoffrey Gorer 93 tion in the United Kingdom, to conduct a survey on English character. Gorer agreed to create and develop this project because the results could provide statistical validity to the concept of national character, otherwise open to criticism for the small number of interviewees usually involved in each study (Gorer 1955a : 4). Also, he was keen to challenge the fi rmly biological approach of Kinsey, whose bestselling study of sexual behavior he and Mead greatly disliked (Gorer 1948b ). In a revealing, acid assessment, Gorer later classed the man a gifted publicist and uninspired sexologist (Gorer 1956 ). Finally, both the editor of The People and Gorer thought the newspaper articles and Gorer’ s resulting book might imitate Kinsey’ s commercial success. It is worrying, if his survey was to be truly explorative, that Gorer already had formulated a number of assumptions about English character (Gorer 1949 ). According to him the English, to a remarkable degree, control aggression. But, unlike the Lepchas who relieved their energies through sex, the English repressed themselves, at great personal cost. Extremely restrained characters, they were also very shy, for fear that strangers would be aggressive. Given all these traits and as a leading exponent of the culture and personality approach, Gorer wished to focus on the possible mechanisms of this repressive style. In other words, he would concentrate “largely on questions of training and discipline” (Gorer 1955a : 30). Most academic reviewers were unimpressed, on diverse grounds. They worried how representative Gorer’ s sample, though large, was (Mack 1955 ). The People, after all, was read by few members of the upper and upper-middle classes. As is often the case with quantitative surveys, much of the text was weighed down with barely digestible statistics. His statistical analysis was naïve, and even his handling of simple data was “frequently inaccurate” (Star 1957 : 329). His interpretations and statistical results often did not tally (Duncan 1956 ; Pearse 1956 ). The value of his data was, of course, limited by the design of his questionnaire; some noted that both his questions and respondents ’ answers were equivocal. Gorer, one observed, went beyond his evidence, underestimating “the degree of misunderstanding of his often vague questions, and the very different things people can mean by similar language” (Stirling 1956 : 1159). As for his concluding idea that the English had inculcated a built-in policeman to control their aggression, this was less a hypothesis, as Gorer would have it, than an “unattractive allegorical fantasy.” Ignorant of the complexities of English social history, it was too simple- minded a “theory” to be taken seriously (Stirling 1956 : 1159). The best academic reviewers could say was that the book was a trove of information, some of it illuminating, some amusing. In a modern assessment of the book the historian Peter Mandler observed that, when analyzing the open-ended questions, “Gorer’ s processing and coding permitted him to fi nd the answers he was looking for” (Mandler 2011 : 207). Even worse, a recoding exercise by Jessica Fogarty, a student of Mandler ’ s, of one question on Gorer ’ s list demonstrated that he oversimplifi ed the range of responses to get the answer he wanted (Mandler 2011 : 207). 94 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Keeping Busy

By the late 1950s Gorer was so well known that he needed no introduction when The Sunday Times launched a series of articles by him (Stanton 2000 : 6). In 1970 The Times was still able to refer to him as “the eminent social anthropologist” (March 14, 1970). His bestselling books, commentary in the quality press, talks at universities, and appearances in the media, all assisted in building an image of him as a public intellectual ready to opine on diverse social issues of the day (GG to MM 6 ii 1951, MMP, B6, Folder 2; 6 xi 1959, MMP, B6, Folder 4; 16 iii 1966, MMP, B7, Folder 1; Savage 2010 : 103). Several within the BBC gave Gorer airtime because, unlike more qualifi ed colleagues, he was considered bold and amusing (Mandler 2011 : 205). Throughout the postwar period and beyond, the quality British press repeatedly publicized his lectures and radio talks, quoted his work, and discussed his ideas, whether as support or position to attack.4 During this period he continued to publish widely and considered an even broader range of projects: an opera with Edith Sitwell on Anne Boleyn, a book on national character for a series Julian Pitt-Rivers was editing on anthropological themes for non-anthropologists; another for the same series, on homosexualities; a book on Sitwell; in the early 1970s Mead urged him to write a book “about all of us, the women whose lives you have made so much richer” (GG to MM n.d., early Oct. 1952?, GGA, B91; 30 v 1960, GGA, B92; MM to GG 9 v 1973; 19 vi 1974, B93; JPR to GG14 v 1961, GGA, G97; GG to MM 2 viii 1960, MMP, B6, Folder 4). Nothing came of these projects. A collection of his best journalistic pieces was published (Gorer 1966 ), as was some sternly statistical work, e.g., Sex and Marriage in England Today (Gorer 1971 ), a text dense with fi gures, and generalizations almost devoid of further interpretation, and certainly of neo-Freudianism. Perhaps his best work during these last decades were two books: one still referred to, the other neglected. Death, Grief and Mourning (Gorer 1965 ), based on a survey he conducted commissioned by The Sunday Times , is free of statistics and laden with quotes from interviewees. In it Gorer argued that the Victorians had practiced elaborate and widely observed rituals of mourning; these offered necessary, effective support to the bereaved. But the modern decline in ceremony had led to an equal decline in support for the grieving. Mourning was no longer public, but a private condition, leaving the aggrieved shunned by his acquaintance. The consequence of this neglect of ritual and the avoidance of the bereaved was maladaptive and neurotic behavior. Death, in sum, had become as obscene and pornographic to Gorer ’ s contemporaries as sex had been to their Victorian predecessors. New secular customs, he contended, were needed to alleviate this condition. Reviewers particularly praised his personal introduction, detailing the reactions of friends on hearing of his brother ’ s death. The fi nal section on “the pornography of death,” which originally appeared in 1955, was much reprinted (Gorer 1955b ). Geoffrey Gorer 95

Modern Types (Gorer and Searle 1955 ) was a series of sharp-eyed portraits of identifi able character-types in 1950s Britain. Originally published in Punch and illustrated by the renowned cartoonist Ronald Searle, they were presented with an illuminating acuity, mordant humor, and a strong sense of the social changes which had left once well-placed Britons socially adrift, perilously negotiating their outdated sense of status in a world where the old class categories held less and less meaning. It is telling that almost all his modern types are middle-aged or old, usually in traditional occupations. The only three outsiders he presents are all regarded with pity, as socially mobile, good-willed characters scorned by conservative neighbors, whose increasingly beleaguered social position was in danger of exposure by the arrival of new money. Modern Types can be regarded as an unpretentious, witty manner to make sociologically informed commentary, with none of the parody of pompous academic discourse which peppered the 1950s U/non-U debate about social class in the United Kingdom, and which Gorer had branded “absurd.” In this sense, the book may be viewed as pop anthropology in another mode, a precursor to the satirical ethnographies of the 1980s, similarly focused on the constant chess-game of social positioning, e.g., the extremely successful The Offi cial Sloane Ranger Handbook: The First Guide to What Really Matters in Life (Barr and York 1982 ) and The Offi cial Foodie Handbook (Barr and Levy 1984 ), both of which identifi ed in an informed but irreverent manner emergent new types of personality in contemporary British society.

Gorer, Mead, Love, Sex

In a “Professional Data Sheet” he wrote in the 1950s, Gorer included the statement, “Love affairs with members of a number of cultures, but I have no reason to believe that the details or sequence are culturally relevant.” It is difﬁ cult to disagree seriously with this sentiment. Most commentators on his work have classiﬁ ed him, in an unproblematic manner, as homosexual, or most probably so (Grosskurth 1988 : 78; Lapsley 1999 : 268, 308; Banner 2003 : 322; Lutke- haus 2008 : 59, 62; Lindstrom n.d. ; Taylor n.d. ). Certainly very many of his close friends were homosexual or lesbian. Veteran anthropologists with whom I spoke remembered that he gave a clear impression of being gay (R. Needham pers. comm. 2005; M. Banton email, January 22, 2011). However, existing evidence about his relationship with Mead, including letters only recently released, belies this statement. Perusing this correspondence can help us to understand why, though he disappointed her repeatedly, her association with him was so enduring. To a more limited extent, knowledge of their romantic tie may also aid us to place in its broader context the remarkable degree each was quietly prepared to assist the advancement of the other. 96 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Since her death, Mead has become well known for the distinctively non-exclusive relationships she could maintain simultaneously with those closest to her. Bearing that in mind, it is appropriate to state that Mead was dedicated to Gorer. He, in return, was open in his devotion to her. His nephew remembers him saying he was “prepared to peel grapes for her” (P. Gorer pers. comm., April 4, 2010). As Gorer wrote to her a few months after their ﬁ rst encounter, “My meeting with you has been one of the really important things in my life, and I shall never be able to thank you sufﬁ ciently for all you have done for me” (n.d. 1936, MMP, B5, Folder 6). Mead remained “probably his closest friend” for the next forty years. The potential quality of their relationship is most evident during the late 1940s, when Mead ’ s marriage to Bateson was coming to an end. Some of her letters during this period adopt an even more intimate, loving tone than usual for them:

My darling – you have made me extraordinarily happy – I feel still feel as if I were glowing. Margaret, lovingly. (20 xi 1949, GGA, B91) And now to bed to accumulate enough sleep to go on revising . . . and may you be sleeping, quietly, an ocean away. (5 xii 1949, GGA, B91) There is still no future, except the sort of timeless haven which you have given me to anchor my spirit in . . . where I feel eternally safe and cherished. (20 vii 1949, GGA, B91, original ellipsis)

During this personally difﬁ cult period for Mead, rumors continued to circulate that she and Gorer would marry. In 1949 he wrote to her that colleagues in the Tavis-

Figure 3.1 Geoffrey Gorer, on the beach, Ischia, Italy, with Chester Kallman, W. H. Auden’ s partner, 1946 (photograph presumed taken by W. H. Auden). Geoffrey Gorer 97 tock Institute for Human Relations, the UK center for psychoanalytical theory, were “marrying them off ” (27 xi 1949, MMP, R8, Folder 7). In July 1950 she wrote to him that she was coming to the United Kingdom, just to see him, “to get life very clear.” With divorce pending, she also makes patent her material worries about providing for Catherine, her daughter (20 vii 1950, MMP, R8, Folder 7). However, it appears that Gorer wanted a loving friendship, not marriage. Though it seems he disappointed her, Mead was resolute they retained their bond. Seeking to overcome this troubled stage in their association, she wrote him a long letter openly speaking of their “love” for one another and their need to cherish their relationship (n.d, MMP, BS-6, Folder 5). Clearly, they succeeded in this. In 1952 she was able to write to him, in a jocular tone, about stories that they had wed secretly and that she was spending a large part of her time in the United Kingdom. She gently mocked these tales, underlining how many US television shows and newspaper reports she was then appearing in (15 v 1952, MMP, B6, Folder 3). Over time, Gorer’ s epistolary intimacy returned. In 1960 he started a letter, “I think of you – and miss you daily, almost hourly” (1 ix 1960, MMP, R8, Folder 7; see also 26 vii 1968; MMP, B7, Folder 3). His present to her that Christmas was a transatlantic plane ticket (a return) (3 i 1961, MMP, B6, Folder 4). The next year, when he received distressing news about his brother ’ s terminal cancer, the only person he felt he could conﬁ de in was Mead (2 v 1961, MMP, R8, Folder 7). The year after that, he thanked her for her Valentine (20 ii 1962, MMP, B6, Folder 5). Given Mead ’s bisexuality, and the apparently variable disposition of Gorer, the epithet for him as “Britain ’ s Margaret Mead” seems doubly appropriate.

How to Straddle the Academic and the Popular, Mead-Style

Throughout their decades of correspondence, Mead actively tried to steer Gorer ’s career in a remarkably directive manner. He was not the only colleague whose course she tried to guide; in 1950 she told him of her desire to turn Ashley Montagu “into a real anthropologist” (10 v 1950, MMP, B6, Folder 2). She had little success there. What marks out her relationship with Gorer is not just its length and mutual warmth but the sustained effort she made, over several decades, to advance his career along more or less conventional university lines. While Mead accepted he might wish to keep up his more popular work, she wanted, above all, for him to gain and retain academic credibility, to contribute importantly to debates of the time. The tone of her letters to him is at times a wildly varying blend of great affec- tion, cajoling suggestiveness, and ill-tempered exasperation. She could be frustrated at his independence of mind and his apparent lack of concern at consolidating his academic reputation. But she always valued highly his intellectual abilities, freedom of thought, literary style, and visual sensitivity. 98 Anthropology in the Public Arena

One of Gorer ’ s earliest academic tasks was a review of Bateson ’ s Naven , secured thanks to Mead’ s intervention. However, when she read his criticisms, she force- fully stated her disappointment, detailing the points she thought he had missed (4 iv 1937, GGA, B91). It is as though she were training him in the etiquette of her subculture. While she and Bateson were away, ﬁ eldworking in Bali, Gorer informed her his book on burlesque was to be called Hot Strip Tease. This worried her greatly. Her statement of concern starkly reveals her conceptions of how contemporary academia then functioned:

You already have to live down – from the narrow academic point of view – everything you have written for assorted and dissimilar reasons of subject matter, treatment, political views and an acceptance of extra-sensory phenomena. Isn ’ t that enough, plus the fact that your training has been unorthodox and that you have been – from the standpoint of the underpaid academic – disgustingly successful, and have had much too interesting a life, without adding to your handicaps a book called HOT STRIP TEASE. If you are going to do scientifi c work, you must have the confi dence and acceptance of the scientifi c people. You know well enough how much my prestige has suffered through writing readable books that sold, and that with an orthodox training and post and a bulk of strictly dull and conventional publications to right the balance. (4 xii 1936, MMP B5, Folder 6)

At the least, she recommended he add a subtitle such as “An analysis of a piece of cultural symbolism.” Gorer turned a deaf ear. When she did read the copy he sent her, she thought it a brilliant piece of writing, but hoped he would return to the more rigorous mode of his de Sade book. She was very critical of his anthropological introduction to the book, insisting that if he was to make “clever, intuitive guesses” about cultures, he needed to keep that clearly separate from his academically respectable work. Again, her manner of upbraiding him bluntly states the constraints she felt they were working under:

I don ’ t care how much more right and more accurate and more brilliant your guess may be than the conclusions which years of careful sociological analysis by dull people might have produced, it still is not fair to confuse the two things. I have stood for years that accusation that I was journalistic, and merely making brilliant guesses, when it wasn ’ t true, and when I had worked days to get the material behind every sentence . . . I want you to do work that counts, not hampered by having stirred up all sorts of irrelevant prejudices. You will always encounter academic jealousy because you write brilliantly; no need to heap up the cup, and give them legitimate bricks to throw at you . . . Perhaps I have had an unnecessary ﬁ t. But I do care so much. You haven ’ t begun to do what you want to do yet . . . You have your reputation all to make, if you really want to in some way help to shape current thought towards Geoffrey Gorer 99

some sense. And I could weep when you appear to be deliberately hindering yourself from doing that. (12 x 1937, MMP, B5, Folder 6)

When Gorer informed her the Lepcha practiced polyandry, she replied quickly with a long list of detailed questions. These display both her quicksilver imagination and her fascination for varieties of sexual behavior, which had of course advanced her own popular reputation so famously:

A good psychological study of polyandry would be thoroughly interesting, especially of the ties which grow up between the men, and the amount of identiﬁ cation that goes on. Will an impotent man prefer a co-husband who is also impotent, or a co-husband of conspicuous virility, through whose achievements he can attain satisfaction? Do the women get into psychological difﬁ culties over who the actual father of their children is – imagine composite parenthood, or differential life of spermatozoa? . . . Are there any ideas about intra-semen hostility if the various husbands are on bad terms? (1 x 1936, GGA, B91)

Gorer sent her his Lepcha manuscript while she was still on Bali. In response, she wrote him a dense series of fi nely grained comments, mostly concerned with developing the intellectual distinctiveness of his material, and making the text more appealing to a general audience, e.g., make culture contact, and not just with Whites, more central; contrast a witnessed account of a ceremony – “in the Malinowskian manner” – with an ideal account from informants; include photographs of offerings which “would make them more real to your readers,” otherwise provide “much more detailed and vivid descriptions.” She thought the life-history of one Lepecha “grand stuff from every point of view; the character comes out with extraordinary consistency”; but it would be more striking if put side by side with a “standard sequence” (11 xi 1937, MMP, R8, Folder 7). Mead agreed that the Lepcha were a “dull people,” and fi eldwork with them a disappointment. But she considered his book “a very provocative piece of work,” and was “very anxious” that his ethnography should establish him academically (11 xi 1937, MMP, R8, Folder 7; 1 ix 1938, GGA, B91). She also urged him to pur- chase an MA from Cambridge, as “it would help your professional standing” (11 vii 1938, GGA, B91). To promote his book, she urged he include an introduction “by someone old and placed and conventional”: “It is a good thing to do even if one is strictly within the fold and almost essential if one isn ’ t” (19 xii 1950, MMP, R8, Folder 7). Bateson, who had been at Charterhouse at the same time as Gorer though the two had not known one another there, smoothed his path by writing a letter of recommendation to Haddon (10 ii 1938, MMP, B5, Folder 6). Haddon, then in his eighties, cried off the task, pleading his age, but did introduce him to Hutton. Once Gorer had realized their mutual dislike of Malinowski, he was able to persuade Hutton to do the job (8 v 1939, MMP, B5, Folder 6). Gorer was keen 100 Anthropology in the Public Arena that Mead review his book, in either an academic or popular journal (24 vi 1938, B5, Folder 6). She even sent him the provisional argument of her review, for Oceania, for him to comment on, and suggesting ways the book could be used to place him in a respected academic lineage, and so prevent others from regarding him solely in terms of Africa Dances (20 x 1938, GGA, B91; Mead 1939 ). Mead then wanted Gorer to do further fi eldwork (20 x 1938, GGA, B91). But war intervened. Between Gorer ’ s return to the United Kingdom in the late 1940s and her last years in the 1970s, Mead continued to attempt steering his anthropological career, raising money for him to make research trips to New York, telling him what he should do, assiduously commenting on his work, praising it to publishers, suggesting books he should write, advising him where to publish, putting his name forward for various jobs, and so on (e.g., MM to GG 18 ix 1947, MMP, B6, Folder 1; 21 i 1964, MMP, B6, Folder 5; 30 v 1951; 16 iv 1954; 30 vii 1954; GGA, B91; 5 xi 1962; 5 vi 1958, GGA, B92; 27 xii 1960; 4 xii 1964, GGA, B92; 9 v 1973; 19 vi 1974, GGA, B93; GG to MM 18 ix 1951, GGA, B91). She eulogized The Americans in a review for The Observer (August 29, 1948: 3). Seven years later, she tried to review Exploring English Character (Gorer 1955a ) for the New York Herald Tribune, only to be told an old mutual friend of them both had already requested it (MM to GG 31 x 1955, MMP, B6, Folder 3). In a more critical vein, she passed comment on drafts of both his English character and death books for their lack of vivid, concrete detail, and got him to suppress the fi nal, evolutionist chapter of Himalayan Village for its second edition (MM to GG 28 v 1952, GGA, B91; 8 xii 1952, GGA, B91; 18 xii 1961; 17 ii 1962, GGA, B92). She also complained of the “excessive thinness” of everything he had done since his ethnography, his persistent lack of documentation and, in his texts, his unannounced shifts in lines of comparison. Mead wanted him to be much more explicit about how his approach shaped his observations and conclusions (19 xii 1950, MMP, R8, Folder 7). She repeatedly asked him to contribute to books produced by her and her “culture and personality” colleagues (8 iii 1954; 19 ix 1954; GGA, B91). In 1954 she even argued that since he was ready to let the world judge anthropology, partly by his own writings, he should thus assume some responsibility for his position (6 x 1954, GGA, B91). On that occasion, Gorer once again chose not to hear. Gorer was almost as dutiful toward Mead as she was to him. He acted as an English foil to her ideas about the United States, and responded to her repeated calls for advice, information, and assistance on various topics. She also thanked him for his criticism of her writing and for the informal training in art that he gave her (e.g., GG to MM 6 viii 1954, GGA, B91; 24 ii 1956; 25 iv 1956; 17 x 1960; 22 iii 1962; 18 iv 1962, GGA, B92; 14 iv 1969; 19 xii 1975, GGA, B93; MM to GG 4 i 1956, GGA, B92; 11 ix 1975, GGA, B93; Howard 1984 : 236). Mead ’ s daughter remembers that “she always found conversation with him stimulating and insight- ful” (M. C. Bateson email, July 7, 2010). On a darker note, Gorer was also ready to participate in Mead’ s covert manipulation of the media. When she turned down Geoffrey Gorer 101 the offer of reviewing Kinsey’ s book for the New York Herald Tribune, she suggested Gorer instead, knowing he would be very critical. Kinsey was stung by Gorer’ s review (Lutkehaus 2008 : 171). Mead was the best-known anthropologist of her broad generation. Throughout her letters to Gorer, she evinces the sustained need for a fi ne balance in literary and intellectual styles, to placate sober, potentially jealous academics, and to win a broad audience for the work she and her colleagues wished to promote. While she acknowledged that he, unlike her, was a writer primarily committed to his writing, she hoped to make of him a transatlantic anthropologist with the academic prestige and popular standing able to co-defend their work in a variety of fora (MM to GG19 xii 1950, MMP, R8, Folder 7). To an important extent, she appears to have trained her spasmodically recalcitrant pupil well. Their correspondence also shows starkly just how energetically, and persist- ently, Mead was prepared to advance Gorer’ s reputation. What is perhaps surprising is that neither appears to have suffered any moral qualms about packing the jury to achieve that end. When asked why she had not married Gorer, Mead often said she did not wish to put ointment on his back (Howard 1984 : 314). But, on the evidence of this section, she was prepared to scratch it.

Kinship at the Core: Gorer ’s Relations with British Anthropologists

“The Social Science scene in England is pretty dismal . . . the epigoni of Bronio (Malinowski) are not exactly exciting or adventurous” (GG to MM n.d. 1946?, MMP, B5, Folder 7). Ensconced back in the United Kingdom, Gorer made contact with his compatriot colleagues, and he was not impressed. In December 1946 he wrote, “I’ ve now met nearly all the LSE anthropologists – Gawd, what a dreary lot” (28 xii 1946, MMP, B5, Folder 7). Most were equally unimpressed with him. Reactions to Gorer were strongly negative in several quarters, for various reasons. Meyer Fortes, the professor at Cambridge, was quite open about the reason for establishing in 1946 the Association of Social Anthropologists, which was to become the key professional body for British practitioners. It was “to prevent people like Geoffrey Gorer from calling themselves social anthropologists” (R. Fox 2001 : 25; 2004 : 339). A student of Fortes remembers that, at the time, he was extremely keen to raise the status of anthropology, to make it more professional. To do so, he felt he “had to counter assumptions by many outside the discipline that it was largely reducible to psychology and the psychology of sex at that” (Abrahams email, January 11, 2011). That left no space for a gentleman amateur who openly advocated a hybrid style of anthropology and neo-Freudianism. In a talk given in the 1950s on “Anthropology and psychology,” Gorer made his disagreement with his UK 102 Anthropology in the Public Arena colleagues plain. In his opinion, the two disciplines “could not properly be separated without the greatest impoverishment of concepts and inadequate interpretation of data.” He then turned more personal:

I can discern in British anthropology today a fear of psychology which is not entirely rational . . . It would seem in quite considerable measure due to a fear of introspec- tion . . . In many cases there are present both a desire to escape some obsessing problem, and a hope that a solution . . . will be found among the Bongo-Bongo or some other primitive society.

Yet how, he asked, could one study the psychology of others if one didn ’ t know one’ s own? (n.d., GGA, B70). It was not just Gorer’ s neo-Freudianism which made him anathema to many of his British colleagues; it was his theoretical approach as well. Given their interests during this period, the “culture and personality” school embodied much of what many UK anthropologists were reacting against. Though Gorer did receive useful comments on his work from David Schneider, an old friend from his Wash- ington days, Schneider ’ s pupils at the LSE, and “from some of the Cambridge people,” the general response was negative (28 xii 1950, MMP, B6, Folder 2). For instance, when in London discussing his work on national character, he found he was trying “to persuade the very hostile group here, especially Firth and his buddies” (29 iv 1947, MMP, B6, Folder 1). These negative attitudes did not wane. In 1955 he wrote to Mead, about their culture-at-a-distance work, that “nobody I know will take the stuff seriously” (10 xii 1955, MMP, B6, Folder 3). This intellectual rejection was not aimed exclusively at Gorer, though he was tainted by association with Mead, regarded by many in the United Kingdom as a lightweight publicist, a producer of “cheap novel writing” (R. Fox email, May 13, 2010). It did not help his cause that he liked their association to be known (R. Gross pers. comm., October 16, 2009). Schneider found British anthropologists were wary of the culture and personality approach, thinking it “a distinctively American bit of ‘nonsense. ’ ” After giving a seminar in Manchester in 1951, he complained about the students there “armed to the teeth” with “What is wrong with Gorer- Mead-Benedict” (quoted in Bashkow 1991 : 229). Goody, Fortes ’ successor, remembered that in the 1950s there was hostility toward US anthropology, with comments “about ‘lady novelists’ and talk of that kind”; his contemporary colleagues tended to look down on those trained in the United States. Though he was not against some of the kinds of psychological anthropology then practiced in the United States, he did take against some of the culture and personality school, “which seemed to me rather superfi cial.”5 When, in the early 2000s, I mentioned to a senior British anthropologist my interest in Gorer, his reaction was immediate and strongly negative. He mentioned the repeated rumors that it was Morris who had in fact gathered much of the material used in Himalayan Village, and that Gorer’ s medical reasons for not doing Geoffrey Gorer 103 more fi eldwork were but an excuse. I have found no evidence for these stories in his correspondence nor with any of my communications with his kin or kith. Instead, I take these negative comments as masked expressions of distaste for popular anthropology, if not done in exactly the way academic anthropologists then thought it should be. It is highly probable that, generally, Gorer ’ s UK contemporaries were critical of the public role he played. In the postwar decades they dedicated themselves to the development of their discipline and communicated, above all, only with those in neighboring subjects. They rarely bothered with popularizing anthropology (Firth interview, June 1994). In effect Gorer was left the fi eld to himself, because they did not think the effort worth the candle. For these different reasons of theory, method, and media, it is little surprise that in the early 1970s Gorer was still “not even acceptable” to professional British anthropologists (Fox 2004 : 437). These attitudes survived up to his death. It is revealing that his Times obituarist classes him as “anthropologist and critic,” yet is mean with praise and snipes at his anthropological approach. The worst put- down, however, tells us less about the deceased than anthropological prejudice in the contemporary United Kingdom: Gorer “was never felt to be completely sound on the fundamentals of kinship” (The Times May 29, 1985: 16).

Gorer Lives?

Gorer stated he became an anthropologist in order to understand his own society, and to discern “a remedy of our present discontents.” He did fi eldwork “less perhaps to fi nd out about the Lepchas than to try to fi nd out what it is like to be an ethnologist . . . I am trying to fi nd out ‘by being my own rabbit’ what is the value of ethnology for extrapolation into our own culture” (GG to MM 17 ii 1937, GGA, B91). In the United States during the early 1940s he developed “national character” studies out of his mentor ’ s “culture and personality” school, as a contribution to the war effort. The aim of his postwar work to understand Russian character was, at its most lofty, to assist in the making of Cold War strategy. As Mead wrote to Gorer, a senior member of the Offi ce of Naval Research (ONR) had informed her:

You will be glad to hear that much attention is being given to Geoffrey Gorer ’s study of swaddling techniques by highly placed persons in the Navy Department. In the near future I hope it will be possible to discuss further research in this ﬁ eld under ONR auspices which should lead to some very fruitful results. (27 viii 1949, MMP, B6, Folder 1)

In 1950 Gorer found it “very gratifying” to give his paper on the Russians at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs: “it is as near as one 104 Anthropology in the Public Arena can possibly get to the policy makers.” He was also pleased his The Russians was to be the August “Book of the Month” in the United Kingdom: “it means a fi rst edition of 25,000 (enormous for this country in these times) and a chance to infl u- ence the political thinking of quite a large group, which is what I wanted” (GG to MM 2 iv 1950, MMP, B6, Folder 2). If Gorer wished to infl uence the making of policy, the record of he and his colleagues is in fact disappointing. Benedict is famously remembered as the anthropologist who recommended, on anthropological grounds, that come the end of the war, the Japanese emperor be left in place, as a effective strategic contribution to the establishment of peace. In his CVs Gorer claimed that in fact he had been the fi rst anthropologist to present this case. In 1940 he had argued that criticizing the imperial throne or the emperor himself “would only incite anger against foolish sacrilege.” Instead he recommended US propagandists should attack holders of real, not ritual power, so long as they were denigrated in Japanese terms (Gorer 1942 ). When Benedict was praised for her bestselling analysis of Japanese character The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Benedict 1946 ), which included mention of her recommendation, Gorer wrote to Mead about “The number of letters received ‘commiserating’ with me on inadequate acknowledgments in The Chrysanthemum . . . I don’ t feel slighted; but people seem to read footnotes with malicious care” (GG to MM 25 iii 1947, MMP, B6, Folder 1). Sub- sequent work by historians of anthropology suggests both Benedict and Gorer exaggerated the power of their words. During the war, in the United States, social scientists in general were mistrusted, regarded skeptically, or just ignored. When occasional policymakers did make use of their work, it was usually only to bolster a course of action they had already decided on (Janssens 1999 ; Price 2008 : 171–199). Gorer did keep up links with a few British anthropologists, mainly expatriates who wished to keep the subject open to non-academic audiences, such as Colin Turnbull and Julian Pitt-Rivers, who thought him an “original” (F. Pitt-Rivers pers. comm., January 25, 2012). But, pushed as he was to the margin by most mainstream UK anthropologists, the academics Gorer chose to spend most time with tended to be sociologists and psychoanalysts. Also, he was keen to bring an anthropological sensibility to those working in other fi elds. Among sociologists, he became close to Peter Willmott and his colleagues at the Institute of Community Studies, where he acted as consultant, checking their tendency to romanticize working-class community (Mandler 2011 : 206). His initial attempts to infl uence the thinking of psychoanalysts were frustrated, however. He found there was little point being explicit about the concept of culture, as they would not “go to the trouble of reading the literature” (15 xii 1950, GGA, B91). But by 1952 he could boast to Mead that his opening paper at a recent social psychology symposium had been a “smash hit – biggest audience ever” (10 iii 1952, GGA, B91). In particular, he worked with psychiatrists at the Tavistock Institute, then the leading British Geoffrey Gorer 105 center for neo-Freudianism, which he would fondly refer to as “The Tavi” (P. Gorer email, April 2010). While Gorer maintained a broad interdisciplinary profi le, participating in a variety of heterogeneous conferences and workshops, he could on occasion be careful how far he strayed within academia, beyond anthropology (GG to MM 3 i 1961, MMP, B6, Folder 4; Howard 1984 : 395). There were some limits he respected. Green classes Africa Dances the best example of “faunlet” prose by the Children of the Sun for its combination of impudent naïveté and political knowingness. He considers Gorer escaped the “bright young Englishman” confi nes of this literary set by going to train to the United States as an anthropologist (Green 1977 : 331). But Green ’ s assessment is too partial. Gorer in many ways did not escape the confi nes of the Children of the Sun. To a signifi cant extent, he remained a politically concerned naïf , an observer who did not commit himself to any one path or single creed. Instead Gorer wished to range lustrously between genres: mono- graphs, popular essays, and satirical pieces. While he was prepared to develop an evolving neo-Freudianism grounded in anthropology and to essay different research methods, he would not be disciplined by academic peers. Too often, he preferred brilliant intuition to almost all else. To a notable extent, his desire to range wondrously, grandly ignoring disciplinary boundaries, was indeed creatively successful, albeit more after his death than during it. His book on grief and mourning was a key infl uence on Ariès’ work, and is considered foundational by contemporary practitioners of death studies (McManners 1981 ; Whaley 1981 ; Prior 1989 : 4, 6, 137; Fulton and Metress 1995 ; Lovell 1997: 31; Pickering, Littlewood, and Walter 1997 ; Small 1997 : 208). For the historian David Cannadine, his interpretation of the decline of mourning “embodied a powerful and exceedingly infl uential historical perspective” (Can- nadine 1981 : 188). His studies of English character, death, and sexuality retain a public value, and can be used as a basis for historical comparison. For example, in 1999 The Guardian attempted to gauge changing social attitudes in an opinion poll, by repeating some of the very questions Gorer had asked for his 1955 study into English character (December 29, 1999: 3; see also Clark 1991 ). The results of his various British surveys are still mined by politicians, columnists, think-tanks, policymakers, and journalists for supportive facts or insights. So, in their own minor way, his works today feed into the formulation of national policy.6 Moreover Mike Savage, the historian of postwar British sociology, argues that with the English character survey, Gorer took a radically innovative step when he forged a novel alliance with the press, by making it the funder of social science research. For Savage, generating this new kind of popular social science was the highpoint of Gorer’ s variegated career (Savage 2010 : 104–105). His Lepcha ethnography has, within its own geographic ambit, been even more signifi cant, though in a very mixed manner. Himalayan Village has been reprinted several times, and is now available as a mass market paperback. However, 106 Anthropology in the Public Arena many Lepchas who have read his book have felt defi led, and have objected extremely to his misrepresentation of them, in several passages, as drunk, gullible, and sex-obsessed savages. Worse, the text has been used extensively by leaders of neighboring ethnic groups to degrade and ridicule them. Yet, given present social changes and their need to press claims over other ethnic groups, Lepchas recognize with some bitterness that, however ironically and unfortunately, Gorer’ s book remains a central, because rare resource for them to rediscover their cultural heritage (Hermanns 1954 : 109; Gowloog 1995 ; Arora 2004 ). Gorer ’s greatest contribution may lie elsewhere, however. For his genuinely pioneering social investigations of fi lm, radio, television, and literature, as well as his studies of everyday culture, all deserve recognition as neglected exemplars of cultural studies avant la lettre (MacClancy 2003 ; see also Stanton 2000 ). Though he had feared his commissioned television research was “going to be rather dull,” he was pleased to see the reception of the subsequent articles was “very good” (GG to MM19 iv 1958, MMP, B6, Folder 3; 12 xi 1957, MMP, B6, Folder 3; MM to GG 5 vi 1958, MMP, B6, Folder 3). Also, in his review of a founding text of cultural studies, Richard Hoggart’ s The Uses of Literacy, Gorer queried, on good grounds, that he had “exaggerated the passivity of the working classes”: they had not had rock and roll foisted on them, but evinced a demand which impresarios had exploited (Gorer 1957 ; Hoggart 1957 ). In a letter to Gorer, Hoggart confessed he had downplayed sex so as not to upset middle-class readers (RH to GG 21 iii 1957, GGA, B86). Indeed, a broad history of the rise of cultural studies, yet to be written, would have to go beyond the conventional paradigm, which foregrounds the roles of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, at the University of Birming- ham, and of Stuart Hall. Instead it would have to take on board the infl uential work of Bateson, Benedict, and Mass Observation (see chapter 5 ), as well as that of Gorer (Highmore 2009; 2011; email, July 19, 2011). Beeman makes a stab in that direction in his defense of Gorer as an unacknowl- edged contributor to the rise of cultural studies. In riposte to what he regards as over-hasty dismissal of “national character” studies, he argues that most students of culture today would agree with the explanations Gorer and Bateson gave for their approach: “a methodology for explaining regularities in thought and behaviour for a population under study, hypothesized to arise from commonalities in psychological development programs” (Beeman 2000 : xxii). Beeman contends that their structural concern with developmental psychology would today chime well with the work of two theorists highly infl uential in the development of cultural studies: Lacan, given their common beliefs in the way early childhood development shaped adult behavior, and Volshinov, who underlined that learning a particular language inculcates a child with a particular view of the world (Beeman 2000 : xxiii). Though Beeman might be straining at analogy, the general point holds: the remarkable congruence between national character and cultural studies, in both general aims and specifi c targets of analysis. And Gorer was a trailblazer in the two. Geoffrey Gorer 107

Gorer ’ s public words were given weight, above all, because he was a proven, bestselling anthropologist. His authority to pronounce on social matters was granted, partially but crucially, by his anthropological training and his original fi eldwork in an exotically distant site. Several reviewers of The Americans emphasized that Gorer was so worth reading on the topic thanks to his anthropological credentials, and that his analysis should help Anglo-American understanding and collaboration (e.g., Yorkshire Observer July 30, 1948; The Bulletin August 3, 1948; Daily Graphic August 5, 1948; Nottingham Journal September 6, 1948). When Punch used his “Modern Types” series to raise sales, it underscored the source of his gently acerbic vision: “Gorer trains his anthropologist ’ s eye . . . Merciless observation laced with wit” (The Manchester Guardian March 31, 1954: 2). Indeed Gorer became so successful a public exemplar of anthropology that journalists would invoke his name as an anthropological arbiter of puzzling social phenomena. In 1955 one theatre reviewer, unable to understand the massed screaming at a pop singer’ s concert, argued that the entertainer’ s performances had now become a ritual: “Frazer, Malinowski, or failing them, Geoffrey Gorer, are the authorities we should have to consult for an explanation” (The Times May 18, 1955: 3). At times, however, Gorer suffered the common problem of alternating humor and gravity: use of one approach is interpreted as masking the other. For example, one reviewer of Modern Types opined, “some of Mr Gorer’ s earlier works gave the impression of a natural humorist sniping through a camoufl age of scientifi c method” (The Observer December 18, 1955: 10). In many ways, Gorer was indeed “Britain ’ s Margaret Mead,” in the broad theoretical approach they espoused, and their sustained concern to bring an anthropological dimension to debates about the social issues of their day. Like her, he made varied contributions to allied disciplines. As his nephew remembers, he was not respectful of disciplinary boundaries; his attitude was more, “There’ s so much to do. If you ’ re interested in it, why not just pursue it?” (P. Gorer email, April 2010). But Mead and Gorer also differed in at least two key ways. First, he often claimed his chief sin was sloth. This admission can be regarded both as a dryly humored, self-disparaging comment typical of his class and time, and as an implicit comparison to Mead, whose energy was legendary, her productivity verging on the awe-inspiring, and who found giving lectures vivifying (Mitchell 1996 ). Second, when in 1939 he was considering a research position at Yale, he confessed to Mead, “And of course (most confi dentially) I am quite unscrupulous enough to throw up the job if it did bore or outrage me; that is one of the great advantages of being fi nancially independent” (29 v 1936, GGA, B91). Gorer’ s wealth freed him from the constraints of academic position, where the ideology of collegiality is at times almost enforced. When disagreeing with others, he preferred retreat to resolution. He had “both the benefi t and curse” of his money (P. Gorer email, April 2010). When biographers of his famous friends wished to interview him, they found him “diffi cult”; his nephew remembers sensing “resentment and bitterness,” his niece how opinionated and judgmental he was (R. Gorer, December 29, 2009; 108 Anthropology in the Public Arena

P. Gorer, April 2010). His independence allowed him to range intellectually where he wished, but it also removed the need for the minimal but continuing socialization the employed have usually to respect. In sum, the money of Gorer and the intellectual proclivities of his UK contemporaries forestalled him making a greater impact in British anthropology. He was not prepared to toe the disciplinary line; they were not interested in psychology. If Mead had wanted the culture and personality approach to make the transatlantic passage, it would ﬁ nd no welcome port of call. By the same token this spurning of Gorer partially enabled his pathbreaking contribution to a host of other subjects and his major role throughout the 1950s and 1960s at keeping anthropology in the public eye. If US anthropologists today are rehabilitating the reputation of Mead, underscoring her ability to keep anthropological issues on the public agenda, isn’ t there scope for a similarly productive reassessment of Gorer by British anthropologists?

Notes

1 On Boissevain, see http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/r.j.vanginkel/bestanden/ Outsider%20looking%20in%20-%20Boissevain.pdf . Accessed June 20, 2011. Filmed interview of Goody by Eric Hobsbawm, May 18, 1991, http://www.alanmacfarlane. com/DO/fi lmshow/goody_fast.htm. mins. 40–42. Accessed May 19, 2011. 2 See, for example, The Manchester Guardian May 2, 1954: 5. 3 The quotes come from Daily Graphic 5 viii 1948; The Sphere 7 viii 1948; Daily Mail 31 viii 1948. See also Belfast Telegraph 30 vii 1948; Sunday Times 1 viii 1948; The Star 2 viii 1948; The Bulletin 3 viii 1948; Daily Dispatch 3 viii 1948; Birmingham Post 3 viii 1948; Newcastle Journal 3 viii 1948; Nottingham Journal 6 ix 1948; The Scotsman 23 ix 1948; Britannia and Eve x 1948. 4 For example, The Observer September 1, 1946: 3; August 17, 1947: 2; March 7, 1950: 4; July 26, 1953: 9; September 12, 1954: 13; October 9, 1960: 25; August 13, 1961: 13; July 10, 1962: 7; July 24, 1966: 24; March 12, 1967: 21; October 14, 1967: 23; December 8, 1968: 28; April 20, 1969: 30; October 25, 1970: 29; February 14, 1971: 19; February 23, 1975: 21; February 3, 1980: 11; The Times September 16, 1947: 6; December 6, 1951: 5; June 27, 1961: 5; April 15, 1969: 11; July 27, 1970: 5; November 1, 1971: 11; July 23, 1981: 12; Manchester Guardian December 31, 1951: 6; March 15, 1954; 3; April 20, 1955: 6; February 6, 1956: 4; March 22, 1960: 8; The Guardian March 6, 1964: 5; November 4, 1971: 11; November 12, 1974: 18; April 25, 1979: 10. In particular, several referred to his insights into the pornography of death or the rise of hypergamy, exemplifi ed by the perils of marriage of working-class males with middle-class women in several novels by the Angry Young Men (Manchester Guardian April 10, 1959: 8; The Observer December 28, 1968: 28; April 5, 1970: 8). 5 Filmed interview of Goody by Eric Hobsbawm, May 18, 1991, http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/DO/fi lmshow/goody_fast.htm. mins. 40–42. Accessed May 19, 2011. Geoffrey Gorer 109

6 For example, The Observer January 16, 1991: 89; August 21, 1994: 22; March 22, 1998: 9; The Guardian December 29, 1999: 15. See also http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/home-news/fatherhood–the-love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-1304763. html. Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ rite-of-passage-1174988.html. Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ travel/722424/Remember-the-Cold-War.html. Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/4728687/Made-angry-by-the-media.html . Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3642241/Social-acid- has-burnt-the-heart-of-Britain.html . Accessed June 21, 2011. http://www.guardian. co.uk/fi lm/2003/jul/06/artsfeatures . Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.express. co.uk/posts/view/14422/Only-by-building-more-prisons-will-we-restore-justice-in- this-country-. Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 1169540/Good-Heavens-More-half-Britons-believe-life-death-think-ghosts-exist. html. Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.frankfi eld.co.uk/media/press-releases/q/ date/2010/01/11/demos-launch-its-commission-on-character/. Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8032830/Frank- Field-Children-suffer-when-parents-abandon-tough-love.html . Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2010/12/poverty_britain . Accessed June 21, 2011; http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/03/citizenshipfi rstthe caseforcompulsorycivicservice/. Accessed June 22, 2011. 4 Robert Graves Empowering Anthropological Modes of Explanation in Myth and Ritual

Layard and Gorer were both trained by some of the most respected anthropologists of their day. They went on to become outsiders, on the edge of their academic discipline, because of their privileged position and personal disposition. Here I look at a contrastive example: a highly intelligent, deeply learned man who saw himself as an outsider to university activity almost from the beginning. Yet, if we understand the phrase broadly, he became in his own indirect way arguably the greatest popular anthropologist of the British postwar period. Besides producing a thick sheaf of anthropologically rich works, he created novel anthropological methods and his own research culture and networks, which only overlapped with specifi c sections of Academia. He is a rare British exemplar of popular anthropological practice, semi-detached from intra-mural activity. And some academics ensured he paid the price. Robert Graves was productive in a remarkable diversity of subjects: a bestselling historical novelist and autobiographer, mythographer, translator, literary critic, amateur anthropologist, and perhaps above all romantic poet. He produced over 150 works, more than forty of them non-fi ction. In this chapter I concentrate on a narrow range, his anthropologically informed writings: especially, his earlier poems and commentaries on poetry; The White Goddess, his investigation into the source of poetic inspiration; his historical novels about biblical times; his collabo- rations with Hebrew scholars. I conclude with analysis and assessment of his role as a critical disseminator of anthropological ideas. But fi rst, a caveat. Graves was a prolifi c, much-lauded, bestselling writer. I am none of those. If, in the following, I criticize some aspects of his practice that is because he is so worthy of assessment. Academics do not bother with intellectual midgets, usually.

A Life

The biography of Robert Graves is so well known, I can be brief. His father, as a young man, wrote bestselling ditties and, like his father, Charles Graves, Anglican Bishop of Limerick, became a leading Gaelic scholar. When his fi rst wife died, leaving him with fi ve young children, he married a German heiress. Robert, born July 24, 1895, was the third of their fi ve children. A scholarship boy, he entered Charterhouse in 1909. There he started to write poetry, and to display the scholarly and moral seriousness which marked much of his life. Most holidays were spent in his parents ’ second home by the coast in north Wales. In 1914 he won an exhibition to St. John’ s, Oxford. Rather than go up, he joined up, commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His famed Goodbye to All That movingly describes the sustained horror of life at the front (Graves 1929 ). Shrapnel-struck in the Battle of the Somme, he was posted dead. Invalided home and badly shell-shocked, he only returned to France, briefl y, once. Early in 1918 he married Nancy Nicholson, daughter of Sir William and brother of Ben, both painters. On demobilization he fi nally started to study at Oxford. He and his wife set up home just outside the city, in Boars Hill, then a rural retreat of leading poets. Perhaps his closest friend at university was T. E. Lawrence, at the time a Fellow of All Souls, with whom he discussed contemporary poetry. But the burden of raising a growing family in artistic poverty often led to severe fi nancial and marital tensions. In 1926 he briefl y renounced his postwar resolution “never to be under anyone’ s orders” by taking the one paid job he would ever hold: a professorship of English at Cairo University (Graves 1948 : 236). He voyaged out with his family and the US modernist poet Laura Riding, whom he had invited along, from the United States, as a collaborator. Disillusioned by the standards of his students, he resigned within a year. Back in London the triangular relationship formed by Graves, his wife, and Riding fragmented within twelve months. Graves and his paramour established their own open relationship, though Nancy remained close. But in 1929 the diffi culties between Riding and her latest lover were such that at one particularly charged gathering, she expressed her displeasure by drinking venomous disinfectant and jumping out the third-fl oor window. Graves, in a gallant gesture, ran down the stairs and jumped out a lower one. Riding never fully recovered from her injuries. Graves very quickly wrote Goodbye to All That , as a renunciation of the world in which he had been brought up. Before its publication the couple went that year to live in Deia, a village on the north coast of Mallorca. With the exception of the war period, this was to be Graves’ s residence for the remaining half-century of his life. At Deia Graves and Riding made a welcoming home for their friends and gradually created a colony of literati and artists. On the outbreak of civil war in 1936, they were forced within hours to abandon their village and return to the United Kingdom. Three years later Riding ended their usually tumultuous 112 Anthropology in the Public Arena relationship by leaving him for a farmer–poet. The following year Graves entered a lifelong partnership, later marriage, with Beryl Hodge, until then the wife of one of his co-authors. In 1946 he returned to Deia with her and the fi rst children of his second family. Graves wished to be known for his poetry, especially his love poems. But it was the historical novels, especially of Ancient Rome, which made him known inter- nationally. His fame, and notoriety, were further consolidated in the 1950s and 1960s by polemical public lectures in Oxford and Cambridge, his annual literary tours of the eastern United States, and his increasingly off-center views about sexuality, mysticism, and drugs, among other topics. Though Graves was out- standingly prolifi c throughout his life, the onset of Alzheimer ’ s in the early 1970s sharply reduced his output and increasingly confi ned him to Deia. He died there in 1985.

Rivers, Graves, the Trenches, the Underworld

Graves fi rst met W. H. R. Rivers in 1917 because the anthropologist–physician was at the time treating his close friend and fellow poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Rivers realized that Graves was similarly affl icted with shell-shock. He suggested ways to treat his condition, then known clinically as neurasthenia, today termed post- traumatic stress disorder. Rivers and Graves became friends (Slobodin 1978 : 70). Some of Graves ’ s commentators state he learnt to regard Rivers as one of his “heroes.” In his letters to Sassoon, Graves refers to him as “that excellent man”; “in the inner circle of my friends”; “I feel that Rivers is really all that matters” (9 viii 1917; 29 v 1921; 22 vii 1922, in Graves 1982 : 82, 126). The two frequently discussed their complementary interests: the production, roles, and interpretation of dreams and poetry (Ker- snowski 2002 : 24). Rivers introduced him to depth psychology, a modifi ed Freud- ianism, and greatly broadened his knowledge of anthropology. Graves’ s confi dante, Martin Seymour-Smith, states that in the early 1920s he was “reading deeply in the works of James Frazer, which he then accepted more or less uncritically” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 98, 119). Graves ’ s fi rst three books on the nature of poetry: On English Poetry (1922), The Meaning of Dreams (1924), Poetic Unreason (1925), are all the result of his discussions with Rivers. Indeed Graves took the manuscript of the fi rst book to Cambridge “to be vetted by Dr Rivers”; he later stated Rivers was “responsible for it being written in the way it is” (10 iii, 8 xii 1921, in Graves 1982 : 123, 130). Graves dedicated the book to him and T. E. Lawrence. In The Meaning of Dreams he strives openly, but critically to adapt and then apply Rivers’ work on the phenomenon in his Instinct and the Unconscious (Rivers 1920 ) and Confl ict and Dream (Rivers 1923 ). In Poetic Unreason he again acknowledges his debt: Robert Graves 113

I have to admit it was personal friendship with Dr Rivers, admiration for his book, Instinct and the Unconscious, and the encouragement he gave me in my writing of On English Poetry that has made this book take the shape and title it has taken. (Graves 1925 : 100)

Indeed he quotes liberally from Rivers, more than once, in order to establish his argument (Graves 1925 : 99–100, 127–131). In this trio of books, Graves explains the poetic impulse in quasi-anthropological terms. Poetry itself is a “modifi ed descendant of primitive Magic” and a poet “a highly developed witch-doctor.” Graves argued that “primitive man” had soon learnt that recollecting and then interpreting dreams was a powerful way to solve problems. The more gifted of witch-doctors learnt to induce a form of self- hypnotism; the resulting dream he turned into an oracle which answered a contemporary problem. Setting the oracular utterance to the rhythmic beat of a drum led, over time, to poetry (Graves 1922 : 19–20). Underlining this connection, Graves equated witch-doctors, biblical prophets, and poets, as common dream-mongers (Graves 1924 : 5–6). In contemporary society dreams were so important because, in deep sleep, they were freed from strict logic, into “the imaginative method of thought followed by children and savages” (Graves 1924 : 48). This mode of “associative,” non- rational thought was possible in ordinary waking life, though usually went unrecognized. However, “romantic poetry is charged with it, and so are the asylums” (Graves 1924 : 52). Like deep dreams, romantic, “that is Illogical or Fantastic, Poetry” could be interpreted into a more logical form (166). This would not affect the value of a poem, but give us greater sympathy with it than we had before. In these writings, Graves is drawing a clear parallel between poets, children, and the uneducated. Unlike hatchet-faced businessmen, they all take seriously an “emotional mode of thought based on remote associations of words and images” (53). Rivers had taught Graves to regard his condition as a boon, not a burden. It was not to be suppressed but mined, as a potent source of poetic creativity. According to Rivers, Graves had to access his unconscious in his writing and then examine his poems for clues to his state of mind (Seymour 1995 : 106). Generalizing from his own case, Graves extended Rivers’ theories into the domain of poetry. He thus argued that internal confl ict was central for poets: when consciously disturbed by confl icting issues, they achieved reconciliation by learning to cultivate a state of self- hypnotism. In trance, inhibitions were forgotten, defenses lowered, secrets revealed, and words exerted their full, magical power. A poet unable to move into trance could not produce “true poems,” would lack inspiration. Graves also argued that the result of a dream or a self-induced trance was a primary elaboration, an inchoate poem. A poet had then to work, consciously, on this product of the unconscious. It was this revising of drafts, a secondary elaboration, which led to a fi nished poem. Graves did not accept everything that Rivers argued. Even a hero could be criticized. For example, he does chide Rivers for regarding associative thought as a 114 Anthropology in the Public Arena survival; to the poet, it is “as modern and reputable a mode as intellectual thought” (1924: 57; also Graves 1922 : 131). Against those who classify “primitives” as inferior, simpler, and barer in their structure, Graves deploys ethnographic example to show their lives may be much more complex than commonly thought, and thus well worthy of respect (1924: 58–59). Over the next two decades, Graves moved from this psychoanalytically minded approach, to a more mythographical one. But his central reliance on Rivers and other key anthropologists, especially Frazer, to buttress his anthropologically oriented style would persist to the end, as would his beliefs in the signifi cance of dreams, associative thought, self-cultivated trance, and the intellectual genealogy stretching from witch-doctors, to prophets, to bards, and so to poets.

Goddesses, Muses, and Other Modes of Thought

George Steiner ranked The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetical Myth as “one of the most original books published in modern times” (Steiner 1960 : 356). The book had “an immense infl uence” and continues to do so, especially as “a central source of inspiration for poets” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : xiii, 400; Lindop 1997 : xx; Firla and Lindop 2003 : 7). Seymour claims a postwar generation of poets were profoundly affected by it, Ted Hughes calling it “the chief holy book of my poetic consciousness” (Seymour 1995 : xviii). On fi rst reading, The White Goddess appears a fearsome, uncompromising book, easy to read but diffi cult to follow for long stretches. The text is criss-crossed with learned riddles and Graves ’ sustained efforts to solve folklorist problems most readers did not even know existed. The core thesis, however, is clearly stated. Graves wishes to claim that the original divinity of humankind, at least in the Middle East and Europe, was female. Worship of her went hand in hand with a matriarchy. Women ruled, both spiritually and mundanely. But the male agents of a patriarchal system overturned this order, a god of reason ousting a goddess of passion and fertility. This change led humans to ignore the world of nature and its seasonal rituals, and to emerge from prehistory and myth into historical time. To Graves, this loss is the predicament poets must overcome, by striving to recon- nect with the goddess, “the true Muse,” and with the original idiom of poetry, myth. Though the Goddess is as dangerous as she is attractive, able to kill as to vivify, it is the duty of a poet to worship her:

Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its magic from the moon, not the sun. No poet can hope to understand the nature of poetry unless he has had a vision of the Naked King crucifi ed to the lopped oak, and watched the dancers, red-eyed from the acrid smoke of the sacrifi cial fi res, stamping out the measure of the dance, their bodies bent uncouthly, forward, with a monotonous chant of: “Kill! Kill!” and “Blood! Blood! Blood!” (Graves 1948 : 439) Robert Graves 115

Poets, to be poets, have to swear allegiance to the Goddess. Relying on inspired analysis of often obscure material, he argued that poets acted fi rst as son to his muse, then as her lover, and fi nally her victim. In this sense he, Demon of the Waxing Year, alternates in her favor with the Demon of the Waning Year, his darker self (Graves 1948 : 383–4). The White Goddess is diffi cult to follow, yet it is not in fact a complex book, just an oddly structured one. A perceptive critic, Grevel Lindop, has identifi ed that the individual chapters are of three different types. First there are those which consider the quiddity of poetic thought, and the roles of goddess-worship in its production. Second are those dedicated to proving his historical thesis about the primacy of goddess-worship and its later subversion, fi rst in the Middle East, and then in Europe. Third are the miscellaneous: material which parallels that in other, key chapters, entertains the reader, but does not infl uence the logic of the argument Graves is bent on assembling (Lindop 2003 : 33). On this reading, The White Goddess is not one book, but at least two, and maybe up to three spliced together. Lindop bravely tries to defend this structure by claiming that Graves, who could be a notoriously playful writer, deliberately chose to lay out his thesis in an indirect and at times even misdirective manner in order to induce a poetic trance in the persevering reader. To grasp the message, one cannot rely on rationality but must feel or intuit what the author is saying (Lindop 2003 : 35). In other words Graves provided the key for those who already thought like poets; and those who were not but yet made it, still lucid, to the end, were well on the way to becoming poets. On this reading, The White Goddess is less a guide to poetical thinking than a do-it-yourself manual. Some, wondering how to classify this idiosyncratic work, have called it “a poetic metaphor” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 388). In 1965 the US poet Randall Jarrell argued that the White Goddess was a projection of Graves’ s unconscious (Jarrell 1965 ). Since then several academics have viewed the book, at least partly, as not just personal but semi-autobiographical to boot. But if the book is to be regarded as masked autobiography, its central character, for the author anyway, is no metaphor. His biographer-nephew states he “fi rmly believed” the White Goddess was a living reality; in 1997 his daughter, Catherine Dalton, confi ded to Frank Ker- snowski, a literary critic and young friend of Graves, that her father had physically seen the Goddess early in life. He felt he could not admit this, for fear of being thought mad (Kersnowski 2002 : 6, 97; Graves 2003 : 18). On reading the book, it is obvious how anthropological writings infl uenced Graves ’ s style and its content. His clearest debts are to Rivers, Frazer, and the Cambridge Ritualists, in particular Jane Harrison. Rivers had maintained great interest in matriarchal cultures and the matriarchal principle on which they were based (Lindop 2003 : 29). Rivers also thought analysis of myth could demonstrate that ancient societies had worshipped a fi gure known as the “Great Mother.” He assumed this worship was once very wide. According to one of Graves’ s biographers, it was Rivers who brought to his attention the idea that ancient societies were governed by women, and encouraged him to extend this work (Seymour 116 Anthropology in the Public Arena

1995 : 108). On this reading, Graves already had a protean conception of the White Goddess in the early 1920s. While The White Goddess appears a fabulous work of compendious erudition, one critic has pointed out that only fi ve essential works went into its making, which “most readers could quite easily master . . . in a year or less” (Lindop 2003 : 29). Of those fi ve sources, Frazer is the most important. Several critics have in fact classed The White Goddess as a feminized development of The Golden Bough. Vickery goes so far as to judge Graves’ s book a “displacement and complication of the central themes” of Frazer ’ s book (Vickery 1972 : 34; Lindop 1997 : xi). If we accept this interpretation, The White Goddess can easily be viewed as a successful attempt to bring, above all, neo-Frazerian ideas to a new generation. Indeed Graves appears to have been the postwar bearer of the Frazerian fl ame. In 1957 he was invited to abridge all twelve volumes of The Golden Bough and only turned the offer down because he had no time (Seymour 1995 : 369). Graves made an exceptionally detailed study of The Golden Bough partly because it chimed so well with beliefs he already held, for instance in seeing the world of magic and fairies as identical with those of children and of poets. Frazer’ s works both bolstered Graves’ s ideas and helped him extend them much further: for instance, the mythic resonances of individuals’ actions; the use of comparative mythology to create metamyths; the futility of religious dogmatism, since Chris- tianity was but a transformation of Judaism which was but a transformation of paganism, whose ghosts continued to harass and terrify Jews and Christians. Yet Graves’ s theories were much more elaborate than Frazer’ s and thus, to a disbe- liever, that bit more contrived. Also, the poet was no respecting student of the man, as he was quite prepared at times to satirize Frazer ’ s approach, in comic poems about seemingly bizarre customs (Vickery 1972 : 10, 32–34). Furthermore, he was very ready to contradict the anthropologist on anthropological matters. For Frazer is quite clear that the presence of matrilineality (the tracing of descent through female lines) does not imply matriarchy. In fact there is little ethnographic evidence to support Graves ’ s idea about universal (or even widespread) worship of a goddess, of whatever color. Graves ’s earlier, more psychoanalytic approach was above all based on the arguments of his anthropologist–healer Rivers; his later, mythological approach was primarily grounded on the encyclopaedic work of Frazer. In other words, Graves’ s mentor might have changed over time, but the centrality of anthropology to his work remained as important as ever; it continued as a constant throughout his life.

Magic, Witchcraft, and Other Gravesian Modes of Thought

Graves did not just employ conventional anthropological methods, but created a few distinctive ones of his own. He ﬁ rst discussed them in King Jesus, elaborated Robert Graves 117 them in The White Goddess , put them to extended use in his books on ancient myth, and subsequently referred to them in many of his writings and interviews. Best classed “para-anthropological” they are: analepsis, prolepsis, iconotropy. “Analeptic” thinking is “the recovery of forgotten events by a deliberate suspension of time.” And to produce a historical novel analeptically, a writer had to

train oneself to think wholly in contemporary terms. This is most easily done by impersonating the supposed author of the story, who has much the same function as the carefully costumed ﬁ gure placed in the foreground of an architectural drawing to correct misapprehensions about its size, date and geographical position. (Graves 1946 : 421)

Thus, in King Jesus , Graves was the mouthpiece of the late fi rst-century fi gure, Agabus the Decapolitan. His nephew states that, while writing Count Belisarius, which is set in the Late Roman Empire, Graves believed that “his use of analeptic thought had in a very real sense propelled him back into the past, and so he told [a close friend] that he had ‘never been back in Rome since around 540 AD’ ” (R. P. Graves 1995 : 279). This deep immersion into the life of another time, strictly parallel to a particularly intensive bout of anthropological fi eldwork, helps to clarify otherwise paradoxical statements of Graves ’ s. For example, if quizzed on television about his claims to have certain knowledge of long-distant events, he might retort, “I was around!” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 393). In a similar mode, he claimed to have been in Paradise, albeit “by the hallucinogenic backdoor,” i.e., ingestion of psychotropic mushrooms (Graves 4 iii 1961 to Patai, in Patai 1992 : 189). Analepsis could at times possess him, apparently. At one point in The White Goddess, he reports he solved a poetical riddle by analeptically listening in to a discussion between a Near East historian and a regional governor of Claudius (Graves 1948 : 341). Further, in conversation Graves would state that “lost” Hebrew facts which he deployed in his biblical reanalyses came to him in an “analeptic trance” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 393). Seymour-Smith states Graves ’ s absorption in the literary task to hand could be so great that his imagination could take over (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 393–394). The most heightened example of this was the writing of The White Goddess. Graves said he wrote the fi rst 70,000 words in three weeks in a trance-like state (Graves 1960 : 479). “Proleptic” thinking is “the anticipation, by means of a suspension of time, of a result that could not have been arrived by inductive reasoning” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 393). He appears to have used this technique much less than analepsis in his writings. For Graves, “iconotropy” is a technique to be practiced when icons are not defaced or physically altered; rather, interpreted in a manner contrary to the original cult (Graves 1946 : 423). This later interpretation could be literary rather than visual. Thus by restoring a transformed legend into pictorial form, the original myth which the transformations were meant to hide “will often leap to the 118 Anthropology in the Public Arena eye” (quoted in Patai 1992 : 51). Once an instance of iconotropy is identifi ed, Graves claims, the obfuscating reinterpretation can be unmasked and the original meaning revealed. He uses this technique throughout his two books on ancient myth, The Greek Myths and Hebrew Myths, and in a series of essays on the same period. For example, in “Pharaoh’ s Chariot Wheels” Graves carries out an extended iconotropic exercise into the Book of Exodus. At its conclusion he argues that its results show that a “legend directly derived from primitive religious practice” was later transformed into a story pointing a moral and defaming an enemy, glorifying the tribe, or accounting for some religious anomaly (Graves 2000 : 181). On occasion, he described his ability to spot iconotropy with biological metaphor: “It’ s all a question of smell; some things smell primitive however modern-looking; others smell modern however much patina ’ d by Biblical tradition of great age” (in Patai 1992 : 55). The longest single project Graves ever engaged in is the book where he uses analepsis and iconotropy to the greatest extent. In The Nazarene Gospel Restored Graves and his co-author, a learned Jew, Joshua Podro, argue that Jesus has been misrepresented by the Gentile faction of Christianity, now dominant in the Church. Paul had corrupted the work of Jesus for the sake of establishing a new religion. Instead of presenting Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew bent on liberating his people from Rome, Paul portrayed him as a depoliticized savior-god. As Graves wrote to T. S. Eliot,

I have been writing at the Graeco-Roman end; [Podro] at the Aramaic-Hebrew- Syriac end – we proceed from what is historically certain to what is certainly unhis- torical and arrive at the reasons for the acknowledged discrepancies in the Gospels and the acknowledged departures from historical fact, and are thus able to restore the original tradition. (14 v 1950, in Graves 1984 : 73)

Graves thought its publication would have a cataclysmic effect. As he told an old friend, “The Catholics will go on telling themselves fairy stories . . . But Protestant Christianity will be wiped out. The only refuge Protestants can fi nd will be to become Jews” (Matthews 1977 : 281). The book, a thousand pages long, raised much dust but few sales. Given the years Graves spent on it and his hopes for it, commentators have viewed the project as “sadly misconceived,” “the greatest single miscalculation” of his long writing career (R. P. Graves 1995 : 162, 231; Presley 2008 : 152). Some popular anthropologists come to practice what they publish. Michael Harner, anthropologist of Amazonian hallucinogens, set up a shamanic drum- ming academy; Carlos Castaneda, creator of Don Juan, established his own church. Graves, as a popular anthropologist, was not so organized, commercial, or self- promoting, but he does appear to have practiced what most anthropologists usually just study. For he believed in magic, miracles, and the effi cacious power of rituals (Graves 1960 : 479; Seymour-Smith 1988 : 134). Though he disclaimed Robert Graves 119 involvement in any form of witchcraft or spiritualism, his confi dante Seymour- Smith speaks of him as a man who seems “to exist in order to be ensorcerized” and implies strongly that Graves entered that state on many occasions (Graves 1960 : 479; Seymour-Smith 1988 : 463). In 1946 he sent a doctor-friend instructions on how to achieve the Goddess ’ s blessing, to save his wife a third miscarriage and, in what I take to be a deeply ironic manner, refers to himself as “Wizard Graves” (15 iv 1946, in Graves 1984 : 47–48). In 1964, on Hallowe ’ en, in the presence of his current muse, Graves blackened his face, put small bones into a box, took up a wand, and cast spells (Seymour 1995 : 426). During this period he might also engage in naked blood rites with her (Shakespeare 2006 ). On several occasions Graves reported the apparently magical effects of The White Goddess : positive on the one who chose to publish it, fatal for those who considered the manuscript only to turn it down (Graves 1984 : 51). His youngest son reveals he was quite ready to participate in a ghost-banishing ritual in their own house and, in times of drought, to ring his African rain bell (T. Graves 2004 : 68). T. S. Eliot regarded contemporary poets as modern-day shamans who worked word-magic on their audiences (MacClancy 2003 : 85–86; Kohli 2003 : 64). Graves, so often the extremist, took this idea much further than his primitivist peers. He regarded poets as seers, shamans, prophets, able to call on unworldly forces to real effect. In 1962, in a letter to his present muse, he claimed that becoming a poet had given him prophetic powers (R. P. Graves 1995 : 349, 373). A few years later he was proclaiming that he was a son of the Prophet, i.e., genealogically descended from Mohammed (Kersnowski 1989 : xi). In 1963 he told an academic audience that the relationship between a poet and his muse “is usually characterized by remarkable telescopings of space and time and by cosmic coincidences” (Graves 2000 : 119). His nephew and biographer states that at this time he was convinced that he and his contemporary muse “were in regular telepathic communication, and that from time to time they were actually present in some incorporeal form in each other’ s immediate surroundings (R. P. Graves 1995 : 383). By 1971, he was prepared to state in a letter to Len Lye, an old friend and avant-garde artist:

Yes, chum, you and I do things in a weird [way] certainly inherited from Ireland or Scotland or some place which enables us to work in the ﬁ fth dimension and so by-pass time, and to be considered geniuses for anticipating strange facts and phenomena. I’ m accustomed to it now after writing The White Goddess in perfect ignorance of history. (in Horrocks 2001 : 342)

Graves ’ s ability to apprehend occult forces persisted throughout much of his life. For instance, during the interwar years, the world he and Riding conjured was one in which the existence of evil as a force was recognized. In 1929 the poet whose rejection of Riding and subsequent liaison with Graves ’ s wife led to Riding going out the window was from then branded a “devil” by Graves (Seymour 1995 : 177–178, 196, 401). During their 1938 stay in a Breton chateau, Graves found a 120 Anthropology in the Public Arena magic hazel wand in a nearby wood called Les Bois des Fées (fairies); on All Souls’ Night he and his fellow occupants stood guard in what they considered a magic grove. According to one of his biographers, “there was a sense of witchery in the air” (Seymour 1995 : 263). More dramatically, during the separation of Riding and Graves, Riding claimed her future lover ’ s wife had confessed to sorcery and thus all her possessions had to be burned or destroyed. The exorcism was dutifully carried out (Seymour 1995 : 273; Baker 1993 : 394–397). And then, in 1961, shocked to discover his muse had left his side for the sake of a friend of his, Graves was swift to make accusations, once again, of Satanism (Seymour 1995: 401). He was also quite prepared to underline the persistence of similar practices in local life. In one letter he complained that “nobody will ever admit (offi cially) that there ’ s been a strong witch cult in Majorca ever since Jaime ’ s time” (Jaime of Spain, 1213–1276, conqueror of Majorca; 2 ii 1957, in Graves 1984 : 159). In a note to a short story devoted to local witchcraft, “She Landed Yesterday,” Graves took pains to stress that he had not invented any of the factual details (Graves 1995 : 328). To his children, he might refer to a villager as “Someone looked down upon her, as her mother was a witch” (L. Graves, pers. comm. June 18, 2010). At the same time, he could be careful to respect local discretion about certain events. When Sally Chilver once asked him about a death in the village, he replied, “I’ m not allowed to talk to you about that” (S. Chilver, pers. comm. March 25, 2010). His son William states there are still many dowsers on the island, and that the same Mallorquin word is used for both “dowsers” and “witches” (W. Graves, pers. comm. May 5, 2010). It is unclear exactly how Graves regarded the indigenous Deianiacs among whom he lived for so many decades. However, consider the following. First, his daughter Lucia, in her memoir of childhood in the village, calls it “remote in every sense of the word,” a “primitive place” where “only the earth and the water and the elements seemed to govern people ’ s lives.” She then devotes fi ve pages to a discussion of dones d’ aigo , local water-fairies (L. Graves 1999 : 43, 49–55). Second, Lucia describes her father in 1937 as then “living in the enchanted forest of poetry from which he would never emerge” (L. Graves 1999 : 11). Third, Graves’ s brother Charles, also a writer, described islanders on a mid-1930s trip to Deia in patently primitivist terms. He speaks of the “sensationally mediaeval appearance and manner of the local inhabitants. Spain is supposed to be two hundred years behind the rest of the world – Majorca is at least fi ve hundred years behind Spain. The peasants look as purely Gothic as the cathedral in Palma” (Graves 1936 : 219). Fourth, the US ethnographer of Deia, Jackie Waldren, a long-term resident there herself, admits that a village dispute which pitted locals against expatriates in the 1980s exposed the incomers’ dream of a mixed community as but a fantasy; members of the two groups did not so much live together, but in parallel (Waldren 1996 ). In these cross-cultural circumstances, where people could almost glide by one another in a state of mutual miscomprehension, and stereotyping fantasies could fl ourish, it is unsurprising that Graves, in his short stories about Majorcan Robert Graves 121 life, made the ethnographer ’ s common mistake: exoticizing the locals. For example, in “The Viscountess and the Short-Haired Girl” the Deianiacs appear deeply Other. On visiting London, they are presented as wily primitives in a sophisticated land, with Graves nudging the reader to cackle at their ignorance of foreign ways (see also “The Lost Chinese,” “Evidence of Affl uence,” “Está en su casa” [Graves 1995 ]). On occasion, Graves extended this stereotyping strategy to all forms of Spaniards, nobles as much as peons: puncturing the pretensions of any pigeon- chested male, no matter his class; lampooning the formality of contemporary Castilian, exaggerating its pompous turns of phrase and circumlocutions; bur- lesquing the rococo formality of dictatorial discourse (see, for example, “God

Figure 4.1 Robert Graves, with his son Juan, Deia, Mallorca, late 1940s. With permission of the Robert Graves Estate. 122 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Grant Your Honour Many Years,” “School Life in Majorca 1955,” “Thy Servant and God ’ s” [Graves 1995 ]). I accept that writers may choose to exaggerate local peculiarities for the sake of literary effect and of course the choice of his barbs says more about him than the barbed, but it is very diffi cult not to believe he saw many Deianiacs as other-worldly, magically oriented, bound to rural traditions: in other words, as similar to several aspects of his own myth-making personality. Graves ’ s belief in his magical powers and in the reality of analepsis come together in his manipulation of selected items. Graves was fascinated by objects, small fi gures from the past. On his fi nger he wore a ring holding a carnelian seal, which he took to be of the Argonaut period, depicting a royal stag fl anked by the moon (Steiner 1960 : 356). In his study in Deia he would work at his desk surrounded by books and a variety of objects, ancient and non-Western (Devecseri 1970 ). Graves believed he could connect with the past via these items, which emanated talismanic power. When writing on something, he would have an object of that time with him, which he would hold and “so go back into the past via analeptic thought” (Seymour 1995 : xvii, 207, see also 258; Wheldon 1962, in Ker- snowski 1989 : 52; Buckman and Fifi eld 1969 : 119; L. Graves, pers. comm. June 18, 2010). Graves implies very strongly that the Akan goldweights on his desk magically assisted the trance in which he wrote the fi rst draft of The White Goddess. Only later did he discover that the weights represented a herald and a salutation to the local moon-goddess (Graves 1960 : 479–480). On several occasions he contacted anthropologists, such as Mary Douglas, to assist him in the further identifi cation of his pieces (e.g., CA, E. Meyerowitz 15 ix 1953, 5 x 1953; M. Douglas 9 ii 1972). His daughter Lucia informed me that Graves did possess a “magic stone,” which he lost. While away from Deia, in the war-years away, he would still set out his talismanic objects in the study he was then using before settling down to work (Seymour 1995 : 256). To one visitor, he even claimed that the independent receipt of three ancient and African objects had “started me on the track” of The White Goddess (Haller 1956, in Kersnowski 1989 : 43).

Anthropologica

Several commentators have classed Graves a man of his Edwardian times. This was the case for his anthropology, which was usually pre-functionalist and anti- Malinowskian. His key inﬂ uences were Rivers, Frazer, the Cambridge Ritualists, especially Jane Harrison, and Hocart. His antipathy toward Malinowski was very likely due to the man’ s attack on Rivers. In a strikingly vituperative review of two of Malinowski ’ s books, Graves excoriates him for singling Rivers out in a belittling but ill-grounded manner. In a letter to Sassoon at this time, he stated Malinowski “must be a cad” (26 xii 1926, in Graves 1982 : 174). Graves argues that, for Malinowski, Rivers’ “error lay in being genuinely ﬁ rst class in too many subjects Robert Graves 123 and exciting jealousy by relating together too brilliantly the results of his researches in [a variety of] over-specialized departments of human knowledge” (Graves 1927 : 248). If error this be, it sounds strikingly similar to Graves’ s estimation of his own style. Over a decade later, he was still disposed to slight him. In The Long Week-End, the social history of interwar Britain he co-wrote in 1939, Graves chided post- Riversian anthropologists, especially Malinowski, whose works notoriously include The Sexual Life of Savages:

Sometimes they were such poor scientists that they became very friendly with their subjects of study. The true scientist was not supposed to fraternise with his guinea- pig, for fear that he might inﬂ uence its emotional behaviour. And sometimes they did not disguise their bawdy relish in the sex habits of primitives, and their reports were published rather as reﬁ ned erotic reading than as stern works of research. (Graves and Hodge 1940 : 92)

However, Graves was quite prepared to quietly borrow from Malinowski when it suited. For example, in his work on Hebrew myths, he relied heavily on Malinowski’ s defi nition of myth as “a traditional religious charter confi rming laws of customs” (in Patai 1992 : 183). Throughout his life, Graves had a high estimation for the nature and value of anthropology. In his historical and mythographic writings, Graves frequently referred to his “anthropological approach.” In 1953 he talked about his “incidental anthropological articles” (4 xi 1953, in Graves 1984 : 121). In a 1946 letter to one friend, he stated “Anthropology is the key science of the ‘humane’ ones” (Sey- mour-Smith 1988 : 401). To his collaborator on The Hebrew Myths he wrote, “I fi nd anthropologists my favourite class of scientists: it is in fact the basic science” (Patai 1992 : 99). Graves saw anthropologists as “a connecting link between poets and scientists.” Like scientists, they had to carry out systematic investigations, in their case through fi eldwork; yet, unlike scientists, while doing fi eldwork, they had to take magic, oracular prophecy, and divine possession seriously. By joining ceremonial rites, they gained subjective experience of these modes of thought and so, in Graves ’ s term, were cotched . As an example, he speaks, with evident approval, of two anthropologist-friends (his niece Sally Chilver and her colleague Phyllis Kaberry) “who, having been enstooled as queen-mothers of different tribes in West Africa, are now no more scientists than I am,” each talking of “my people” with mystical seriousness (Graves 2000 : 113). For Graves, living with and studying peoples who took magical phenomena as central was what made anthropologists special. Thanks to fi eldwork among the magically inclined, anthropologists could span the divide between other worlds and ours, between the poetic and the rational. In several novels Graves makes plain the integral role of anthropology in understanding human society. For instance, in his utopian novel Seven Days in New Crete (Graves 1949 ) he portrays a people ravaged by the nefarious consequences of 124 Anthropology in the Public Arena over-logical political philosophies. Responsibility for the formation of a new ideology is entrusted to an Anthropological Council, who decide that a new religion could not be programmatically imposed but could spring “only from primitive soil” (41). To that end, they create anthropological enclaves, each representing a different stage in the development of civilization. Most fail, but those of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages prove so successful that their overspill populate Crete. Here they establish a cult to the Mother-Goddess, loosely akin to pre-Christian religions of Europe, with pervasive ritualism: the penultimate chapter is a lengthy account of their key ritual, the death and rebirth of the King in the presence of the Queen. Since the Goddess is the fount of poetry, custom is based on the inspired utterances of poets, i.e., dictated by the Muse, who is the Goddess. In this non-industrial society the central principle is “nothing without the hand of love.” Yet every society is imperfect, this one has its “brutches” (emanations of bad luck), and romantic love, Graves wishes to argue, cannot be wholly confi ned by form, no matter how well grounded. His debt to Frazer throughout all this novel is only too clear. His choice of island setting, though, appears more due to Rivers. It was his late friend who got him to read about the Knossos excavations and to investigate whether there had been a goddess-centered religion on Crete (Seymour 1995 : 146). His anthropological concerns are equally patent in his historical novels. His novels about the Emperor Claudius are thick with detail about Roman customs and ceremonial, and in his introduction to Claudius the God he confesses his précis of British Druidism is augmented by “accounts of modern megalithic culture in the New Hebrides, where the dolmen and menhir are still ceremonially used” (Graves 1935 : 8). Here the evident debt is to Rivers, who in 1914 did fi eldwork on this question in the archipelago, now called Vanuatu. A further debt is very likely to the work of John Layard, who accompanied Rivers on his fi eldwork, as discussed in chapter 2 . In his King Jesus (1946) Graves rewrites the central story of all Christianity in novelistic form. Jesus is a historical actor who, by birthright, is the King of the Jews. He wishes to end the cycle of death and rebirth, and overcome the old matriarchal mystery cults, so he and his disciples work toward the immediate coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Since the people of Israel will not listen, he knows he must fulfi ll prophecy and let one of his followers kill him. But the plan goes wrong. Instead he endures a ritualized death, presided over by the Goddess in her triple aspect: matriarchy wins out. Though this bestselling novel is usually fast-paced, there are throughout the text numerous, often lengthy stretches devoted to unashamedly anthropological matters: learned, dense paragraphs on tribal genealogies, illustrious lineages and their important details, land-tenure and inheritance squabbles, regional stereotypes and sectarian rivalries (Graves 1946 : 315), the resolution of disputes, whether theological, legal, heretical, or revolutionary (332, 378ff). There are detailed sections on the rituals of different Hebraic sects and how exactly they differed; passages of sustained comparison of myths, rituals, and divinities in a neo-diffusionist Robert Graves 125 idiom; pages of studious, imaginative exegesis, worthy of a text-centered anthropologist (e.g., pp. 210–218, 402–404). There is even one dialogue which I can only classify as proto-structuralist (p. 219, see also p. 310). Chapter 14 is taken up with theological debates whose participants adduce mythico-historical dimensions to their arguments as casually as though withdrawing a handkerchief. Ten pages of chapter 19 are given over to an informed exchange between Jesus and a sorceress on opposed ways to interpret key icons. In other chapters the level and quantity of local detail rivals at times the better of ethnographies: the historical lay of the landscape where “every halting-place was a chapter of the Scriptures, or several chapters” (184); scholarly disputes about the nature, identity, and etymology of the Messiah. There are also extended symbolic interpretations (222–224), and learned sections on numerological interpretations, where numbers structure the world and are key to its greatest, most secret mysteries known only to the High Priests (e.g., pp. 218–222). Imagine, this enjoyable but ethnographically demanding novel sold well from the day of its launch in 1946. Halcyon days! Indeed, George Steiner judged the novel a failure because its anthropology overwhelms its fi ction (Steiner 1960 : 352).1 Graves’ s nephew and biographer, Richard Perceval Graves, states that in his novel The Golden Fleece “the number of minor characters, fl eetingly mentioned, makes some chapters rival the more genealogically minded books of the Old Testament” (R. P. Graves 1995 : 57). Graves was well aware of the demanding level at which he pitched his dense historical novels. As he grandly confessed to his brother in 1956, “I ought to write for the masses but it would embarrass me too much” (quoted in R. P. Graves 1995 : 256).

Academe, the Poet, and the Popular

Graves investigated and popularized material usually analyzed by academics only. Little surprise, then, that his relations with them were ambivalent, at times contrary. According to his son William, “He didn ’ t have any truck with any academics. He felt they’ d sold their soul to toe the party line” (W. Graves, pers. comm. May 5, 2010). In his own words, “The great way to keep one ’ s path clear is not to play ball with anyone” (29 viii 1954, in Graves 1984 : 138). A writer who had committed himself to living by his pen, Graves seemed very proud of his independence and the pricks he could kick: “How University professors hate me!” he exclaimed in 1954 (23 iii 1954, in Graves 1984 : 127). As a scholar who ranged across disciplines, Graves had little respect for tenured academics who tended their own turf and feared to venture further.

What always amazes me . . . is the crippling lack of liaison between specialists in particular departments of knowledge. For example, no expert in mythology has or 126 Anthropology in the Public Arena

wants to have any knowledge of astronomy, botany or sexual pathology . . . No New Testament critic studies the procedure in Jewish native courts of the 1st century. (1 ii 1951, in Graves 1984 : 86)

In response to classicists ’ severe criticisms of The White Goddess Graves would say, “Well, they don’ t understand it because they are not poets” (D. Taylor, pers. comm. May 18, 2010). He was, though, very happy to underline scholastic support if it came from prestigious academics (e.g., 19 ii 1954, in Graves 1984 : 124). Independent of academia and its institutional impediments, Graves could present himself as in advance of academics, who had yet to catch up with his ideas and approach. For instance, he considered his The Greek Myths “in advance of University fashion in the USA (i.e., it treats myths anthropologically and archae- ologically, and not as uprushes from so-called Jungian unconscious)” (23 iii 1954, in Graves 1984 : 127; see also Patai 1992 : 399). He could even contrast himself with the dullness of the university-tenured: to a friend he wrote that the argument in The Greek Myths is “much too exciting for Academics” (28 iii 1954, in Graves 1984 : 129). As in so many intellectual areas, when Graves made his mind up on an anthropological point, he was usually deaf to criticism. In the 1950s, when in Oxford as Professor of Poetry, Evans-Pritchard, Godfrey Lienhardt, and other leading practitioners of the day tried to discuss anthropology with him but quickly realized he was only interested in expounding, not listening (J. Waldren, pers. comm. 2002). In 1965 when Edmund Leach attempted to dissuade him away from matriarchy, on factual grounds, Graves would not shift but tried to fl oor him “with erudite irrelevancies” (Seymour-Smith 1988 : 388). By that time, Graves had formulated his own anthropological approach and did not wish to be lectured by others, no matter how prestigious their positions. Unsurprisingly, academics ’ opinion of him was very variable. Many saw Graves as a dangerous amateur, imposing his own fantasies on reality (Steiner 1960 : 354). The distinguished literary critic Paul Fussell considered The White Goddess “fl am- boyant fi ctional anthropology” and Graves “a manic illusionist” (Fussell 1976 : 206). Others acted as mealy-mouthed pedants or were plainly condescending: one calls him a “crank,” another thought his critical studies in comparative religion can be rejected wholesale, as “capricious and irrelevant,” “nonsense of an entertaining sort” (M. T. 1938; Bacon 1944; Bennett 1949 : 133, 136). Some reviewers of The Greek Myths were dismissive or merciless (Rose 1955 ; Herbert 1956 ; Macpherson 1958 : 18). One views him less as mythographer than myth-maker, the inventor of “social-science fi ction” who, by appearing to follow scholastic rules while in reality playing fast and loose with them, is not a scholar but a magician; another regards The White Goddess as “an egregious compendium of scholarship run amok” (Dimock 1955 ; Fromm 1991 : 198). Even popular anthropologists could damn his work. Lord Raglan slammed The White Goddess for its lack of references and judged much of it “nonsense” (Raglan 1949 ). One frank critic was open about Robert Graves 127 her dislike of Graves’ s imaginative eclecticism. Crabbing The Greek Myths, she complains of Graves ’ s juxtaposition of approaches “classifi able as ritualistic, semantic, iconotropic, anthropological, euhemerist. The purist steeped in a particular methodology cannot abide such miscellaneous possibilities” (Snipes 1979 : 104). A more specifi c, well-grounded criticism was that his iconotropic exercises frequently failed to provide the very icons which were meant to underpin his argument (e.g., Herbert 1956 ; Macpherson 1958 ). His lectures, delivered in Cambridge and Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s, are said to have caused uproar in the academic world (Seymour 1995 ). While Graves was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, he was lodged in St. Johns, his old college, with a young anthropologist and junior don, Don Taylor, in the rooms opposite. Taylor remembers that his fellows did not particularly like Graves, and disapproved of the number of parties he held, to which he invited friends such as the alcoholic actress Ava Gardner and the eccentric don Enid Starkie. The proposal in 1968 to make him an Honorary Fellow of the college only got through by one vote (D. Taylor, pers. comm. May 18, 2010). A senior member of the Royal Anthropologi- cal Institute proposed him as a fellow in the early 1950s, without success. Finally, to Graves’ s delight, he was elected FRAI in 1955 (R. P. Graves 1995 : 246). This academic suspicion of Graves could release a cascade of consequences. When a colleague heard Patai was collaborating with Graves, he warned him against the project: “You will ruin your reputation” (Patai 1992 : 247). In 1970 an old friend, Gordon Wasson, published a book about the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in ancient ritual yet made no mention of Graves ’ s considerable assistance to him. Graves, distressed by this discourtesy, reviewed the work and accurately opined, “Any mention of my work in academic books is so suspect as to detract from their sales value and general acceptance” (Graves 1972 : 8). Some university based scholars, however, were more discriminating in their response to Graves ’ s work. One US classicist reviewing The Greek Myths lists a series of academic objections to his style but then recognizes its “real value”:

Which, by its enthusiasm for myth, its lucid style, and its unshakeable conviction that myth is still alive and still meaningful, cannot fail to reach the reader and capture his interest. In the face of the adverse circumstances of our times, to maintain the tradition of myth is a service in comparison to which other considerations must be secondary. (Weisinger 1956 : 243)

Maurice Bowra was similarly laudatory, with only the most minor of qualiﬁ cations (Bowra 1956 ). Rex Warner, the writer, classicist, and translator of classical works, acknowledged the degree of conjecture Graves indulged in, but praised his prose and his commentaries as outstanding (Warner 1955 ). In 1959 a Cambridge physical anthropologist wrote approvingly to Graves that the senior classics master at Harrow had told him, “I know some of you dons don ’ t like [The Greek Myths], but, believe me, it’ s bloody good” (CA, Trevor, J. 27 ix 59). Never out of print, The 128 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Greek Myths is still “a most popular handbook” and “a very useful tool for students (and professors)” of classics (Pharand 2003 : 183).

The Perils of Collaborating with Charisma

In 1947 Graves wrote to Raphael Patai, a Hebrew anthropologist in the United States, with learned commentatory on his Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual (Patai 1947 ). Graves had already worked with the Hebrew scholar Joshua Podro on The Nazarene Gospel Restored. What makes his association with Patai so relevant here is that the academic wrote a doggedly detailed, revealing account which highlights the perils of collaboration between an inspired but learned poet and a meticulous scholar (Patai 1992 ). Patai clearly felt a sharp contrast, which runs throughout his account, between a dutiful academic ’ s painstaking assembly of evidence and Graves ’ s quicksilver ideas, borne of intuitive thinking (Patai 1992 : 36). As he later complained, some of Graves ’ s interpretations of ancient Hebraic events and customs were so inspired, so unverifi able that “it is almost impossible to ascertain whose mind is at work: that of the Ancient Hebrews whose workings Graves claims to have uncovered, or that of Graves himself ” (49). A further tension was that of style: Patai wished to be scholarly accountable; Graves ’ s concern was to avoid even a single dull paragraph. Patai wanted every factual statement grounded on sources with accompa- nying references, Graves wanted crispness of statement and a text as free of scholastic apparatus as possible. Patai thought terms such as “possibly,” “could be,” or “this suggests” would be more in line with academic practice; he did, however, recognize that inclusion of qualifying phrases would weaken the force and fl ow of Graves ’ s exposition (59).The pair did not battle over footnotes, merely engaged in gentlemanly skirmishes from time to time (269, 273, 279). Patai did persuade Graves to agree to the inclusion within each reinterpreted myth of footnotes referring to their main sources, but he could gain no more (156). Patai ’ s concerns about Graves ’ s methods were counterbalanced by awe for his abilities. He was quite aware that Graves might read feminist meanings into biblical passages which scholars could not see, or that he might introduce a female goddess “into the least likely places” (39; 72). He found it diffi cult to follow Graves when he made statements, for example, against prose “in which one thinks on only one level at a time” (45). But Patai felt humbled by the poet’ s mastery of English. He was also impressed by Graves ’ s erudition, his ability to cite facts few non-talmudists would have known, and his capacity to appreciate the moral stature of the Talmudic sages (150, 184, 266). Further, he thought Graves made genuine discoveries, e.g., in King Jesus, the coronation of Jesus reenacting a series of ancient Hebrew coronation rites (42). Robert Graves 129

Patai believed that he understood myths, but that Graves lived them and breathed them (Patai 1992 : 249). He is frank that he was taken by the poetic persona, the “magic aura which emanated from him.” At several points in his book he mentions observing a distanced look on his face, “as if the poet that Graves was had reverted momentarily to the ancestral vates , the seer, carrying the burden of the double gift: to see what others cannot see, and to be compelled to clothe it in words of magic and power” (196). At these moments, Graves appeared to Patai a prophet “who saw, heard, and spoke in the name of a higher power” (261). And he accepts that it was this vision of Graves which made him shy from pressing his scholastic case too hard (262). This was not the fi rst time a scholastic collaborator had retreated in the face of all Graves represented. Podro confessed to his son that the pleasure of working with Graves was too great to give up for the sake of academic dispute. He would thus on occasion acquiesce to the inclusion of a scene against his better judgment (Seymour 1995 : 330). The criticism of The Hebrew Myths stung Patai. Refl ecting years later on the wilder claims within the book, he wondered whether he had not been tempted to reduce his vigilance, and that he should have monitored Graves’ s commentaries more closely (Patai 1992 : 156–7, 164). He recognized there were points on which Graves would not budge, especially about iconotropy, matriarchy, and the goddess. Since he could not persuade him further, they compromised on phrasings, with some of which Patai was not totally satisfi ed. He states subsequent reviews made him regret “I was not more insistent in having my way, but in the circumstances I was unable to argue more energetically than I did” (255). Deeply committed because of the years already spent on the project, and hopeful of good sales, Patai had been seduced by charisma and image. It is, at the least, ironic that Graves and Patai were criticized for ignoring Lévi- Strauss. For just as the French mythologist liked to class his interpretation of a myth as but the latest in a series of transformations of that myth, so has Graves been classed as creating the latest version of the myth he claims to be excavating (Smeds 1997 ; Bertholf 2003 : 120). At this rate, The White Goddess and his works on ancient myth are not so much a scholarly uncovering of the past more a modern re-draping of it.

Anthropologists, Academic and Otherwise

Graves was pleased to be friends, and collaborate with sympathetic anthropologists (Graves 1956 : 472). While at Oxford, he was happy to give a talk to the University Anthropological Society (OUASP, Box 4, 22 xi 1961; Parkin 2007 : 145). He liked to boast that the distinguished anthropologist Phyllis Kaberry was “a great friend of ours” (Simpson 1963 : 183). He was particularly proud of Sally Chilver, who used to obtain books for him, and made constructively critical 130 Anthropology in the Public Arena comment on The White Goddess; whenever they met, he would ask, “What should I be reading?” (R. P. Graves 1995 : 101; Chilver to Graves, n.d., CA; S. Chilver, pers. comm. March 15, 2010; D. & I. Taylor, pers. comm. May 18, 2010). She remembers that at Deia he would have anthropological journals like Africa lying around on his table (S. Chilver, pers. comm. March 15, 2010). The remnants of his library still there include an array of anthropologica spanning six decades. For many years Graves worked closely with Eva Meyerowitz, an anthropologist of Africa with a diffusionist approach complementary to his “goddess” thesis. In their extended correspondence between the early 1950s to the early 1970s, they exchange abstruse mythological points, discuss arcane calendrical systems, and share erudite comments on aspects of ancient symbolism. Both valued their collaboration highly. In a letter to Patai, Graves calls her work “extraordinarily helpful”; in one from Meyerowitz to him, she speaks of “the joy,” “the encouragement,” “the stimulation” his assistance gave her (Patai 28 x 1953; Meyerowitz to RG 28 iii 1958; CA). Graves generously and carefully emended the manuscript of her The Akan of Ghana: Their Ancient Beliefs (1958) and even had his secretary retype its fi rst chapter (Meyerowitz to RG 2 vi 1956; CA). It seems Graves held her in such esteem because use of her work lent an ancient African dimension to his analyses. However, he did not publicly acknowledge how very helpful Akan Tradi- tions of Origin (1952) was to him while writing The Greek Myths (Seymour 1995 : 417). Meyerowitz, an independent, often cash-strapped anthropologist, was so grateful to him because he was one of the few who lent support to her academically unfashionable thesis: in 1959 she was hurt by “a devastatingly bad review” of her book “by an enemy of mine,” Jack Goody (from Meyerowitz 27 ii 1959; see Goody 1959 ). In fact many anthropologists did not regard her as a colleague and equal but as an antiquarian, while Patai considered some of her interpretations “fl ights of fancy” (Patai 1995: 167; S. Ardener, pers. comm. June 24, 2010; J. Goody, pers. comm. January 20, 2011).2 In the 1950s and 1960s Graves assisted Wasson, a learned New York banker with whom he shared great interest in the anthropology of psychotropic mushrooms. Over the years Graves sent him a great deal of information he came across in his readings, as well as his latest opinions about etymological points. Graves also asked his fellow amateur to check with his fi eldwork collaborator, a Mexican curandera (priestess, healer), his ideas about the role of mushrooms in ritual (22 x 1955, in Graves 1984 : 149). In 1962 he even declared that were he his son’ s age, “I’ d make ethno-mycology my trade” (10 vi 1962, in Graves 1984 : 216). A further anthropologically inspired friend of Graves was Len Lye, who had spent some time studying tribal art and rituals in Samoa “where ‘mother-right’ formed part of the culture” (Seymour 1995 : 157). He and Graves were both greatly interested in ancient art and mythology: in the 1980s Lye referred to the two of them as old “myth men.” In Deia, Graves and Riding made him the principal artist of the Seizin Press, decorating their books with primitivist motifs (Horrocks 2001 : 108, 110, 425; also Lye 1930 : 16, 19). Riding’ s infl uence on Graves during their Robert Graves 131 years together should also not be minimized. She and Graves often talked about non-Western cultures and myth; her own writings refer to Frazer, Rivers, and Malinowski, among others (Jackson 1993 : chs. 4, 8; Seymour 1995 : 220). She was particularly close to Lye and strongly promoted his primitivist work. Graves was prepared to put his money where his mouth was, and fi nancially assisted two of his anthropologically inclined friends. In 1929 he was a part-sponsor of Lye’ s revolutionary cartoon-movie Tusalava, based on Samoan designs, part of his “fi lmic anthropology” (Armstrong 2001 ; Horrocks 2001 : 92; Baker 1993 : 248). In the mid-1960s he sponsored Meyerowitz’ s return fi eld-trip to Ghana, and the next year offered more support so that she could write her latest book in peace (Meyerowitz to RG 28 xii 1967, 30 i 1968; CA). Graves was even prepared to teach the subject, on occasion. One signifi cant resident in Deia in the early 1950s was the US sculptor James Metcalf. His account of how to work metal led Graves to believe the Cyclopes were bronze-smiths; in turn he gave Metcalf “a complete education in anthropology” (Seymour 1995 : 344).

Of the Poker- and the Po-Faced: Graves, His Critics, and His Co-Believers

The works of a popular anthropologist can have a rainbow-like range of consequences, both intended and not. According to Graves, an Early Christian Society was founded in Cambridge, based on The Nazarene Gospel Restored , while “various” White Goddess religions were established in New York State and California (Buckman and Fiﬁ eld 1969 ). It is highly probable that The White Goddess and other like-minded works of his were key sources leading to the continuous stream of feminist writings on matriarchy and Great Goddess writings which ﬁ rst emerged in the 1970s (di Leonardo 1998: ch. 3). A further, unexpected consequence of The White Goddess was its role in the revival of contemporary witchcraft. In particular Gerald Gardner, who had so much effect on many covens in postwar Britain, met with Graves and took on board the book’ s feminist emphasis (Hutton 1999 : 272; Lindop 2003 : 31). As the number of letters to him in the Canellun archive attest, Graves himself was to maintain an extensive correspondence with practicing witches. One journalist visiting Deia was bade silence by Beryl because Graves was in conference with a group who had traveled a long way to request his expert opinion “in some occult matter” (Devecseri 1970 , in Kersnowski 1989 : 137). Little wonder then, that even a sober literary critic can classify the volume as “the sacred text of a new and ancient faith” (Ward 2003 : 88). Not only the gullible or the already-inclined fell prey to the power of Graves: during the war Churchill is said to have studied his Count Belisarius for helpful ideas (Seymour 1995 : 259). 132 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Many were unconvinced. Graves’ s excursions into biblical studies were roundly attacked by academics in that ﬁ eld. Patai attributed their harsh words to mistrust, if not suspicion, of people they regarded as intruders (Patai 1995: 126). It is my impression (I cannot be more exact) that this criticism is common to boundary- crossers in this general area of study. Leach ’ s studies in the mid-1970s of biblical myth were similarly crabbed by scholars of the Ancient Near East (Leach and Aycock 1983 ). Anthropologists of south Asia tell me that they are criticized by Indologists if they venture into Sanskrit studies (N. J. Allen, pers. comm. March 8, 2011). Perhaps the criticism of Graves was particularly strong because he relished the role of provocateur and was not himself a university based academic. Perhaps his extra-mural example was too threatening to those within their ivory towers. Yet his industry is unquestionable, and arguably deserved serious commentary rather than haughty dismissal by wannabe Olympians outraged an intruder was scaling their supposed heights. Graves exploited anthropological materials and modes of analysis to iconoclastic end. After all, The Nazarene Gospels Restored was a failed attempt to explicitly “destroy the Church . . . Christianity will be ﬁ nished” (Matthews 1949, in Ker- snowski 1989 : 24). One reason this grand project foundered was because, once again, the academically blinkered refused to take him seriously. When I emailed a senior Oxbridge scholar in Hebraic studies about Graves’ s biblical work, he/she replied, “No-one actually uses Graves’ Nazarene Gospels Restored at all any more” (Anon. June 7, 2010). However, the statement repeated by Graves’ s biographers, that a good number of scholars of the Ancient Near East have subsequently pursued similar lines of enquiry to those in The Nazarene Gospels Restored, does appear to be the case. As the Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby opined in the mid-1990s,

The Nazarene Gospel Restored remains a mine of insights which any New Testa- ment scholar would do well to read and re-read. It is one of those works that have had a seminal inﬂ uence which too often has not been openly acknowledged out of a fear of academic ridicule. Many a scholar has made a career out of just one of the intuitions which Graves threw off so abundantly. (Maccoby 1996 : 51)

In this instance at least, Graves ’ s claim that his work was ahead of that done by academics appears very well grounded, as was the statement to Patai by one colleague that academic association with Graves was tantamount to career-suicide. Perhaps it was Graves ’ s fi ne sense of the ludic which provoked intolerant dismissal. First, several have openly queried whether Graves at root believed in the doctrines he propounded. Whenever questioned directly, he was predictably evasive. Second, at times it is diffi cult not to think that Graves is parading his knowledge, striving to dazzle the reader, bludgeon critics, and tease academics with the range and depth of his various expertise. Third, remember also, his writing of a magical formula, signed off as “Wizard Graves,” where he both sup- Robert Graves 133 plies the information required and distances himself from it. At moments like these, Graves appears in earnest play, mocking the monodisciplinary and tempting the unwary academic to join his game. For what if, as one critic subversively implies, he is in truth a satirist in mythographer-gear, and his White Goddess but “Jonathan Swift in anthropological drag?” (Fromm 1991 : 197; see also Baker 1993 : 301; Lindop 1997 : x). This is a fundamental difference between a tenured academic and a popular practitioner. Graves can afford to take risks; academics have to check their method and argument at every plodding step. They have to abide by the scholarly rules, which include sobriety in language and seriousness of tone. Graves can make hay, “championing the implausible” (Steiner 1960 : 364); they have to be more guarded or risk losing the esteem of their peers. Graves can claim the learned poet ’ s pre- rogative of intuitive inspiration; his mundane opponents can only rely on common academic standards and assiduous dedication to the small task at hand. Of course, Graves is not truly independent, only semi-detached from the rules of Academe. Nor is he free of his public, for if he fails to enchant, what use a writer whose words are not read? One problem with a popularizer who has no university post is the lack of research students to carry on the baton. Unless exceptionally charismatic, a popularizer has few, if any epigones to help lay down a tradition, to extend the maes- tro’ s style or further application of their ideas. In universities, the structure of the academic endeavor necessarily creates traditions: authors are obliged to cite sources and relevant forebears; leaders of introductory courses are forced to represent selected members of the late great. Little space is given to the unorthodox, or the serious but irreverent. The closest Graves, as anthropologist, came to winning proselytizers were three historical novelists who wrote about the ancient and mediaeval worlds, and frequently employed an embattled “Goddess” theme: the well-selling Henry Treece, the bestselling Mary Renault, and the phenome- nally successful Rosemary Sutcliff (Fox 1967 : 18; Sweetman 1993 : 177; Hutton 1999 : 285). As evidence of the ways Graves’ s acolytes might confer, Meyerowitz, when visiting Capetown, went to call on Renault “because she was someone else in love with The White Goddess and interested in the change from matrilineal to patrilineal” (Meyerowitz to RG, 24 iii 1959; CA). The only contemporary baton- carrier I know of is the Irish postmodern novelist Paul Murray, whose much- praised Skippy Dies is underpinned by Graves’ s ideas of the White Goddess as dangerous muse (Murray 2010 ). In sum, Graves applied and popularized anthropology throughout his lengthy career. He did so because he thought it worth the candle, and so offered an indirect tribute to the revelatory power of anthropology. No matter that his academic counterparts thought his approach jarringly out of date, Graves applied traditional and novel anthropological methods to anthropological materials for usually anthropological ends. In these ways, he stimulated anthropological debate among his readers, repeatedly reminded them of the relevance of the discipline to broader 134 Anthropology in the Public Arena issues, and most likely turned several of them into amateur anthropologists of their own. In the interwar years, Malinowski had pushed his fi eldworked brand of anthropology into educated debate, thanks to his engaging polemic and provi- sion of detailed ethnography, hitherto almost unknown. Graves played a similar, albeit more indirect role, above all, in the postwar decades, by encouraging a range of publics to take anthropological perspectives on board: readers of poetry, lovers of the ancient world, defenders of the Christian faith, prophets of a New Age. Given the dearth of anthropologists at this time prepared to enter public fora, his ability to keep the subject within public debate becomes all the more manifest. Indeed as the inventor of a new kind of ethnographically rich historical fi ction, Graves is one of the most successful of anthropological disseminators. His bestselling pair of Claudius novels are still in print, and are still the works by which he is best known; his King Jesus, Count Belisarius , and a range of his other historical novels also did very well. His son, William, told me in 2010 that his publishers continue to sell tens of thousands of his books every year. At the same time, Graves created and participated in a network, however loose, of the anthropologically informed, helped to legitimate and sustain their interests, and even, on at least two occasions, sponsored anthropological research. Further, he corresponded with a good number of academics, many of whom seemed to revel in the opportunity to escape the usual confi nes of their particular discipline. In these ways he seems to have acted as a nexus for the academically disenchanted, the amateur but learned scholar, and the spiritually inclined happy to bolster their beliefs with ethnographic materials. I suspect that this kind of boundary-blurring encounter, stimulated by enthusiastic exemplars able to transcend academic vs. popular divides, may be more common than is generally recognized.

Notes

1 In a similar manner to my detailing of the contents of King Jesus, Kingsley Amis, in his review of Homer ’ s Daughter (Graves 1955 ), lists the ways the action of the novel is “tricked out . . . by portents, divinations, the recounting and expounding of myths, and a tremendous display of erudition (or plausibility) over such matters as the furni- ture, dress, trade, entertainment and eating and drinking habits of the period” (Amis 1955 ). 2 See also http://stmarys.ca/ ~ wmills/course316/3Africa_Egypt.html . Accessed March 21, 2011. 5 Mass Observation A Radical, Popular Ethnography of the People, by the People, and for the People

Poetry will be made by all. Lautréamont

André Breton did not like anthropologists, whom he criticized for their regard glacé. He thought these

specialists of the “human sciences” take advantage of their stay in the ﬁ eld, even though it be of the least perilous or the briefest . . . That this circumstance fundamentally uncovers the very opposite of a profound communication with the ethnic group on which they had designs and on which they imposed themselves, is only too probable. (quoted in Jamin 1986 : 56, my trans.)

Breton ’ s attitude is initially surprising, for Clifford (1988a ) portrays Paris between the wars as a time and a place where the ﬂ edgling discipline of ethnography and the emergent aesthetic of Surrealism mutually enriched one another. The culturally critical approach of either one to a conventionally deﬁ ned reality both mir- rored and gave depth to the equally radical approach of the other. But as Jamin’ s (1986, 1991) re-analysis of the period suggests, Surrealists and ethnologists had little of substance to say to one another – even when they were listening: “If both extend invitations to travel to the far reaches of ‘otherness’ to discover ‘the savage heart,’ one discipline is committed to preserving it as such, listening for the echo of repressed and buried voices there, and the other is committed to explicating it through concepts and an interpretative grid” (Jamin 1991 : 84–85). Given this historically particular context, where ethnologists and Surrealists appear as mere traveling companions, and given that Clifford, as he openly

Anthropology in the Public Arena: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, First Edition. Jeremy MacClancy. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 136 Anthropology in the Public Arena confesses, deals more with the inﬂ uence of ethnography on Surrealism than vice versa, it is instructive – both for our ideas about the possibilities of ethnography and for our understanding of the way the historiography of anthropology has been constructed – to look at an alternative case, at one where a group of Surreal- ists joined forces with a popularizing anthropologist to do prolonged ethnographi- cal work on their own people. In other words, the establishment by Charles Madge, Humphrey Jennings, and their friends, together with Tom Harrisson, of Mass Observation.

A Democratic Surrealism

British Surrealism was not a pale imitation of the original French variety. Though greatly stimulated by the ideas of Breton and his fellows, many of the British artists and poets who called themselves Surrealist did not baldly copy the approach of their Parisian peers but came to develop their own conceptions of the Surrealist project. They tended to understand the movement in their own way and to express it in their own terms. The fi rst British apostles of the Surrealist message were the young poet David Gascoyne and the wealthy painter Roland Penrose. Both had resided in Paris for prolonged periods, where they had learnt of and had been converted to the “cause.” Back in London, in 1935, they gave themselves the mission of forming “a group of poets and painters who shared our urgent desire to make clear to Londoners that there was a revelation awaiting” (Penrose 1981 : 60). Gascoyne produced A Short Survey of Surrealism , which sold out almost immediately. The next year, Penrose organized an International Surrealist Exhibition. Breton, Dali, and Herbert Read, the leading British critic of the avant-garde, all gave lectures. Brancusi, Klee, Picasso, Henry Moore, Paul Nash, and over fi fty other artists all lent works. So many people attended the opening, the traffi c was stopped in Bond Street and Piccadilly; journalists on the national newspapers wrote chatty articles on the event for weeks afterwards (Ray 1971 : 137, 150). Surrealism had arrived. Despite Penrose ’s intentions, British Surrealists never coalesced into a cohesive group on a par with Breton’ s coterie. Perhaps the most closely knit circle that did form in Britain was the collection of friends who used to meet regularly at the home of Charles Madge in Blackheath, London. Their number included David Gascoyne (poet), Stuart Legg (fi lmmaker), Ruthven Todd (poet), William Empson (poet and critic), and Kathleen Raine (poet and Madge ’ s wife). Several of them had been educated at Cambridge where they had been members of the brilliant group of students under I. A. Richards, the promoter of “practical criticism.” As Madge said of this select undergraduate set, “We had in common a sense of the important shifts of vision which were taking place in the giant intellectuals of the nineteenth century, and which changed the relation of prose and poetry and Mass Observation 137 undermined the older antithesis of the material and the spiritual” (quoted in Mer- ralls 1961 : 31). Like so many other leftwing writers, fi lmmakers, and photographers of that time (Cunningham 1988 ), they harbored the hope of creating artistic forms which might provide a kind of social therapy and maybe even help bring about social change. They wished to represent the modern world in a contemporary mode. Emphasizing the primacy of reality, they wanted to reveal the texture of everyday life, which the great majority of their forebears had disregarded for the sake of an overly composed classicism or an elitist romanticism (Calder and Sheridan 1988 : 4). Unlike many of their peers, however, they did not attempt to achieve these aims in a purely documentary manner but tried valiantly to blend that approach with their own interpretation of Surrealism, to which they had been introduced by Gascoyne and Jennings.1 In developing their own form of Surrealism, this clutch of co-believers came to employ the Freudian theory of sexuality as the mainspring of all unconscious activity, but in a much less doctrinaire manner than their Parisian counterparts. Breton was “obsessed” with the notion of love, and with the power of sex to undermine bourgeois morality; he and his associates regarded the erotic relation between the sexes as a central Surrealist concern (Ades 1993 ; Matthews 1993 ). In contrast, Madge and his friends thought sex was not to be forgotten, but nor was it to be placed on center-stage to the exclusion of almost all else. Compared to their Continental colleagues, these London-based Surrealists tended to be, at one and the same time, less concerned with revolutionary rhetoric as such and more socially committed. Instead of merely talking about the need for social change, they also wished to try to bring it about. Of all the talented persons who met at Madge ’ s house, the one whom they generally regarded as the most remarkable, and the most infl uential in the development of their ideas, was Humphrey Jennings. 2 Though he was one of the most voluble protagonists of Surrealism in Britain, Jennings ’ version of the creed was, in many ways, a somewhat unorthodox one. For while he recognized the key importance of the unconscious, he thought its greatest revelatory value lay not in the realms of personal expression, but in those of collective expression. He was uninterested in personal achievement in the arts and thought that the time for individual self-expression had passed (Raine 1950 : 2). In his discussions he would never speak of “the symbol,” which for him was essentially a vehicle for private expression, but of “the image”: to him a very broad concept denoting a much more public, readily accessible form of representation. It lay somewhere between an idea and a sensation, for it was more vivid than an abstract idea yet was more intangible than a concrete sensation. While basing his ideas of the image on Breton ’ s conception of “the Surrealist object” (i.e., of a person ’ s unconscious thought made concrete), Jennings held that the image, to be valid, had to be discovered, not invented. Since he regarded the workings of the unconscious as, to an important degree, impersonal, the image, if it was to have 138 Anthropology in the Public Arena any worth, had to be equally impersonal. Poets were not to create, and could only communicate a kind of truth to the extent that the images they employed were public, collective, and historical. Thus an image was not to be thought up by a gifted person; rather, to be sought out in the external world, in literature, or in the past (Raine 1967 : 49; Ray 1971 : 179). It was to be taken as a manifestation, not of the individual working outside of time, but of the community acting within time.3 According to Breton, the discovery of an image exposed the operation of “objective chance.” This concept, one of the more striking within Surrealism, signifi ed the apparently chance encounter of an external object with a previously felt inner desire. What others might have regarded as the random coming-upon of an objectifi cation of their feelings and thoughts was to Surrealists a highly signifi cant meeting which served to reveal the subtle links connecting the objective world to the unconscious. Thus premonitions were to be heeded for their prophetic value. On this reading of humans ’ relation with their environment, coincidence was not a marginal, freak occurrence, but a repeated phenomenon central to the workings of the world. Once again, Jennings interpreted this notion in his own democratizing manner:

“Coincidences” have the inﬁ nite freedom of appearing anywhere, anytime, to anyone: in broad daylight to those whom we most despise in places we have most loathed: not even to us at all: probably least to petty seekers after mystery and poetry on deserted sea-shores and in misty junk-shops. (Jennings 1936 : 168)

Unlike the Paris-based Surrealists, who boasted of their revolutionary inclinations and their wish to break with all tradition, Jennings, while strongly committed to a socialist restructuring of society, was deeply imbued with a sense of the spirit of England. For him, the present was seamlessly united with the glory of his country ’ s past. And he sought to represent the history of the English imagination, of its evolving sensibility since the coming of the Industrial Revolution, by compiling an anthology of textual “images” from the works of contemporary writers, engineers, and scientists. Extracts for this work, which he entitled Pandemonium , were selected on the basis of the imaginative impact they had made (Jennings 1985 ). For him, this sort of archival enterprise had much more than mere antiquarian interest: he considered that the imagination had to “test itself continually against historical actuality; for such actuality is itself an embodiment of imaginative truth; man creates his world continually in the image of his dreams” (Raine 1967 : 50).4 Jennings spent his energies in several fi elds of artistic endeavor. In contrast Madge largely restricted his talents to poetry, in which he had already established a solid reputation.5 But though lauded as a poet, Madge (pers. comm. 1994) regarded himself as a frustrated scientist-to-be and he was attracted to Surrealism partly because he thought it had scientifi c potential: “Surrealism is a science by virtue of its capacity for development and discovery and by virtue of the anonym- Mass Observation 139 ity of its researches. Like science it is an apparatus which, in human hands, remains fallible” (Madge 1933 : 14). For him, Surrealism held the appealing promise of uniting art and science, “because the human needs from which both arise are laid open to the light of day, and seem to be the same” (Madge 1937c : 32). Both dealt, not with the inexplicable, but with what had not yet been explained. Just as scientists analyzed the workings of the world and made generalizations which applied not only to themselves but to every member of society, so artists were to observe not merely themselves but everybody, and their works were not to satisfy their own isolated fantasies but the needs and wishes of the masses. 6 On this account, Surrealist endeavor was ultimately equivalent to, and as potentially valuable as, work done in a university laboratory. Madge had worked for the Daily Mirror as a reporter and as a jobbing subeditor responsible for the layout of the tabloid’ s center-pages of photographs. This experience led him to develop the rudiments of a theory of modern mass culture. On the Mirror he said he was told to “concentrate on ‘Sex, Scandal and Crime.’ Behind these three grisly abstractions, I glimpsed the afterglow of another trio in whose names much confusion had been wrought: Beauty, Truth and Goodness. Sex, Scandal and Crime are the poetry of modern journalism” (1937a: 153–154). Madge regarded this “queer poetry” of newspapers, and of advertisement hoardings, as a compromise between the material interest of their owners and the “mass-wish”; both forms of public statement served “as vehicles for the expression of the unconscious fears and wishes of the mass” (Madge 1937a : 153–154). Skilled layout men, whose livelihood depended on their ability to put together a good page (i.e., one the public wanted), had to know how to satisfy this mass-wish. Their work – selecting and setting out photographs in a patterned manner agreeable to the mass – could thus be seen as a sort of collage, or visual poem, summing up the “social unconscious” of the moment (Madge 1937b : 284; Gascoyne 1980 : 9). Graffi ti, Madge thought, could be viewed in a similar light, for it offered the possibility of reading signs of the collective unconscious uninfl uenced by the self-interest of proprietors or advertisers. As far as he was concerned, the writing was on the wall for those who wished to learn the thoughts and dreams of the otherwise inarticu- late mass. 7 To Raine ( 1975 : 81), her husband seemed at the time “a man inspired.” They, the ever-enthusiastic Jennings, and their friends became so thrilled by the ideas they were debating, that it appeared, as she later put it, they were “on the crest of a wave of excitement which at the time seemed the beginning . . . of an imaginative adventure” (Raine 1974 : 1). For them, the external world had become magical, the cities dream structures, ones stocked with the objective correlates of interior lives. Seeking for “lineaments of the most high in the most low” (Raine 1975 : 84), they tried to discern on the surfaces of dingy walls and in commercial posters traces of the collective unconscious, of the sorrowful as well as of the beautiful. Hence they walked the streets with “a strange sense of dedication, of quest,” for “anywhere, everywhere, we might receive a sign” (Raine 1975 : 84). 140 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Toward the end of 1936, however, Madge and his friends came to realize that they could observe the workings of the social unconscious more clearly and in a much less haphazard manner by studying the public reaction to occurrences of wide symbolic import. It was above all during such events – in Surrealist terms, “coincidences” – that the otherwise repressed condition of the British people materialized. One such event was the burning of the Crystal Palace, that architectural symbol of Victorian achievement, in late November 1936; to the Blackheath group, the public ’ s fascination with its destruction was an expression of the masses ’ unconscious fears that a world-conﬂ agration was already on the way (Gascoyne 1980 : 9). Another such event was the Abdication Crisis of early December when the new “Father-of-the-people” threatened to give up his crown for the sake of a US divorcee. On that occasion, for supposed reasons of state, the national papers had not adequately expressed the mass-wish in print (Madge 1937e ). In order to overcome this sort of ofﬁ cial silencing and to record the opinions of the people, Madge’ s group began to establish “observation points,” where they would undertake what he termed “mass observation.” Thus when on December 12 the New Statesman, the leading leftwing weekly, published a letter by a Cambridge scientist arguing that the popular response to the Crisis showed the need for an anthropology of Britain, Madge was able to reply in the next issue that a group concerned with precisely that task had already been formed (Madge 1937d ; Pyke 1936 ). By chance, Madge ’ s letter was published alongside a poem by Tom Harrisson, a popularizing anthropologist who, after recently returning from a prolonged expedition to the Melanesian archipelago of the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), had started to investigate British proletarian life by living as a lorry-driver in the Lancashire cotton-milling town of Bolton. On reading Madge ’ s letter, Harrisson made the trip to Blackheath where he agreed to coordinate his efforts with those of the Surrealists. Working very quickly, they wrote a joint letter and published a pamphlet which set out the aims and hopes of their combined project (Harrisson, Jennings, and Madge 1937 ; Madge and Harrisson 1937 ). Mass Observation would study British life, both physical behavior and mental phenomena, by working with a mass of observers, who would come from all walks of life. In this way the artist and the scientist would be “at last joining forces and turning back towards the mass from which they had detached themselves” (Harrisson, Jennings, and Madge 1937 ). Madge would coordinate the National Panel, which would receive day- reports monthly from observers throughout the country. Harrisson would manage a more intensive study of the life of one town, Bolton. Mass Observation would not set out in quest of truth or facts for their own sake, or for the sake of an intellectual minority, but would aim at exposing them in simple terms to all observers, so that their environment might be understood, and thus constantly transformed. By gaining knowledge people could emancipate themselves. For “the foisting on the mass of ideals or ideas developed by men apart from it . . . causes mass misery, Mass Observation 141 intellectual despair and an international shambles” (Harrisson, Jennings, and Madge 1937 ). They concluded with an appeal for volunteers. 8

A Day in the Life

The fi rst book produced by the new team was May 12th, 1937, a study of people’ s behavior on the day George VI was crowned. Jennings and Madge, who edited it (1937), regarded the coronation, like the burning of the Crystal Palace and the Abdication Crisis, as a key symbolic event when otherwise repressed elements of the social unconscious would be released. By reporting what people felt, did, and saw on that special day, they hoped to gain insight into the usually silenced concerns of the British mass. The bulk of their thick book is made up of reports from 43 Mass Observers, who had already sent in their day surveys for February, March, and April 12, from 77 members of the public who replied to a widely circulated questionnaire compiled by the team, and from a “Mobile Squad” of twelve Mass Observers who covered the happenings on the street in London. The structure of the book follows the course and effects of the ritual throughout the country: the fi rst chapter deals with the preparations, reported day by day, for the three months preceding the occasion; the second and third document, respectively, events observed in London and outside the capital on the day; the fourth is a compilation of individual reactions. The fi nal chapter, which gives a “normal day survey” for March 12, serves to highlight the extraordinary nature of Coronation Day and to show how Mass Observation might analyze ordinary occasions. The editors claimed that they had arranged their material “in a simple documentary manner” (Jennings and Madge 1937 : 347). Their claim is contestable, for even a cursory glance through the book strongly suggests that they did not compile it in a disinterested manner. 9 The ostensible purpose of May 12th’ s fi rst chapter, composed mainly of press-cuttings, was “to represent in outline the various types of preparatory activity, from the most solid to the most popular and hysterical” (1937: 4). But by repeatedly juxtaposing accounts of offi cial preparations with reports of strikes, riots, and the miserable conditions of workers involved in the run-up to the big day, Madge and Jennings lend a deeply ironical dimension to the uplifting rhetoric of obsequious newspaper editors, and lay bare the tensions of organizing a nationwide celebration of unity in a country where equality is not the rule. The distance between offi cial and public attitudes is stressed further in the second and third chapters. Deferential reporters may have wished to represent the coronation as a great event in the history of the British monarchy and thus of Britain itself but, as the Mass Observers discovered, in London May 12 was “in 142 Anthropology in the Public Arena many ways . . . treated as a public holiday and festival like any other, to be enjoyed in the usual ways, carrying the emotional weight natural to the special days of a large society, but no [ sic ] extreme interest in what the function of a King may be or in the signifi cance of his Coronation” (Jennings and Madge 1937 : 91). To the extent that the King did become an object of emotion, he was “conceived in family or ‘Freudian’ relations, not as a person who might do anything and hardly even as representing a country or a class” (Jennings and Madge 1937 : 92). Madge and Jennings state that the ritual was viewed very largely in what they term an “aesthetic way”: “this was the way which involved the least strain and was for the majority the best social adaptation to the circumstances” (92). 10 Outside London, observers found that while the ceremony in Westminster Abbey was a common reference for all local celebrations of the coronation, in many cases that reference was not particularly marked. Local ceremonies marking the enthronement tended to refl ect local loyalties rather than national ones. In some areas there appears to have been little or no public celebration. One Oxford man said he wandered out to observe coronation activities: “There weren’ t any. A few new whores on the streets. No expensive cars outside hotels” (Jennings and Madge 1937 : 313). In the chapter concerned with individual reactions, however, the collated reports and replies to the questionnaires show that the effect of the coronation was pervasive. People who professed little interest in the occasion found themselves repeatedly returning to the radio broadcast of the ceremony; some were surprised to feel their eyes brimming with tears as they listened to certain moments. Even among those who wished to ignore the events of the day totally, by shutting themselves away or by escaping to solitary places, none was able to exclude it completely (267, 292). 11 The sense of national distinctiveness which the day’ s pomp and ceremony signifi ed and which the “quality” press extolled was gently defl ated by the editors ’ drawing of anthropological parallels. The fourth chapter, for instance, opens with a long quote from Freud ’ s most anthropological work, Totem and Taboo, about the manner in which the “required continuity in the psychic life of succeeding generations is established” (Jennings and Madge 1937 : 265–266). In their footnote to an extract about the coronation celebrations in Hastings, where couples stripped and swapped clothes, Madge and Jennings comment that “in many savage tribes people wear the clothes of the other sex on occasions of public importance” (32). On this reading, the British were no different from others. Even “savages” did the same. Madge and Jennings might have claimed “scientifi c” pretensions for May 12th but their book is also a highly literary one. The second chapter opens with a long quote from the fourth act of Shakespeare’ s Henry V, and many of the numerous conversations reported in direct speech have their own rhythms and expressive styles. Some passages, where the narrator shifts from one observer of the royal procession to another, recall sections of that other “day-in-the-life,” Joyce’ s Ulysses ; some fragments of recorded conversation echo Eliot ’ s “Coriolan.” “But,” as the Mass Observation 143 social historian Samuel Hynes (1976 : 285) has commented, “Most often the book reads like a proletarian novel of urban life, put together by someone of avant- garde tendencies.” Madge and Jennings took pains, however, to affi rm that they were not writing a novel. They claimed that even the most sensitive of realistic novelists, paralyzed by the fear of cliché, found it diffi cult “if not impossible” to describe the texture of the proletarian world. In sharp contrast to these educated failures, observers, both working class and middle class, were supposedly unaf- fected by these fears; in their reports they were said to be “actually speaking in a language natural to them” (Madge and Jennings 1937 : 37). Thus Mass Observation was, among other things, giving people a chance to speak for themselves, about themselves (37). In this sense Madge and Jennings were not just promoting a democratic Surrealism, but a demotic one as well. They were giving voice to the people, in the people’ s own tongue. 12 While the focus on the coronation does provide May 12th with a certain degree of narrative unity, the editors enabled several different sorts of readings of its contents by compiling fi ve separate indexes. The fi rst, “General,” includes entries on topics such as “Birmingham,” “Hats, Caps and Crowns,” “Girls,” “Lavatories and Troubles,” “Periscopes,” and “Weather.” The other indexes list, respectively, streets and places in London, the cuttings from different newspapers and periodicals, popular songs, and the reports by different observers. Armed with these cata- logues, readers did not have to follow the page-order decided by the editors but could roam through the text pursuing their specifi c interest in, say, “Bells” or “Red, White and Blue,” in the day-long course of events at one spot in the capital, in the style of one newspaper, or in the reports of a particular observer. May 12th might have been arranged, as its editors professed, “in a simple documentary way,” but its several indices deliberately undercut any pretension of authoritativeness for the particular format that they did choose. In sum, a key aim of their book was to provide a pointed contrast with the unifying purpose underlying much of the offi cial rhetoric, and they pursued this aim by proffering a subversive variety of alternatives: alternative events and interpretations, and alternative ways to read those. To Madge and Jennings, May 12 was not singular, but plural.

Going Bush in Bolton

Tom Harrisson, who had been excluded from the compiling of May 12th, did not much like the book. In a letter to a friend he complained, “It was a crazy idea to have it edited by a whole bunch of intellectual poets” (quoted in Pocock 1987 : 418). Unlike Madge and Jennings, Harrisson professed no interest in Surrealism nor in the poetry of vernacular discourse. What he enjoyed most of all was to amass “facts.”13 144 Anthropology in the Public Arena

As a resolutely naïve empiricist (his formal education had ended after four academically frustrating and riotous terms at Cambridge), Harrisson held that observers had to, and could, shed all preconceptions about what was good, and what bad, to observe. They had to cast away all those habitual frames of reference which might inhibit “fresh” observation and obscure the unexpected. There was to be no artifi cially imposed limit to this open-ended, wide-eyed observation. “Every- thing,” as he was later to put it, “that men, women and children do should be recorded with the disciplines of natural science and human wonder” (Harrisson 1975 : 3). As a self-styled anthropologist who boasted of his ability to live with those neither of his class nor his nationality, he argued that to study a people one had to live with them. One had to be a participant-observer among them, working with them, drinking with them, playing with them, and, if the occasion arose, making love with them. Unlike Malinowski, with whom he disagreed strongly on this point, Harrisson believed there should be no bounds whatsoever to one ’ s attempts to integrate oneself with the people one was studying (Madge 1976 ). But, as the notable ex-ornithologist that he also was, Harrisson would, on occasion, argue that one should devote long periods simply to watching, rather than to listening, let alone to conversing. Better to lose your notebook than your sight, more valuable to become part of the local landscape than to pester people with premature and ill-judged questions. Indeed at one point he even contended that “the most important – and as far as I know unexploited – piece of technical equip- ment for any sort of social scientist is the ear plug ” (Harrisson 1961 : 19, orig. italics). However, the primary reason why this talented young man gained popular renown as a leader of Mass Observation was not due to the attractive eccentricity of his intellectual approach, but to his possession of three further gifts: he was an inspired organizer, an extremely gifted publicist and self-publicist, and a talented writer who knew how to pen quickly in an endlessly entertaining, but characteristically undisciplined style. With a patent enthusiasm that some found infectious, he managed to persuade the wealthy to give him money, newspaper editors to give him space, and BBC producers to give him airspace. 14 Harrisson’ s efforts paid off. At the talks he gave in London, Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere, writers, artists, students, and others (including one astrologer) were so taken by his message that they volunteered for the novel organization (Wyatt 1986 ). The number of people on the National Panel swelled to many hundreds within a few months, while about fi fteen full-time but unpaid Observers assisted him in Bolton.15 Though Harrisson wished his work in Bolton to be “scientifi c,” his choice of behaviors to study seemed at times to rely more on his powers of intuition and his caprice than on any desire to survey local life in a conventionally methodical manner. Giving orders from the bath, he might dispatch a newly arrived observer to report on the contents of sweet-shop windows, or to watch people in Noncon- formist chapels.16 Harrisson was good at command, but not at sharing it. Jennings Mass Observation 145 thought Harrisson’ s approach banal and, tired of his overbearing nature, left the movement shortly after the production of May 12th (going on to become one of the greatest documentary fi lmmakers of the war period).17 Gascoyne, who disliked Harrisson’ s positivism, also left (Fraser 2012 : 127–129). Madge, who was almost constantly in confl ict with Harrisson, felt forced to compromise and so the Surrealist potential of Mass Observation was totally neglected for the sake of more mundane and narrowly empirical work (Madge 1976 ; pers. comm. 1995) The books produced by Harrisson, together with Madge, were very different in style and content to May 12th. Gone are the long reports of overheard conversation and the confi nement of editorial comments to occasional footnotes. In their place are much more focused, much more closely argued studies of observed behavior and newspaper articles backed by statistical analyses of information gathered in surveys. Those brief statements of the observed which were quoted were not included for their poetic qualities, but for their informative value; their function was solely to illustrate, and thus to further, the authors ’ arguments.18 In the fi rst two books which Madge and Harrisson edited together, First Year’ s Work (1938) and Britain (1939), Madge discussed the results of work on topics such as smoking as a social habit, the Munich Crisis, and the Two Minute Silence on Armistice Day, while Harrisson dealt with, among other subjects, pub-going, leisure-time in Blackpool, “All-In” wrestling, and a local festival in a Lancashire village. Their formula worked. First Year’ s Work reached a wide public while over 100,000 copies of Britain were sold within ten days of publication. Mass Observa- tion, it seemed, had struck a popular chord. The project also held the promise of personal transformation for the Observers, and this too appears to have been achieved. According to an analysis of their diaries and reports, the Observers did not wish to reproduce extant class or socio- geographic divisions. Rather they creatively sought to exploit Mass Observation in order to separate themselves from conventional highbrow culture. Instead of associating with a fusty gentlemanly style, they wished to engage with a more technical, intellectual vision of modern society (Savage 2010 : 64). Mass Observing was a way to make it new, in a socially scientifi c manner.

Observing Mass Observation

The reaction of the educated classes to the new organization was widespread, and mixed. Contributors to a variety of newspapers and magazines regarded its work positively, as a potentially most informative approach to further understanding of British life. Several commentators, however, seeking easy copy for light-hearted articles, portrayed Mass Observation as a new sort of entertainment, or parlor game; after all, as Madge and Harrisson had declared, it was something anyone could do. Some were less amused, and viewed the movement with alarm, as an 146 Anthropology in the Public Arena infringement on their right to privacy. These critics vilifi ed observers as snoopers, nosey parkers, peeping toms, or worse. In the thundering words of one Labour MP, “If I catch anyone Mass Observing me, there’ s going to be trouble.”19 The response of academic anthropologists was more considered. Malinowski, one of the distinguished intellectuals on its Advisory Panel, gave a qualifi ed welcome to the new organization. As someone who had repeatedly spoken of the need for, and the political value of, an anthropology at home, he hailed the creation of a body such as Mass Observation. For by informing citizens about the nature of their own society, it held the promise of countering the increasing threat of totalitarianism, which seemed to thrive on ignorance. In a long essay which concludes First Year’ s Work (Madge and Harrisson 1938 ), he commended Madge and Harrisson for their initiative, enthusiasm, and accomplishment, and he argued against those academics who were prejudicially opposed to Mass Observation precisely because of the popular sensationalism it had generated. To Malinowski, it was wiser and more profi table to cooperate than to ridicule, for if it were allowed to peter out, it would have to be restarted, “most likely under less favour- able conditions and with a less competent personnel” (Madge and Harrisson 1938 : 85). Malinowski was at fi rst very prepared to cooperate: he attended a party at Madge’ s home, and his fi rst draft of his contribution to First Year’ s Work was so lengthy that Madge spent long sessions with him in his house, shortening and tightening it (Madge n.d.: 76, 79). Despite this initial fraternizing, Malinowski was not happy with much of Mass Observation’ s methodology. He thought if Madge and Harrisson’ s approach was to become a useful instrument of social scientifi c research, they needed to be much more theoretically informed – in a conventional anthropological manner – and much more rigorous. There was little point in telling observers, for instance, to collect conversations taking place in Bolton ’ s public lavatories at precisely 5.30 p.m. (Trevelyan 1957 : 84; Symons 1960 : 102) unless the choice of hour could be justifi ed within a broader frame. For the same sorts of reasons, Madge and Har- risson also needed to be more selective. The varieties of response which they had shown occurred during a coronation or the Two Minutes Silence was valuable and informative, but sociologists could not be concerned with the almost infi nite diversity of feelings at such moments. They could only be interested in those ideas or passions which were felt by suffi ciently large groups of people to be symptoms of a tendency to collective expression (Malinowski 1938 : 118). Sociologists and anthropologists were, after all, social scientists, not individual psychologists.20 Malinowski also argued that the potential contribution of Mass Observation to our knowledge of social processes would only be fully realized when it linked up its particular methods with the results of the already established social sciences. For instance economists, who usually relied on statistically collected data, needed some kind of Mass Observation in order to assess the human and social side of production, consumption, and marketing. Homo economicus was an academic fi ction which could only be fl eshed out by employing the fi ndings of hundreds of Mass Observation 147 observers ’ reports. Thus, in Malinowski ’ s opinion, if the leaders of Mass Observa- tion heeded his suggestions, their organization would move “inevitably towards the fully scientifi c position,” as a professionally recognized body working hand- in-hand with its academic brethren (Malinowski 1938 : 116–117). The response of Raymond Firth ( 1939 ) was far less optimistic. While he acknowledged that Mass Observation was tackling an important series of problems, he questioned its claims to be ethnographically original. Mass Observation could not claim to be pioneers in the use of direct observational techniques because there had been a series of such studies of British working-class life over the previous seventy years. Some of them, moreover, had included long accounts of overheard conversations, reported verbatim, and of memory records dictated by an informant. In this sense all that was distinctive about Mass Observation was the richness of its records and the wide range of its observers (Firth 1939 : 170–176).21 Firth also criticized Mass Observation for failing to integrate the great mass of facts that it presented and for not linking them up with the problems that it stated to be the particular subject of its investigation. For instance, the text of May 12th, which was meant to describe coronation activities, was constantly interrupted with comments on the weather, accounts of people ’ s babies, and arguments about female cyclists. These “disconnected items” could have been the “raw material” for other problems, but since their implications were not worked out they were so much lumber weighing down the book (Firth 1939 : 178). In answer to those journalists who had queried the status of Mass Observers, Malinowski (1938 : 118) said that they had to be viewed in the same way as fi eldworkers regarded their “informants”: in other words, as members of the studied community, who comment on happenings and take part in them, who supply ethnographers with relevant information and are able to analyze the motives and feelings which account for their fellows ’ behavior. Firth might have accepted this formulation but he found it very diffi cult to discern in the published examples of observers ’ reports exactly when they were acting as informants on themselves, and when as informants about others (Firth 1939 : 182). He thought that this duplication of roles would not have caused confusion if the editors had got full- time observers to corroborate independently the summary statements of their part-time colleagues. But they had not and thus it was occasionally diffi cult to assess the basis on which the editors made their own generalizations. Summing up Mass Observation, Firth said he could not share with its leaders their faith in the validity of their methods or results so far. He thought they claimed too much, tried to do too much, and did not give themselves enough time to do even part of that in suffi cient thoroughness (Firth 1939 : 191–192). He concluded on a note of dismissive condescension:

even though the movement may not consider that it requires to set its house in order, and may make no contribution that will revolutionize modern social science, 148 Anthropology in the Public Arena

it has still a value in providing a recreative outlet for its thousand or so Observers, and enabling them to learn something about the behaviour of others than themselves. (Firth 1939 : 193)

Assessing Mass Observation

Madge left the organization in 1940, partly because of a deepening rift between him and Harrisson over the way it should develop. After some years in various kinds of research work, he became in 1950 the fi rst professor of sociology at Birmingham University (Chaney and Pickering 1986 : 38). Harrisson himself joined the war effort and afterwards was appointed director of the national museum of Brunei. In their absence Mass Observation struggled on for a few more years but eventually evolved into a limited company for market research. Despite its brief life, Mass Observation had a signifi cant effect, among other aspects making a much broader swathe of the British public acquainted with the aims and methods of anthropology. Yet its innovatory work has neither been mentioned nor discussed in any historical studies of twentieth-century anthropology. The question is, why this neglect? One part of the answer would be the independent-minded attitudes of Madge and Harrisson. When Madge was much later asked about his reactions and those of Harrisson to the comments made about Mass Observation, he replied, “Con- temporary academic criticism? It didn ’ t bother us” (Madge 1978 ). It did sting though: Harrisson, hurt by criticism, deliberately upset critical anthropologists, especially “the chinless wonder Pole” (Harrisson 1959 : 156; Hubble 2005 : 57). Since Madge and Harrisson had set their own, extra-mural aims, and were not out to fawn over professors but to inform the British people about their own behavior, they could afford to disregard many of the comments made by those they regarded as cloistered anthropologists. For instance, what Firth viewed as needless detail (such as arguments about female cyclists on Coronation Day) they could see as informative sidelights on people ’ s interests and attitudes. As Harrisson argued, it was precisely this kind of detail, the seeming trivia of the present day, which could well be signifi cant tomorrow. Up until now, “History” had been “crippled by the absence of information as to what was happening that was not climax, new, ‘historical’ ” (Harrisson 1937a : 48). Mass Observation aimed to rectify that omission. Malinowski ( 1938 : 111–115) and Firth ( 1939 : 179) both thought May 12th an unbalanced account, since Madge and Jennings had paid no attention to the internal structure and symbolism of the central ceremony within Westminster Abbey, to the historical evolution of the royal ritual, or to the way it had been stage- managed by the various organizing bodies. But since these topics were within the traditional ken of established anthropology, Mass Observation’ s free spirits could Mass Observation 149 leave the study of them to more hidebound ethnographers, ones prepared to toe the disciplinary line. Firth (1939 : 178) argued that Madge and Jennings’ “non-selective attitude” meant that, in May 12th , “far from the facts speaking for themselves they speak for the state of mind of those who published them in this form.” However, since its editors had provided several ways of reading the book, they had not intended that the “facts” presented be given a defi nitive sense of unity by the format they had selected. They could be unifi ed, and thus made to “speak,” by each and every reader, who was able to choose how to tread his or her own way through the text. On the question of the status of their reports, Madge and Harrisson ( 1937 : 31–32) argued that it was a pervasive problem in any kind of observational activity, since even laboratory-bound scientists found it impossible to rule out their own subjective biases. The best way for Mass Observation to accommodate their work to this problem was for observers to provide as much information about themselves as possible and for the observers to have this information corroborated by others. In this way, the subjectivity of an observer could be transformed into objective fact. It was not ignored but turned into a component of the analysis. As Harrisson later came to claim, the distinctiveness of Mass Observation lay in this qualitative dimension of its work; other studies of British life, which tended to rely on statistics, neglected “why” for the sake of “what.” Harrisson and Madge’ s decision to use a mass of observers also enabled them to claim that they could cross-check results and, bearing in mind the biases of different observers, could assess critically confl icting reports. As they delighted in pointing out, conventional anthropology could not boast of such advantages: ethnographers went into the fi eld alone, their observations were not checked by others, and no account was taken of their personal biases. If the leaders of Mass Observation could pretend to ignore the advice of Malinowski and Firth, they were privately forced to admit the power of some of their arguments. As one member of the original Blackheath group later confessed, though Mass Observation presented interesting possibilities, in practice it posed many problems. The sheafs they were sent by observers proliferated “like maggots in a cheese” (unsigned review, The Listener, November 17, 1937); by the end of their fi rst year they had received over 1,700 reports, containing more than 2,300,000 words. As a perceptive journalist noted, this ever-increasing mass of material represented “infi nite regress . . . If we could read all the papers and all the books, we could know what we are all thinking. But there never will be time” (Reynolds News , May 1 1938, quoted in Calder 1985 : 129). In Bolton, Harrisson was stockpiling more information than he knew what to do with; he had promised his publisher the speedy production of three manuscripts dealing with religion, politics, and the pub but, unsure how to arrange his material, he had to delay constantly their submission. Madge (1978 ) later admitted that “the trouble with [the studies on] religion and politics was that there was too much material. It was very diffi cult to digest.” 150 Anthropology in the Public Arena

As far as I can judge, Firth’ s general attitude – if not his tone of condescension – was shared by most of his peers. They were interested in the venture, approved its aims, and appreciated the ingenuity of some of its fi eldwork methods. But, unlike Malinowski who was prepared to promote the popularization of the discipline (Mac- Clancy 1996a ), they maintained grave doubts about the status of Mass Observers’ reports, and about Mass Observation’ s “impressionist” approach to ethnography. Also, they found Harrisson a diffi cult person to get on with and disapproved of his propagandist methods of presenting fi ndings.22 If the 1930s can be seen as a period when British social anthropologists tried to legitimate the academic status of their subject by establishing a common set of disciplinary conventions (MacClancy 1986 ), it is perhaps understandable that they were reluctant to include Madge, Harrisson, and their outfi t among their number. For the broader consequences of Mass Observation were implicitly subversive of university based anthropologists’ attempts to establish the professional nature of their endeavors. The style of intrepid, individualistic fi eldwork being established by Malinowski in the 1930s was clearly at odds with Mass Observation’ s emphasis on research as an essentially collective endeavor. None of Mass Observa- tion’ s books was presented as having been written by a single person and the majority were simply attributed to Mass Observation collectively. No single full- time Mass Observer was able to claim exclusive knowledge of a particular society. For part-time contributors, moreover, obeying a directive or fi lling in a monthly diary was hardly intrepid. Furthermore, the democratizing endeavors of the organization menaced the privileged intellectual status of academic anthropologists. By urging people to become their own ethnographers both for their own sake and for that of others, Madge and Harrisson were enabling them to invade (and so partly to redefi ne) the intellectual territory academic anthropologists were wishing to demarcate as their very own. It is not important here that the types of societies studied by academics and Observers were apparently so different. At that time anthropology might still have been largely defi ned by its subject matter (“the primitive”), but for those bourgeois intellectuals who ran Mass Observation and for those members of the middle class who read their reports the lives of the working class, especially the northern working classes who lived in industrialized towns such as Bolton, were just as exotic and as unknown as the Trobriand Islanders. The important consequence of encouraging people to analyze their own social lives was that if, as Madge and Harrisson came close to claiming, anyone could be an anthropologist, what exactly then was so special about the funded work done by academics? And, just as importantly, if almost anyone could be an anthropologist, why then should people accept academics’ particular defi nition of the subject? A further reason for the subsequent neglect of the work of Mass Observation was that, quite simply, the organization lacked an institutional base within academic anthropology, and its founders (like their anthropological contemporaries, Hocart, Layard, and Bateson) left no heirs or successors in a position to install Mass Observation 151 their ancestors in a teaching canon. Their work was effectively forgotten and, to later generations of anthropologists, virtually unknown. 23

From MO to PoMo

When Jennings left Mass Observation, the Surrealist promise of its original manifesto remained unfulfi lled. Examining exactly why this occurred may illuminate the continuing debate, initiated by postmodernists and continued by them and others (e.g., Clifford 1988a ; Marcus and Fischer 1986 ; Price and Jamin 1988 ; Van Maanen 1988 ; Polier and Roseberry 1989 ; Slaney 1989 ; Stoller 1989 ; Manganaro 1990 ; Richardson 1990, 1993 ; Adamowicz 1993 ), on the relations between ethnography and surrealism. Firstly, Jennings and Madge had found it all but impossible to reconstitute the “collective image” (Ray 1971 : 178). The root of this problem, particularly important given the central role of the concept in their interpretation of Surrealism, lay in their shift of Surrealist focus from the individual to the social. For Breton, the objet trouvé had signifi cance primarily for the individual who came upon it, and whose previously felt inner desires it concretized. If others thought the object interesting, that was valuable but not essential; the chanced-upon item had Sur- realist worth, above all, because of the meaning it embodied for its discoverer. But Jennings and Madge, by shifting attention to the social dimension of an object, had created for themselves the problem of identifi cation. In other words, who was “discovering” what? For, other than their concept of nationwide “coincidences,” they had no satisfactory criteria for identifying exactly which images had collective signifi cance. And since they claimed to be empiricist they could not rely on their own general knowledge of British culture, otherwise they would lay themselves open to the criticism of being members of a particular social group (bourgeois intellectuals) whose choices were guided by their subcultural upbringing. The problem is manifest in Jennings’ poems and his wartime documentaries. In these productions he repeatedly uses, among other images, that of St. Paul ’ s Cathedral. For him, it was not just that the building signifi ed the heights of British architecture but that its dome brought to mind the forehead of great British thinkers such as Darwin. But how many blitzed Londoners would have been aware of, or even if aware agreed with, this highly intellectual association? Secondly, Jennings and Madge ’ s notion of a public “coincidence” – such as Coro- nation Day – might at fi rst seem specifi cally Surrealist but, shorn of its Breton- based terminology, the idea that a key ritual highlighted the central concerns of its performers was by then already a commonplace among anthropologists. Thirdly, their application of Freudian theory to ethnography was not particularly innovative for it, or something very similar, had already been attempted, though not very successfully, by Malinowski and several of his colleagues (Stocking 1986 ). 152 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Given these diffi culties, it seems that the ultimate importance of Surrealism for Mass Observation lay not so much in its general philosophy as in the ethnographic direction in which it led its Blackheath founders. They may have been unable to employ successfully their notion of the collective image but their desire to discern “the unconscious fears and wishes of the mass” and to draw out its poetic dimension in a scientifi c manner did lead to that unjustly neglected text May 12th 1937. What is so disappointing is that, after the departure of Jennings, Harrisson ensured that the format and aims of that book were not replicated in the later works of Mass Observation. The promise of an ethnographic surreality was given up for the sake of a more mundane reality.24 In the Paris of the 1920s, Surrealists and ethnologists were, by turns, mistrustful of and attracted to each other’ s work. A constructive dialogue rarely occurred between them. They were, above all, but co-participants within the avant-garde of their time. Both may have wished to examine “the primitive” and to reassess our notions of humankind, but their relationship was in fact less one of mutual infl uence than of contiguity. Though they moved across a similar terrain, each plotted it according to their own fashion. Surrealists saw their work as a poetics, and ethnologists saw theirs as a science (Jamin 1986, 1991 ). The evidence of this chapter draws out the provisional nature of these self-defi nitions. For in the London of the late 1930s, Surrealists were able to conceive of their endeavors as scientifi c (however vaguely they defi ned and however rhetorically they deployed that term) while at the same time exposing the irreducible degree of artistry involved in writing ethnography. Unlike, for example, Breton and Mauss who thought they were working to different ends, Madge and Malinowski were able to imagine that they were both, at least theoretically, interested in a common goal: the ethnography of their own people. In sum, the early leaders of Mass Observation put forward a highly popular, and radically new program which, in more modern terms, can be presented as: the creation of a plural text, the questioning of ethnographic authority, the recognition of the need for refl exivity, the realization of the subversive potential of anthropology, the irreducibly literary nature of ethnography, the study of Western industrialized societies, and the recognition of the essentially contested nature of the codes and representations which compose culture. The boundary between art and science is blurred, ethnography is an interdisciplinary exercise, and the production of ethnographic texts a problematic enterprise. Much of those last two sentences is written in the discourse of anthropological postmodernists (e.g., Clifford 1986, 1988a ; Marcus and Fisher 1986; Tyler 1987 ; Rosaldo 1989 ; Crapanzano 1992 ) who, most oddly, given their concern with the historicization of ethnographic production, paid little attention to their intellectual predecessors.25 In fact Mass Observation is a patent product of its modernist times, where the avant-garde deliberately ignored disciplinary lines in order, in Ezra Pound’ s programmatic phrase, to “make it new.” Mass Observation 153

Notes

1 Jennings had come to know the Surrealists during his sojourns in Paris in the early 1930s. Breton became a close friend, as did the painter André Masson; Eluard was so entranced by his personality that he even wrote a poem about him (Merralls 1961 ). 2 Indeed at times their comments about him read like condensed series of superlatives. A painter, poet, and fi lmmaker, Jennings was also exceptionally well read and an extremely gifted talker. A Double First in English, this “extraordinarily alive” man had produced an edition of Venus and Adonis , had designed theatre sets and costumes, had translated, with Gascoyne, a volume of poems by the French Surrealist Benjamin Peret, and had helped to organize the London International Surrealist Exhibition, in which several of his own collages and paintings had been shown. 3 Thus in his own poetry he did not fashion phrases anew but took them from already existing sources, and when painting he invariably worked with postcards, prints, or colored plates, but never from nature (Raine 1950 : 3). 4 In a discussion by a panel of intellectuals on postmodernism, broadcast in August 1995 on the BBC Radio 4 program Kaleidoscope , Fredric Jameson praised Pandemonium as an inspired precursor of postmodernist concerns. 5 W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice ( 1937 : 252) extolled his “great mind” in one of their poems. According to Heath-Stubbs (1993 : 62), in the 1930s Madge was regarded as “the white hope of modern poetry.” 6 Merging the two roles, Madge argued that the task of the “artist–scientist” is not to raise to the level of his own consciousness aspects of humanity hitherto concealed or only guessed at, but he has to raise the level of consciousness collectively of the whole mass, he has to induce self-realization on a mass scale. He becomes, that is to say, the organizer of collective human–scientifi c activity, and his poem or thesis becomes a report of this collective achievement (1937c: 32). 7 I recognize that “the social unconscious” and “the mass” are deeply problematic concepts, no longer employed by sociologists or anthropologists. 8 Among the problems they intended to study, they listed “Behaviour of people at war memorials, Shouts and gestures of motorists, The aspidistra cult, Anthropology of football polls, Bathroom behaviour, Beards, armpits, eyebrows, Anti-semitism, Dis- tribution, diffusion and signifi cance of the dirty joke, Funerals and undertakers, Female taboos about eating, The private lives of midwives” (Harrisson, Jennings, and Madge 1937 ). They were later more explicit on the personal benefi ts of Mass Obser- vation. They claimed that systematic observing offered its practitioners the possibility of heightening their powers of observation, of expressing otherwise unexpressed feelings, of giving them new interest in and greater understanding of their own lives, and of maybe even bringing about a permanent change in the observers themselves (Jennings and Madge 1937 : iv; Madge and Harrisson 1937 : 30). 9 A clue to their aims is given in an article by Madge published in February that year, in which he argued that “the ancient taboos which govern a King still seem to exert an unconscious infl uence on a part of the popular mind. To lay bare the sources of 154 Anthropology in the Public Arena

this infl uence would have the effect of lessening the magical power of the symbol of monarchy” (Madge 1937c ). 10 Interspersed with accounts of patriots cheering the royal carriage is a plethora of reports detailing public drunkenness, women fl irting hard with fl attered soldiers or policemen, and the frequently irreverent comments of the crowds. 11 One self-styled “Platonist” noticed at dawn “with malicious pleasure that the weather was not fi ne, for I wanted the weather to be bad to spite the Coronation-mongers.” But on rubbing oil into his hair, this resolute anti-monarchist still noted “the resemblance between the King and myself in respect of this action” (Madge and Jennings 1937a: 317). 12 An intended aim of the publication of the reports received by Mass Observation was to highlight the poetical nature of much of ordinary discourse. Madge hoped that one immediate effect of this would be to devalue considerably the privileged status of the “poet.” For if ordinary people were being poetical (even if unconsciously) much of the time, then the distinguishing trait of “full-time” poets was not their mode of performance but the profession to which they had chosen to devote themselves. According to this argument, poetry was like football: almost everyone could do it, but only some became professionals (Madge 1937c ). 13 My analysis of Harrisson ’ s approach is inspired by that of Calder (n.d.) . On Harris- son’ s attitude to Surrealism, see Stanley (1981 : 92–93). 14 Several northern industrialists and the leftwing publisher Victor Gollancz provided funds for the work of his group; the editors of the Daily Mirror , the New Statesman, and Picture Post were prepared to publish almost anything Harrisson found out; Mary Adams, a BBC producer, gave him hours of broadcasting time on both the radio and the newly opened television service (Rolph 1973 : 223–225; Hodges 1978 : 112–115; Mellor 1978 : 4). 15 It was fortunate for Harrisson and his associates that they appealed for help during a period of economic depression when there were few openings for bright young men just out of university (Green 1970 : 120). 16 One was told to visit the local Palais de Danse on New Year ’ s Eve; the observer had to be certain to be dancing with a girl at midnight, and had to kiss her when the clock struck: her reaction was dutifully noted (Wyatt 1953 : 34). 17 What Gascoyne chiefl y remembered of the initial meetings of Harrisson with the Blackheath group was “Humphrey with his elbow on one end of the mantelpiece, and Harrisson with his elbow on the other end of the mantelpiece, both talking loudly and simultaneously to those present in general, without either of them paying the slightest bit of attention to what the other was saying” (Gascoyne 1980 : 10, orig. italics). 1 8 The Pub and the People, the only Mass Observation book (Mass Observation 1943 ) which goes against this trend, was compiled mainly by John Sommerfi eld, a “proletarian novelist” who worked as an observer in Bolton between 1937 and 1939. (On the formal similarities between May 12th and Sommerfi eld’ s novel May Day, see Laing 1980 .) 19 One correspondent thought Mass Observation was regarded as “a silly stunt,” another said it seemed “unbeatable as a sport,” while a third found “it hard to imagine anything dottier” (Garnett 1937 ; Stonier 1937 ; West 1937 ). Evelyn Waugh (1938 : 663) approved of its founders’ “agreeable touch of levity” and delighted in the “funny Mass Observation 155

footnotes” of their books, Louis MacNeice (1939 ) summarily dismissed Mass Observ- ers as “Madge ’ s lab boys,” Cecil Day Lewis (writing under his detective-writer pseudonym) lampooned them (Blake 1940 ), W. H. Auden branded them spies, and Graham Greene ( 1939 : 99–104) cruelly caricatured them as lonely eccentrics exploiting an excuse for intruding into the lives of others. More considerate commentators (e.g., Gorer 1937a, 1937c ; Large 1937 ; Marshall 1937 ) worried about the vaunted “scientifi c” basis of Mass Observation’ s work, the representativeness of its observers, and the supposed “objectivity” of their observations. The reviewers of May 12th for the Times Literary Supplement (October 2, 1937) and for The Spectator (November 19, 1937) both thought that the patently leftwing leanings of many observers had led them to revel in reporting the seamier side of the crowds’ behavior. Not everyone was drunk, the reviewers claimed. As well as having to suffer these intellectual criticisms, Harrisson was personally crabbed for his “petulant self-advertisement” and “unsupported generalizations,” Madge for his “vague eclecticism” and “chaotic intelligence,” and both of them for their condescending air of middle-class intellectuals indulging in a bit of slumming (Gorer 1937b ; Hobhouse 1937 ; Dudman and Terry 1938 ; Symons 1941 ). The publicity-seeking Harrisson was partly to blame for these adverse reactions since he was, for instance, prepared to pose for an article on Mass Observation (“Public Busybody No. 1,” Daily Mirror , December 6, 1938) dressed as a private detective peering through a keyhole. 20 Commenting on Mass Observation ’ s more mathematical work, Malinowski felt that once its leaders had worked out a sound theoretical argument for their studies, then the further paraphernalia of scientifi c work that they occasionally employed – fi gures and graphs, statistics and charts – could be sited in their appropriate intellectual place. Until that time, this sort of analysis was but a “pseudo-scientifi c rig-out” masking lack of forethought (Malinowski 1938 : 89). 21 Firth, however, did note that Mass Observation, to its credit, documented institutions and types of behavior till then uninvestigated (such as extra-family kinship, religion, and politics) and, by enabling comparison between its material and that of the earlier surveys, enabled the making of generalizations about the degree of social change (Firth 1939 : 176). 22 While the history of British anthropology demonstrates that the possession of a diffi cult personality is no necessary bar to success within the discipline, it has to be stated that Harrisson’ s character endeared neither him nor the ideas of Mass Observation to academic anthropologists. Harrisson, impatient and impetuous, did not like to debate in a dispassionate, painstaking manner, and could simply brush aside others ’ criticisms, especially when it suited him. He tended to think it more important to state his opinion and to get on with the job now than to spend time arguing at length over philosophical points about Mass Observation ’ s methods. He said he wanted “to cut the cackle and go ahead in an attempt to establish a sensible, normal socio- psycho – whatever else you like oh – anthropology of ourselves” (Harrisson 1937a : 46). Priding himself on this no-nonsense approach, he would declaim (1937c), “Fieldwork, not fi ne words, I say.” Many anthropologists found the spirited and opinionated Harrisson a prickly character to deal with (Firth [pers. comm.] thought him “stimulating but a bit of a brigand”) and were irritated by his constant jibes at social scientists for their lethargy 156 Anthropology in the Public Arena

and supposed lack of awareness of vital problems. They regarded themselves as responsible professionals trying to uphold the name of the discipline. To them, Har- risson was an unschooled novice more concerned with putting his own name forward, and they judged his bestselling account of Vanuatu, Savage Civilization (Harrisson 1937b ), a superior kind of travelogue posing as historical anthropology. Firth remembers (pers. comm.) that Malinowski, whose seminars Madge and Har- risson attended for a brief period, told them that if they wanted to do their work properly, they needed to drill themselves in social anthropology and to keep coming to the seminar. Madge claimed he was willing, but was too taken up with the day- to-day running of the National Panel while Harrisson, ever the rebel, refused to submit to discipline. Madge (1978, 1979) remembers that Harrisson and Malinowski angered one another greatly and that each described the other as “a crook.” (On doubts about the veracity of some of Harrisson’ s Vanuatu material, see Corlette [1937, 1938]. I thank Judith Heimann for these references.) While I was doing ﬁ eldwork in Vanuatu in the late 1970s, Nakomaha, the old man with whose family I lived in Sulfa Bay, Tanna, and who had been a Native Policeman in the 1930s, told me that Harrisson, under whom he had worked during the brief period Harrisson was an Acting British District Agent, was a “wild man” with long hair and a straggly beard (MacClancy 2002b : 3) Gavin Ewart (1938 ) appealed to Madge to “Cage Me a Harrisson”:

O you must learn through loss of love or money: Harrisson ’ s only useful when he’ s funny . It ’ s hard to ﬁ nd oneself in the same boat With people who consistently misquote – And think of Science with a capital S, How Harrisson occasions their distress By baiting poets with his subtle gibes And “loving the women” of those savage tribes. O Madge, my Madge, if you have the power to feel The supplication of my poor appeal, Think, you and Science have a world to win, But Harrisson is the Dog Beneath the Skin – O put the kennel up and forge the chain, Let Mass-Observation be itself again!

For a lengthy consideration of Harrisson’ s temperament, see Heimann ( 2002 ). 23 The only clear exception to this generalization is David Pocock, who was the founding Director of the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex. The inﬂ u- ence of the ideas of the organization might be discerned in his notion of a “personal anthropology” (Pocock 1975 ). 24 In Britain generally the practice of Surrealism, made redundant by the effects of the war, steadily declined. For in a bombed hospital, it was far from inconceivable that Lautréamont’ s famous deﬁ nition of beauty – “the chance encounter on a dis- secting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella” – might come to be realized Mass Observation 157

(Vaughan 1983 : 68). As Cecil Beaton ( 1943 ) stated, on surveying a Libyan battleﬁ eld littered with hundreds of half-buried, half-folded shirts (the remains of a clothing store) and the carcasses of burnt-out tanks, “The surrealists have anticipated this battle-ground.” 25 The only reference that I am aware of by literary postmodernists to the work of Mass Observation is part of a footnote in an article by Clifford (1981 : n.14). 6 The Literary Image of the Anthropologist

Let me begin with three anecdotes:

1 June 1983: the week after submitting my Oxford doctorate, I went up to the main city hospital for the removal of two wisdom teeth. The ironies were not lost on my friends. As she prepared the needle, the dentist asked, “And what do you do?” “I ’ m an anthropologist.” “Oh! That means you’ ll work for anyone, doesn’ t it?” Astonished, angry, a hypodermic already in my gum, I couldn ’ t reply, only growl silently and feel my face burn. 2 October 2000: Who wants to be a millionaire? is on British TV. The £75,000 question is “What does an anthropologist study?” One of the four answers is “Human beings.” The contestant gets it wrong. 3 March 2002: a BBC broadcaster asks people for their image of anthropologists: “Quite picky, argumentative, very critical of others’ behavior,” “Bearded, long- haired men,” “Serious people but sometimes a bit dotty” (Taylor 2002 ).

Are these “just” anecdotes? Or are they indicative of something much worse: that the public are either ignorant of us or, where knowledgeable, disparaging? Some academics in related disciplines are already aware of the problem, and its importance. Some have recently acknowledged the value of investigating popular images of their pursuit. For instance, the archaeologist Holtorf argues that he and his colleagues ought to assess the “social beneﬁ ts of their popular image and address them explicitly in their work” (Holtorf 2004 : 40). In turn, this reﬂ ection could well alter archaeologists ’ understanding of their own discipline, its aims and boundaries (Holtorf 2007 ). Similarly, some scholars of development studies contend that

fi ctive accounts of their practice reveal different aspects of it compared to more formal articles, and that they may even convey complex understandings of development more effectively. Since many more people learn about development via fi ction than academic work, literary accounts constitute an “important site for the study of development knowledge” (Lewis, Rodgers, and Woolcock 2005 : 16). Within anthropology, the only practitioner I know who has made a similar point is di Leonardo, who noted that those few anthropological writings which are commercially successful infl uence “not only popular culture but also subsequent anthropological work, even if only in dialogue in absentia” (di Leonardo 1998 : 148). Janus-like, these texts affect both a general audience and cloistered academics. Thus, at a time when government agencies force us to be more accountable (Strathern 2000 ) and anthropologists feel ever more obliged to face the public, it behooves us to fi nd out exactly what face the public thinks we have, and how that might affect our notions of what anthropology is or should be. In this chapter I take one track at answering those urgent queries. Anthropologists stress their interest in representations. Some have gone a little further, by trying to establish representations of the profession. The image of the fi eldworker as child and the self-promoting idea of the anthropologist as hero are already widespread clichés within the discipline. Several practitioners have taken a different tack, portraying anthropologists as healers of the wounded West (Maybury-Lewis 1992 ), as gumshoe (Descola 1996 ), as home-culture misfi t (Lévi- Strauss 1955 ), as questing self hungry for vision and self-understanding (Bowen 1954 ), as “jester in shorts” (Barley 1983 ), as native advocate (Wright 1988 ), as whore (Bastide 1973 ; MacClancy 1988 ), as shaman (Frankenberg 1995 ), and even as terrorist (Zulaika 1995 ). Some anthropologists have also taken an interest in how they are represented by the people they study (Maybury-Lewis 1992 : 167). However, none has shown any concern with the ways authors have represented the discipline. Just as anthropologists have neglected to examine popular anthropology (viz. MacClancy and McDonaugh 1996 ) so they have ignored popular accounts of themselves. Time for a change. 1

A Note on Terminology, and a Caveat

I have obeyed the conventional disciplinary procedure for analyzing a native category. In the following, indigenous usage is my guide. If a writer refers to someone as an “anthropologist,” I take that as an example worth studying even if, as so often occurs in US novels, that term denotes an archaeologist, paleontologist, or linguist. Indeed a key event in one US novel turns on the ability of the anthropologist to exploit the ambiguity in order to save his own skin (Long 2002 : 199). By the same token I have ignored novels in which a “rural sociologist” or “psycholin- guist” appears (e.g., Lurie 1967 ; Dickinson 1974 ) even though the work they do 160 Anthropology in the Public Arena might be intellectually near-identical to that dubbed “anthropological.” Also, I have included within my analysis any novel where a character is referred to as an “ethnologist”; it is not just that the character’ s work is identical to that of an anthropologist but that, as far as I can judge, where the term is understood (especially in French and German), it is seen as synonymous with the English term “anthropologist.” For instance, Georges Perec ( 1987 ) seems to use the two terms interchangeably. In sum, my general aim in all of this is to follow native terms, to trail the ways “anthropologist,” “anthropology,” and “ethnologist” are popularly used and abused. Of course, every defi nition is self-limiting, every delimitation of focus creates its own bright areas and blindspots. On drawing the boundary, some previously possible examples are suddenly excluded while others linger tantalizingly on the margin. My defi nition – that of “indigenous usage” – is no exception. For example, I have had to omit William Boyd’ s Brazzaville Beach (1990 ), though almost all the action would be classifi ed as “anthropological” in content by most US novelists and though part of the story takes place in a London university department of anthropology (almost certainly University College London). Whether the benefi ts of clarity that come with my defi nition outweigh the suggestions that come with amorphousness I leave for you to judge.2 We must at the same time recognize the games novelists play. For the deployment of the term “anthropologist” is also a matter of authorial strategy, and may be deliberately not used even though a key character is an anthropologist in all but name. For example, in The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula LeGuin (1969 ; see also 2000 ) does not call her learned cross-cultural investigator an anthropologist because she is taking pains to use a futurist vocabulary throughout her tale. Instead the man is termed an Envoy.3 Thus one qualifi cation to my defi nition must be that there are more anthropologists in novels than are named as such. A word of warning: most of the novels discussed here are the sort of texts many anthropologists and other highly educated types were, until recently, taught to disdain or bypass. They were not seen as books to be taken seriously. Despite this prejudice, the majority of these books should be examined because, at the very least, of their great popularity. For many of their authors sell very well indeed. 4 Just because many of these novelists do not pretend to produce high literature is no reason for us anthropologists to disregard them. Indeed, the very opposite, that may well be the reason why we should have paid them much more attention, and earlier. The border between anthropology and fi ction shifts wildly. At times it appears non-existent. At other times it seems dense, high, and strongly barbed. Among academics, the classic examples here are the fi ctional works presented as ethnographies written by Psalmanazar and Castaneda.5 The contrary is also well known within academia, i.e., supposedly veridical accounts regarded by all but their anthropologist-authors as fi ction. I remember, in the late 1980s, sitting in on an Oxford pub discussion: one participant mentioned that a well-known popular The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 161

British anthropologist was now said to be writing a novel. Her colleague’ s reply was immediate, “But he’ s already published so many!”6 This book is primarily concerned with British social anthropology. However in this chapter, for the sake of completeness and to have the greatest possible, most representative sample, I chose to read every single example that I could ﬁ nd, wherever published, in any of the three languages I can read (English, French, Spanish). As far as I could judge, there do not appear to be any signiﬁ cant national differences in any of the points I make below. I now turn to the images themselves. For the sake of expository convenience, I divide my discussion into “Character,” “Fieldwork,” and “Function.”

Character

Expatriate talking about her house: “It may be all right for a mad anthropologist. They’ re a dippy lot and put up with anything.” (Jay 1952 : 33)

In the great majority of the 188 items I have read, the anthropologist-characters fall easily into either one of two polar types, which I will call the “anthropologist as hero” and the “pathetic anthropologist.” Let us start with the latter; it is by far the more common. The “pathetic anthropologist” is an emotional inadequate, sheltering within objective procedures in order to keep the passions at bay. These psychologically stunted individuals prefer analyzing things to feeling them. At home they sharpen their noses on the inner spines of books; in the fi eld they study people but fail to engage with them. Anthropology here becomes a space and a set of routines where timorous intellectuals can neglect their fears and strive to remain in control of their personalities and their immediate environment. It is a delicate balancing act few manage to maintain for the length of a novel. Indeed several novels turn on the tension between the felt need for dispassionate analysis and the anthropologist’ s increasingly evident humanity. The female physical anthropologist in Darian North’ s Bone Deep fi ts the stereotype: a vulnerable person who buries her emotions by digging up bones. When her best friend says she is not much good at public relations, she replies, “I belong in a lab” (North 1996 : 460). When her behavior becomes increasingly inexplicable, she asks herself, “Was she on the way to a breakdown? Was she losing her scientifi c edge, her objectivity and professional remove? Or was she experiencing some normal aspect of life she had not previously known about?” (North 1996 : 184). In Catherine Palmer ’ s A Touch of Betrayal the male anthropologist likes to study people but not to get involved in their lives. He keeps away from women as “they tended to need things he didn ’ t know how to give” (Palmer 2000 : 59). Though weak in this way, he is strong enough to admit to “the 162 Anthropology in the Public Arena empty place inside him – a void he had long ago fi lled with his research. Or tried to fi ll” (Palmer 2000 : 158). By novel ’ s end, he has succumbed to the female lead.7 Perhaps the extreme example of this impoverished character-type is the anthropologist of tourism in David Lodge ’ s Paradise News ( 1991 ). Lodge here plays on the irony and implicit arrogance of an academic of human behavior who appears incapable of being fully human himself. He does not participate in social activities, he observes them. He is a man who classifi es behaviors instead of indulging in them (see page 242 for his typology of holidays). He does not seek paradise, merely records its discourse. And the only way he seduces a woman is by stumbling on one interested in listening to anthropological theory. Unlike North’ s bone-digger who was well aware of her self-ignorance, Lodge’ s man is comically unaware of his own failings. It’ s as though, deprived of the usual script for human life, he has had to invent his own: so, for him, holidays become superstitious ceremonies and bathing in the hotel pool a ritual baptism. Is this a limit case of “Those who can, do; those who can’ t, research?” Emotionally lopsided and usually deeply alienated, these anthropologists are often portrayed as marginalized or rootless, without signifi cant kin or home. One anthropologist is presented as an exception, even among exiles (Gutiérrez 2000 : 115–116). Another “had never wanted roots in his life. He was a vagabond, a rest- less sojourner on the tossing seas of existence. He was a gypsy. Freedom sang through his veins. Adventure was his middle name. Roots would choke and stran- gle and tie a man to his own grave” (Palmer 2000 : 206–207). These anthropologists are like monks of scholarship who, having made the discipline their divinity, accept celibacy and dedicate themselves to the cloistered life. The woman in Penelope Lively’ s Spiderweb is a visitor of many communities but a member of none. Able to fall in love, she is unable to make a lasting commitment. Instead this eternal outsider commits herself to tracing the web-like networks communities spin (Lively 1998 ). 8 Though we might think the life of these tunnel-visioned anthropologists barren and narrow, we must neither neglect to list the rich pleasures they may gain from their work nor ignore the profound levels of satisfaction to be had from following procedures. North ’ s physical anthropologist does not brook distraction from the gratifi cations of digging: “The work was pulling her and she was eager to jump into it . . . [It] took her, as it so faithfully did, took her into a magical oblivion – like sleep – where the work was a dream of work. And the dream was all there was” (North 1996 : 134). In gendered contrast, Aldous Huxley ’ s Eyeless in Gaza provides the fi gure of a museum ethnologist, an impotent bookworm who lives in a state of literature. For him, the rarest of pleasures comes, not from his fi ancée, but from ethnology. Her mother mocks him accordingly, “It’ s a case . . . a case of: I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not ethnology more” (Huxley 1961 : 228–229).9 Trouble is, for the emotionally crippled, the pleasures of anthropology may come to outweigh all else. Their work then becomes obsessive and they are unable The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 163 to go off-duty. Anthropology becomes the lens through which they view potentially every aspect of life. North ’ s woman, unable to relax at a cocktail party, analyzes the gathering as though she were a foreign anthropologist (North 1996 : 134). One anthropologist neglects his wife, another forgets his children, a third endangers hers – all for the sake of their subject (Coyne 1988 ; Williamson 1996 ; Gaffney 1997 : 11).10 The limit case is of the dutiful anthropologist who commits suicide in his offi ce yet does not forget to leave a colleague some references the man required (McKee 1980 : 273).11 If anthropologists are odd then, like the apocryphal Guards offi cer so stupid that even his fellows recognized his lack of brains, one way to underscore the eccentricity of a character is to state that even his colleagues thought him unusual (e.g., La Farge 1965 : 5; Theroux 1977 : 94; Long 2002 : 6). Lifetime members of the margins, anthropologists are not just eccentric in their behavior, they are also meant to look it, with their dress sense repeatedly exploited for comic relief. In several novels the anthropologists are made to clothe and comport themselves in an unusual, if not patently ludicrous manner.12 Some writers underscore the marginality of anthropologists in physical and religious terms. Vargas Llosa ( 1987 ) makes his character a Jew with a large facial birthmark, while Iris Murdoch ( 1961 ) makes hers a deeply eccentric Jewess with down on her upper-lip and “tawny- coloured breasts” (see also Sesto 1999 : 16). The most extreme example here is the encounter, on a Chilean ice-shelf, of Fergus McBride, a volatile Scots anthropologist, and a 7-foot hominid. A fellow expeditionary describes the scene:

It was dawn. The light was grey but strong enough for every detail to be sharply defi ned: the canvas of the tent ripped to shreds, Westerman and Corbella [two of the expeditionaries] fl at on their backs either dead or unconscious, and McBride on his feet, stark naked, in confrontation with the most incredible creature I have ever clapped eyes on. I say “incredible creature,” yet the fi rst thing which struck me about him, the thing that almost made me burst out in a cackle of half-hysterical laughter, was his extraordinary resemblance to McBride! The creature was, it is true, a great deal bigger and hairier than the professor; but he had the same thick- set body, the same barrel chest, the same short, somewhat bandy legs, the same tangle of rust-red hair, the same pale, near-translucent skin and the same intolerant “what-do-you-want-damn-you” expression; only the shape of his head was different, the low backward-sloping skull of the ape-man being in sharp contrast to the broad cranium of the man-of-science. Their faces were inches apart, and they were glaring at one another with the ferocity of tom cats, each trying to make the other slink discomforted away. It would have been a sight to laugh at if my instinct hadn’ t told me that our lives depended on whose eyes were fi rst to drop. (Cameron 1972 : 101–102)

For all this literary display of eccentricity among learned types, the more subtle and informed of writers portray anthropologists as certainly unconventional, but 164 Anthropology in the Public Arena only mildly so. Bruce Chatwin is particularly damning in this vein. In The Songlines (1987 ) he depicts most anthropologists as bureaucrats of the exotic, offi cious gatekeepers to the alien. Along with lawyers, Aboriginal rights activists, and other well-intentioned but myopic folk, they stand guard over the border zone, blocking others’ easy passage to encounter with the indigenes. It is telling that the only anthropologists Chatwin does approve of he does not name as such. Very often anthropologists might fl atter themselves to be ethically upright characters, but many novelists delight in exposing them as morally fl accid. Self-centered careerists, they are shown to be only all too easily open to corruption, and even theft. In his Booker-prizewinning English Passengers , Matthew Kneale goes further, by presenting a comparative ethnologist (based on Robert Knox) who is prepared to lie, manipulate, steal bodies, brandish pistols, mutiny, and contemplate murder (Kneale 2000 ). 13 The character who evinces, in a concentrated fashion, almost all the unattractive personality traits we have catalogued so far, the very acme of the pathetic anthropologist, is Robert Holiwell, the protagonist of Robert Stone’ s A Flag for Sunrise (1982 ), set in an unnamed but tumultuous Central American country. Deeply disenchanted and chronically alcoholic, he drags a guilty burden: in Vietnam he passed his fi eldwork data to a US secret service. His best friend in the country is a womanizing anthropologist who has now turned gay and so won the despisal of all around. He will later be murdered. Invited to give a prestigious lecture, Holiwell insults his audience with nihilistic claptrap. He claims to be working on a multi-volume study of mankind entitled The Aesthetics of Horseshit. He acknowledges the profundity of his alienation:

The thought came to Holiwell that he had spent much of his life depending on a few local people, speaking some lingua franca, hovering insect-like about the edge of some complex ancient society which he could never hope to really penetrate. That was his relationship with the world. And he himself – more and more losing touch with the family he had made, a bastard of no family origin, no blood or folk. A man from another planet forever inquiring of intelligent strangers the nature of their bonds with one another . . . “The family. It’ s so strange, you know. I’ ve never had a family of my own to speak of. And the one I’ ve raised I don’ t believe I understand at all. As far as other people’ s families go – I’ m absolutely ignorant.” (Stone 1982 : 165–166)

Stumbling through his hosts’ civil war, he befriends a radical US nun, defl owers her, and betrays her to the police who, he knows, will torture her to death. In the closing chapter he murders an expatriate psychopath before the man thinks of killing him. Just before then, Stone has summed up his character’ s predicament: it is night, he is huddling on a beach, during a lull in the cross-fi re. “He was alone and lost, in utter darkness without friend or faction. It was a frightening place – the point he had been working toward since the day he had come south. It was The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 165 his natural, self-appointed place” (Stone 1982 : 405). What a verdict on us practitioners: fetal, solitary, fearful, and in the dark! We can deal with the opposing stereotype quite quickly. The positive image of anthropologists fi ts easily into the classic heroic mold. It is just that the events usually take place in exotic settings.14 These are men and women who see themselves as romantics, who want strangeness and difference and take pride in being intrepid travelers prepared to face occasional danger. Intellectually inclined, they chose their discipline over others because anthropology meant doing things, not just reading about them (Curtis 1996 : 76). The anthropologist in Petru Popescu’ s Almost Adam ( 1996 : 218) is pleased colleagues see him as a fi eldworking fi nder rather than a thinker, while the protagonist of the Gears’ Dark Inheritance (2001 : 402) is an outdoors type, a “warrior hero” “with a rugged charisma.” These ideal characters are the perfect balance of so many everyday tensions: they are both hardy yet vulnerable; they possess a brain and a heart; they are non-assertive yet brave. They can think, they can feel, they can act. Sexed and sexually attractive, they are not promiscuous, nor are they disillusioned by life. The only weighty dilemma they have to face is which lofty ideal to maintain at any one time. They are not racked by existentialist woes nor befuddled by alcohol or drugs. Their vision is clear and their progress, unless the action gallops along, boringly predictable.15 And, as one daughter reveals, they make good role-models (Gear and Gear 2001 : 424). Kidnapped by genetically “augmented” apes, “she whispered through gritted teeth, ‘Get a grip, Brett . . . Your father’ s an anthropologist. If anyone can survive this, it’ s you.’ ”16

Fieldwork

I am an anthropologist. That doesn’ t mean I have to be a masochist. (Elkins 2003 : 44)

What makes all these characters so outstanding, whether as disgraced failures or as heroes to be emulated? Why, in a phrase, are anthropologists seen as so different? The answer is usually fi eldwork and all the consequences of that method. Fieldwork is a sustained period of intensive contact with other peoples (sometimes very different people) in settings which may be very different from the anthropologists’ homeplace. Fieldworkers are exposed to a variety of forces, some powerful, compelling, and mysterious, and their effect on the visitor ’ s personality can be radical and permanent. Fieldwork may bring to the surface otherwise repressed or even unknown attitudes, feelings, and traits. In this way fi eldwork can become a source of almost constant, unwanted surprises for the fi eldworker. No wonder this method can be so traumatic to use! 166 Anthropology in the Public Arena

“I came here as an anthropologist,” one protagonist cries. A local, pregnant by him, laughs, “What are planning to leave as?” (Sturz 2001 : 279). At its most radical, fi eldwork is a life-altering experience permanently transforming the fi eldworker’ s self. On leaving the fi eld, the anthropologist emerges as a different person, forever marked by what they have undergone. Their horizons are widened, their frames of reference now that much richer. One reason why fi eldwork is so mentally chal- lenging is the gilded opportunity it provides to explore the depth and contours of one ’ s personality, to play at being and maybe to become another person. An obvious avenue here for the fi eldworker is to go native, to become as much as possible like one of those he or she studies. To some, going native is a form of freedom from home constraints or values; to another it is a fantasy-fulfi lling escape into adventure; to yet others it is a way to fi nd or to reencounter oneself. 17 Pat Barker in particular develops this theme of liberation, in her portrayal of W. H. R. Rivers. Interviewing Solomon Islanders, his interogees unexpectedly turn the tables: how would he answer the same questions? His answers seem so “bizarre” that everyone laughs:

“And I suddenly saw that their reactions to my society were neither more nor less valid than mine to theirs. And do you know that was a moment of the most amazing freedom. I lay back and I closed my eyes and I felt as if a ton weight had been lifted.” “Sexual freedom?” “That too. But it was more than that. It was . . . the Great White God dethroned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw not only that we weren’ t the measure of all things, but that there was no measure.” (Barker 1991 : 241)

Fieldwork may well be a chance to ponder one ’ s predicament, a needed break from the usual routines and demands. To Robertson’ s anthropologist, fi eldwork is therapeutic, a way to calm his otherwise troubled soul (Robertson 1987 : 33–35; see also Niehoff 1999 : 177, 269). For McKnight ’ s man, it is a chance to gain a fresh perspective on his failing marriage (McKnight 2001 ). Fieldwork can also be an opportunity for personal development, maybe even progress. For those who were sexually innocent or emotionally inadequate to begin with, fi eldwork becomes a moral education or a chance to emerge from academia into maturity (e.g., Yolen 1984 : 96, 141, 190; see also Loucks and Loucks 1998 : 206). One anthropologist learns how to share, another how to swive (Abelove 2000 ; Gutiérrez 1998 ). Lynch ’s ( 1930 ) anthropologist, a bookish fool ignorant of the ways of the world, falls in love with a local and so wins a painful self- knowledge. Hillerman portrays fi eldwork at probably its most positive: he shows how events in the fi eld may even turn a self-accepting failure into a self-surprised hero (Hillerman 1970 ). Many novelists have their anthropologists develop new abilities and sensitivities while away from home. One acquires a perceptive alertness to any change in The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 167 local atmosphere; another becomes more empathetic of the overstressed (Tracy 1956 : 31; Barker 1993 : 245; Westman 2001 : 35–39; see also LeGuin 1966 : 93). Some gain unexpected powers while in the fi eld, by winning access to alternative realities, new sources of power, information, and insight. In this sub-zone of our theme, Castaneda is not unusual, simply the best-known example. 18 A particularly developed example of this process – fi eldwork as spiritual education – occurs in Brodber’ s Louisiana ( 1997 ), where the anthropologist becomes a medium for her late key informant. Resistant at fi rst, she slowly becomes more accepting of her “gift” and, in the South, comes to be defi ned in terms of it. Back in New York, she is treated as madwoman. The stories of Brodber and her ilk expose fi eldwork as a dangerous enterprise, where one may hear voices, traverse times and spaces, and run the risk of being categorized “insane.” According to the writers in our sample, anthropologists are not so much born odd or made odd. It is, to be more exact, a case of fi eldwork making the ordinary somewhat odd and the already odd even odder. For instance, the protagonist of Vargas Llosa’ s El hablador (1987 ) was an asocial even before he went to live with Peruvian hunter-gatherers. He stays in the forest, becoming one of their “speakers”: men who travel from encampment to encampment, passing on gossip, telling myths. He never feels lonely, as the parrots, whose talk he understands, speak to him as a friend. Several examples in the literature suggest that anthropologists cannot be judged or relied upon in everyday terms because of their time spent in exotic settings among possibly very different people. This uneasy sense of the unassessable is compounded by popular ignorance of what fi eldworkers actually do from day to day. The sum result is an aura of mystery about anthropologists and what they get up to in the fi eld. They thus become people diffi cult to fathom, and also to trust. In the eyes of some, the change in fi eldworkers ’ horizons may not be for the best. In Iris Murdoch’ s A Severed Head (1961 : 10) one character describes a Cam- bridge anthropologist: “She could inspire awe. There ’ s something primitive about her. Perhaps it’ s all those tribes.” One of Pym’ s characters makes “the facetious observation that possibly it was the work among pygmies that had made him small-minded and petty” (Pym 1952 : 134) Some characters are not strong enough to weather the change fi eldwork may enable. The challenge is too great and their personalities fracture under the strain. They fail to regulate their contact with forces which prove too powerful or too attractive. Succumbing to the powers they encounter, the already unstable are destabilized even further and the consequences can be dramatic. One loses her mind, another his integrity, a third her modesty, later her fi delity, a fourth his money and then his foreskin (e.g., Tracy 1956 ; Diski 1987 ; Coyne 1988 : 175; McK- night 2001 ). We might say these anthropologists have been “fi eldworked over” by the process and events of fi eldwork itself. Unfortunates away from home, they have become victims of their own cross-cultural audacity. Usually deeply trauma- tized, these fractured personalities leave the fi eld with the notes they have made and the scars they have won. 168 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Some make the further mistake of staying in the fi eld too long, or never coming out: an error they justify by confusing longevity of residence with depth of insight (La Farge 1965 : 19–39; Theroux 1974 ). Climate may compound these problems. Throughout Charlotte Jay’ s book about Papua New Guinea, Beat Not the Bones (1952 ), characters emphasize how insidiously the heat and the humidity corrupt one’ s character. The dangers are only greater for government anthropologists, as they do not just spend years in the tropics, but also cut themselves off from their own kind for lengths at a time. By the end of the novel, it is clear that their characters have collapsed. The personally damaging effects of fi eldwork may also spin outwards, harming others in the process. The anthropologist unsettled by contact with others turns rapist or killer, goes mad, practices human sacrifi ce.19 Some reveal themselves as arch-manipulators, self-centered careerists, or dedicated philanderers.20 Others, intoxicated by the prospect of power or just of fame, come out as megalomaniacs thriving on fantasies fueled by fi eldwork, or even themselves (e.g., Popescu 1996 : 468). The most striking example here is Jay’ s character Ivan, an anthropologist corrupted by his own petty power. A man of “terrifying force,” he evinces “a fanatical curiosity and determination to make events and direct their course” (Jay 1974 : 117). Reveling in his dictatorial creativity, he has previously helped create a lively cargo cult. The book ’ s closing scene is of Ivan, recently returned, now at the feet of the chief, noting the man ’ s comments about the cult ’ s latest uprising, and already imagining titles for the resulting ethnography. It is true the prospect of fi eldwork may be enchanted by the promise of romance, but that promise may turn badly sour. Going native might be tempting; it can also go disastrously wrong. Rush ’ s anthropologist emphasizes how seductive some fi nd the idea of hunter-gatherers and how this “organized innocence” may blind them to gender inequality and persistent violence (Rush 1991 : 322–323). Theroux ’ s man ( 1974 : 196) found he became happy with only “the most savage logic,” while Popescu (1996 : 112) mentions the over-romantic anthropologists who dared to accompany Maasai youth on their lengthy walkabout: the lads survived this hardy initiation into manhood, their guests did not. Fieldwork may indeed be highly educational for a fi eldworker, but in a strongly negative manner. In Michael Krüger ’ s Himmelfarb (1994 ), fi eldwork is the crucial life-defi ning experience of the anthropologist, which exposes his intellectual inferiority, undermines his Nazi beliefs, and uncovers the depths of his immorality: though it is his Jewish assistant who in fact gathers the data, he publishes it under his own name without acknowledgment. We have already mentioned that fi eldwork may be a source of hope; more poignantly, it can also be a cause of disillusion, a defi nitive end to one’ s ideals. The most moving example here is Georges Perec’ s (1987 ) tale of the anthropologist who wanted to lose himself among the most isolated peoples he could fi nd. All he learnt was that they did not want him. His fi nal epistle states: “This is the worst of all, to feel your soul dying.” The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 169

Fieldwork is an intense time. Sharing this experience, its series of joys and tribu- lations, is meant to bond the fi eldworkers together (Popescu 1996 : 103; Pym 1952 : 152; Durant 1999 : 118–119). Fieldwork is also the site of love (Edelman 1967 ; Palmer 2000 ). When it occurs between a pair of expatriate whites, it is as though the exotic, distant setting both isolated and intensifi ed their love (Rush 1991 ). Fieldwork may save a marriage, drawing a couple back together (Robertson 1987 : 57–58). It may also sow the seeds for its destruction, the fi eldworker’ s wife coming to see he is prepared to forego common ethics for the sake of his own narrowly professional concerns (Warner 1982 ). In sum, fi eldwork is emotionally intense, psychologically enriching, potentially traumatic, possibly dangerous. In these dramatic settings, where extremes are exposed and may even collide, the worst sin of an anthropologist is to fi nd all this less than engrossing. The fi eldworker ’ s heresy? To think the locals boring. One anthropologist feels goaded into anger by her Botswanan hosts:

You are boring to me . . . You bore me to tears. You are consigning me to a boring position. You are interesting only from the standpoint of someone interested in boring people. You are less than uninteresting. You are boring in the way you inter- act. I am not asking you to be characters in Proust, but I am mentally asking you not to surveil me, which is the most boring thing you can either do or be subject to. All over the world in the privacy of their huts anthropologists are turning up their hands and saying This is boring. Life should not be boring. (Rush 1991 : 413).

Perhaps the second-worst sin is to help destroy the fi eldsite one came to study. Fieldwork is here seen as contamination and its consequences unpredictable and manifold (e.g., LeGuin 1966 : 32; Yolen 1984 : 111–112, 190; Barton 2000 ). In one short story a female anthropologist tries to turn “her” village ’ s contemporary way of life backwards and to snap all its links with the modern world. Though she marries its chief she is ejected before she can do even more damage (Theroux 1977 : 96). The damage done may be deliberate, as in the betrayal of tribal secrets, or unintentional, as in Lynch ’ s novel where a local young woman falls in love with her family ’ s visitor and, when he leaves, hangs herself from a tree (Lynch 1930 ; La Farge 1965 : 164–166). Either way the novelists’ message is clear: however pure their intentions may seem, anthropologists are not to be trusted (e.g., Goodman 2001 : 157; see also Allen 1975 : 190–202). Given these attitudes, is it really so surprising that one knowing author (Sturz 2001 : 265) has his anthropologist refer to “fi eldwork” as defecating on the grass? Up till now we have talked of fi eldworkers rather than of the fi eldworked, as though it were the anthropologist who always sets the agenda of these encounters. Several of the items I read, however, turn precisely on the way locals reverse this imbalance. Instead of dancing to the ethnographer ’ s tune, they set the pace and the rate at which their visitor will learn (e.g., La Farge 1965 : 261–302; see also Hillerman 1973 : 98, 100). Some locals, far from accepting their visitors’ assumed 170 Anthropology in the Public Arena superiority, may pity them as maladjusted, morally inferior, or generally lacking (Lynch 1930 : 249; Abelove 2000 ; Palmer 2000 : 98). Barker is particularly good at drawing out the ethical complexities of this kind of fi eldwork. In The Ghost Road (set in the deeply colonialist 1910s) she shows Rivers and the Fijian traditional doctor he is studying as different yet equal. Sharing a cross-cultural kinship based on medical expertise, they can relax by seeing each other as fellow scholars proud of their respective knowledge. The link between the two is further strengthened when, on visiting a cave, they are both assailed by thousands of bats. Barker here wishes to argue that extreme experience transcends cultural specifi cities and, if shared, may establish a bond of friendship or, at the least, mutual recognition of a common humanity. Yet the limits set by power are never too far: at the tale’ s end, the local communicates to Rivers he must leave, otherwise Western forces will assail his homeland (Barker 1995 : 130, 135, 169–170; see also Cartwright 1993 ; Long 2002 : 272). 21 Some writers show the locals exploiting the anthropologists as hard as the anthropologists are trying to exploit them. Instead of being played with, they use their visitors as pawns in their own games. 22 In a clever, ironic twist, fi eldworkers’ techniques may even be used against them by the supposedly fi eldworked. The professional observer, often unaware, is shown to be the one who is in fact studi- ously observed (e.g., Grandes 1996 ; Payne 2001 : 50).23 McKnight (2001 : 150) has his Senegalese locals stage a popular trial of their anthropologist (an African- American) where they use his own fi eldnotes as damning evidence against him. The most elaborate instances of this role-reversal, however, are those of Hynes (1997 ) and of Oliver (1954 ). In Hynes’ s short story an arrogant armchair anthropologist is made to step, unknowingly, through the various stages of an ancient British ritual which culminates in his live entombment. In Oliver’ s novel an anthropologist encounters aliens in a Texan town. He immediately becomes the native and they the anthropologists. Despite having a doctorate, he is the savage and they the more advanced civilization. The closing speech of this cultivated man is to his extremely attractive alien girlfriend, where he reveals he knows she has been using him: “You wanted to sleep with a caveman, try out a native for kicks . . . That ’ s all I was to you, just a savage to play with” (Oliver 1954 : 185–186).

Function

What use are these anthropologists? What do they do for the natives? Just ask them questions and write books about them. What good is that? What good is that to anyone? (Jay 1974 : 48) The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 171

It is time to ask why so many writers have included anthropologists and anthropology in their texts. We need to uncover what functions these authors are making these characters and their discipline fulﬁ ll. The response is manifold. I group my answers into the following categories: geography, cultural relativity, professional subversion, anthropological knowledge, anthropological whodunits, ﬁ eldwork as literary structure.

Geography

My fi rst category is the most uninteresting. Putting an anthropologist into your novel is a way to legitimate a narrative move from the West to another country. For instance, because McKnight’ s main character is an anthropologist on fi eldwork in Senegal, he is able to write about the reactions of an educated African-American to the home of his ancestors (McKnight 2001 ). Also, having an anthropologist as a protagonist is a way to make credible an otherwise exotic encounter. In the dysfunctional love story Picture Perfect (Picoult 1995 ), a physical anthropologist and a famous movie-star meet at Olduvai Gorge because she is digging there and he fi lming.24 Anthropologists may also be used as geographical markers, Hillerman (1978 : 59) referring to one desert place in relation to where the fi eldworking academics have dug in. In a parallel fashion, the Cuban writer Gutiérrez ( 2002 : 187) employs anthropologists as barometers of social degradation; he speaks of one slum so wretched that “an anthropologist would be happy there, studying the deep-sea fauna.”

Cultural relativity

This is perhaps the most common reason for inserting an anthropologist onto the page. Many of the items in the relevant literature contain long and frequent sections whose purpose is to underline the relativity of Western morals and so weaken their prescriptive force (e.g., Barker 1995 : 116–120). One favored method is to have the anthropologists use their knowledge at home: to correct their compatriots’ ignorance, to defl ate their sense of cultural superiority, and to underline what is common to us all.25 In so doing, of course, they run the risk of raising themselves up as privileged experts purveying valuable knowledge. As one wife puts it (Theroux 1974 : 227), “ ‘Alfred uses Africans to reproach the English.’ She smiled, ‘Incredible isn ’ t it? But that ’ s anthropology.’ ” Several authors use their anthropologist-novels to emphasize how life in the rural West can be much more primitive or untamed than anything supposedly similar in any African village. In Theroux ’ s The Black House (1974 ) the regulars of 172 Anthropology in the Public Arena a Dorset pub are presented as threatening, almost animalistic. They perpetrate strange killings (especially of dogs), and use such acts to push the unwanted out of their hamlet. In Coyne ’ s ( 1988 ) novel, set in upstate New York, the protagonist fi nds the local “inbreeds” far wilder and more unsettling than any community she discusses in her university courses. The fact her successful New York lawyer- husband turns out to be an inbreed himself, and the biggest murderer of them all, is used as an disturbing reminder of “the primitive within” both ourselves and our own societies, ready to emerge when necessary. Authors keen to produce social critique can easily exploit the fi gure of an anthropologist for satiric end. In 1935 one produced a bogus ethnographic report in order to lampoon the stultifying hypocrisy of suburban Londoners (Cher- nichewski 1935 ). Postwar, Pym often portrayed anthropologists as mildly unconventional. Their moderate eccentricities throw into stark relief the severe conventionality of middle-class others, especially women, making their hide- boundness and concern with petty detail appear comic in its silliness and tragic in its emptiness (Pym 1955 ). In Krippendorf’ s Tribe ( 1985 ) Frank Parkin portrays a very different London, one so close to the edge of collapse that pursuing an alternative neo-tribal logic does not appear completely irrational. In this urban space, where choice of lifestyle reigns and disorder constantly threatens, fi ling one’ s teeth, living in trees, or eating the housekeeper no longer seem quite so aberrant. If, as Parkin implies, conventional morality has lost its force and social organization has become virtually a misnomer, then there may well be space for an alienated anthropologist to form his own tribe. Some writers see cultural relativity as a double-edged ploy, which they can exploit to make fun of anthropologists. Both Margery Sharp (1945 ) and Honor Tracy (1956 ) lampoon ethnographers by having them study rural life in the British Isles. A good deal of their intended humor is meant to come from the apparently preposterous audacity of anthropologists thinking they could compare the customs of an African village with those of a Cotswold parish or of a small Irish town. The danger of this authorial ploy is that it so easily begins to border on racism. In the last chapter of her book, Tracy presents her man as a learned fool. Whether gentlefolk or peasantry, the Irish are either too subtle or too self-contradictory for him. He realizes he cannot fathom their style of rationality. The central occurrence of the book, from which most events follow, is a comic misunderstanding, which he had hoped to reveal to his local friend, a skeptical and educated lawyer. But the sight, at novel ’ s end, of his friend singing heartily along in a religious procession bereaves him

of all power to think . . . Now he saw the joke was far more complex and ramiﬁ ed than he had supposed, and that it was on him . . . The very landscape wore to his anxious eye a mocking aspect, while the stream appeared to be laughing itself silly. Did you really think anything was to be depended on here? he thought it gurgled . . . The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 173

“I understand why Ireland lives by the bottle,” he cried, loudly and passionately, and reeling a little, made for Mrs. Mangan’ s Hotel. (Tracy 1956 : 241–242)

Professional subversion

Sharp and Tracy both poke fun at anthropologists but Pym is the past mistress here, as she knows her subject so well. For her, anthropologists are very easy to ridicule: their particular form of seriousness and their lofty concerns blinding them to large areas of human life. In A Few Green Leaves a young anthropologist toys with the idea of analyzing the Cotswold village she is staying in for the present. Here Pym gently mocks anthropologists for being so arrogant to think that their research methods are suffi cient to understand human behavior. They are trying to be scientifi c (i.e., detached and methodical) about something which is not “scientifi c” in this sense. To understand life one needs to experience life, which means acting in a frequently unmethodical, undetached manner. And people who are not so involved are outside life, or else setting themselves apart from those they are studying. Anthropologists ’ research procedures might make some sense when studying people radically different from oneself (and even then doubts about these procedures are very easily entertained), but they appear downright silly when applied to the society of which the anthropologist is a member. For instance, the young anthropologist peeks in at the surgery waiting-room:

Peering through the half-open doors of the surgery, she was tempted to join in what seemed like an enjoyable occasion from which she was being excluded. But remembering her role as an anthropologist and observer – the necessity of being on the outside looking in – she crept away, meditating on what she had observed. There was obviously material for a note here. (Pym 1980 : 24–25; see also pp. 66, 74, 81)

Moreover, as Pym often pointed out, anthropologists may see themselves as different and may wish to step away from the common ﬂ ock, but that is no reason for them to think they stand above the common bleating. In several of her novels (e.g., Pym 1955; 1980: 157; 1986: 44) she clearly pleasures in undercutting her haughty anthropologists ’ sense of superiority, and in poking fun at their cobbled use of language. 26 Who are these people, she implies, to think of others as “primitive?”

Anthropological knowledge

Several writers exploit their anthropologists in order to insert anthropological commentary on human behavior into their text. The advantage of this strategy is 174 Anthropology in the Public Arena that it (a) provides the reader with academically exact information, (b) makes the information transmitted seem potentially more authoritative and, above all, (c) saves the author from looking omniscient, pretentious, or overly pedagogical. By deployment of an anthropologist character, the author can retain his/her air of being an ordinary person (albeit one highly perceptive about human character, and skilled at the use of language), and can leave the moments of academically exact language – with its ever-present threat of edging toward the pompous – to the academic characters. Thus there are discussions in these stories about Benedict’ s confi gurations of culture, Whorf’ s theory of language, the natures of contagious magic and of free thought, the limits of rationality, the amorality of Italian peasants, globalization, and the anthropology of tourism, as well as the pros and cons of anthropology versus theology, or science versus religion.27 McKee ( 1980 ) makes her vampire an anthropologist in order to be able to have him discourse on the nature of prey and predator, and on his own liminal status. Others use their anthropologists to provide information about genocide in the Amazon or to analyze the local social organization, whether that be a giant spaceship or a grouping of academics (Heinlein 1957 : 75–80, 122–127; Hampton 1974 ; Lethem 2001 ). Dirk Wittenborn goes even further and structures his whole book, Fierce People (2002 ), on the similarities between the US super-rich and the Amazonian indigenes portrayed in Napoleon Chagnon ’ s Yanomamo: The Fierce People (1968 ). Wittenborn caricatures Yanomamo values as grounded on the twin imperatives of swiving and killing: since nothing else really matters, they are justifi ed in being as aggressive as necessary in order to gain what they desire. Deploying an adolescent interloper as an ethnographer-manqué, he shows the over-wealthy to be as fi erce, if not fi ercer, than the Yanomamo. Some authors use anthropologists not as purveyors of knowledge, but as legiti- mators of it. La Farge (1988 : 77) has a desert-dwelling white boast of how well she gets on with the local Native Americans. To impress a visitor, she brags of her “invitations to ceremonies no scientist had yet reported.” One Native American author emphasizes how little known a particular local spirit is by stating that no more has been written about her than “a few amusing notes in anthropology books.” 28 Most of the novelists discussed in this chapter do not grossly misrepresent social anthropological methods or ethnographic data. Indeed many of these works can be seen as worthy modes of popularizing academic anthropology, which underline the necessity of recognizing cultural relativity and the hard decisions that may have to be made in cross-cultural contexts. Usually they portray the collecting of ethnographic information, the uncovering and processing of archaeological data, in a manner diffi cult to argue with. What is almost consistently misrepresented, however, is biological anthropology, especially primatology. Here it is as though novelists give themselves license to run free and fast for long distances with the smallest of well-grounded information. Some construct fantastic structures of explanation on the most impoverished of data (e.g., Bishop 1989 ; Popescu 1996 ; The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 175

Gear and Gear 2001 ). Others pass quick commentary on the human condition in an alarmingly simplistic and biosocial style, as though their authors had only attended an introductory course in anthropology, and that many years ago (e.g., Vidal 1968 ; Niehoff 1999 ). The single exception is Genevieve Sesto ’ s Flight (1999 : 193, 224) where she gently undercuts human pretensions by having her anthropologist interpret the actions of others in primatological terms. According to her, we are just big apes in this year’ s fashions.

Anthropological whodunits

Anthropological whodunits are easily the most popular form of books of all those mentioned in this chapter, with authors often establishing a successful character whom they reuse in a series of novels. Some of these writers make forensic anthropologists their key character. These authors are often forensic anthropologists themselves, or trained as such. Their books are usually fi lled with forensic detail and educative minutiae about their deductive methods. Thus their protagonists may solve crimes by relating muscle insertions of corpses to occupational stress or by relating people to their common biological peculiarities: over a hundred years before, Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes, contributor of learned articles to the Anthropological Journal, make exactly the same kind of relation. 29 On one occasion, the forensic helps solve the crime by identifying the contents of an urn as the ashes of not one body but several (McCrumb 1990 ). Unable to stop analyzing, these obsessive professionals often feel compelled to check out other characters ’ skull shape as evidence of longevity of looks, character, genealogy, or ethnic group.30 Forbes ( 2000 ), in the most serious example of this frequently light-hearted subgenre, makes forensic anthropology a metaphor for life’ s course, with practitioners sifting and examining bones in their continued attempts to fi nd signifi cance within the apparently random, to trace a pattern from within the chaos.31 In contrast to her forensic colleagues, Margot Arnold (pseudonym of Petronelle Cook, a social anthropologist trained in Oxford) has created a US female social anthropologist based in the Pitt-Rivers Museum (e.g., Arnold 1990a ). Her character usually solves the crime at hand by exploiting her broad anthropological skills. In one novel it is thanks to her fi eldwork knowledge of voodoo that she deduces the killer and his motives (Arnold 1988a ). In another she makes the crucial relation of the dead to one of the living by physical anthropological evidence (Arnold 1988b : 53). In yet another she gains key information from friends in the area of the crime because she fi eldworked there (Arnold 1989a ). In a fourth, she succeeds because she alone is able to sift obfuscatory folklorism from the murderous reality (Arnold 1995 ). However, the most interesting variant of this general subgenre is the work of Tony Hillerman, for his protagonists are a pair of anthropology graduates 176 Anthropology in the Public Arena turned detectives, and Navajo to boot (e.g., Hillerman 1978, 1982, 1989a, b, 1999 ; Reilly 1996 ). To my knowledge, he is the only author who has made the natives the qualifi ed anthropologists. In sharp contrast, the white ethnographers in his books are lesser characters. They are included to add color and condensed commentary on the history of the area; usually, they are either the novels’ victims or their executioners. Whodunit? For Hillerman, it is normally the white anthropologist. 32 His two policemen are complementary: one is older and tribally agnostic, the other younger and keen to revitalize. Doubly marginal, they are occupants of that middle-ground where deracinated indigenes cross and re-cross paths with asocial whites who prefer the desert to other people. Both policemen are able to take a distanced, critical, and ethnographically informed view on the local indigenous customs. Where their memory of reservation ways fails them, they can always fall back on what they learnt in their university classes. Indeed in one of the novels the elder ethnic detective identifi es the murderer because the killer misuses anthropological knowledge (Hillerman 1970 : 134–135). In a striking irony, one remembers his anthropology classes as his chance to study the ways white men behaved (Hillerman 1980 : 86). Both policemen muse over the relativity of cultures and may agonize over which values to uphold in dramatic moments of cross- cultural clash. At these times each has to ask himself, What am I: Navajo, Ameri- can police, or someone who tries to muddle his way through this mix?

Fieldwork as literary structure

Several authors make fi eldwork the structural axis of their book, around which they hook other key elements or processes of their stories. In some of these, the process of fi eldwork becomes at the same time a process of self-discovery (e.g., North 1996 ; Sarrionandia 2002 ). It may also become an opportunity to excavate simultaneously both one’ s own past and the unknown past of one’ s own country (Garcia 1994 ; Ondaatje 2000 ). These novelists strive to conclude their works with a dense melodramatic series of mutually intensifying climaxes, with the protagonists fi nally coming to know themselves and the cultures of their hosts. In the closing pages of Garcia ’ s Obsidian Sky (1994 ), the fi eldworker at last realizes why his father died and why, despite his earlier intentions, he will be going home; he solves his particular ethnographic puzzle; and, while witness- ing a violent demonstration, observes rioters raiding the national museum and donning the garb of historical rebels: for him, the past he has been studying has truly come alive. Zaldua and McKnight take a slightly different tack, in each case making the protagonist’ s fi eldwork topic and his life-course blend seamlessly. Zaldua’ s short story (2002 : 17–40) has an anthropologist who fi rst studies head-shrinkers, then television as social control. By the end of the tale it is clear he, now a pensioner, The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 177 is killing others as a form of control, and storing shrunken parts of them in the living-room TV. McKnight ’ s ( 2001 ) man came to study urban legends but increasingly lost the gap between the stories he was told and his dreams. Similarly, Anthony Burgess (1980 : 580–582, 626–629) makes his anthropologist a victim of the topic he lectures on: the limits of translation. African converts to Catholicism misinterpret the message of Holy Communion and eat the character. If the work of Zaldua and McKnight exemplifi es theses coming to life, then that of Burgess shows life exemplifying anthropology, unto death.

No Time for a Conclusion?

Our survey done, we may ask what broader generalizations, if any, we can make, and what prognosis we may contemplate. The fi rst generalization is cross-cultural: this literary image is a predominantly Anglocentric one. Despite continued attempts, I did not learn of more than a handful of items not written in English. It is as though writers in other languages have more suitable fi gures to deploy, leaving it to US, English, and the occasional Australian author (e.g., Williams 1993 ) to toy with the character of anthropologists. The second generalization is historical: there appears to have been precious little evolution of this literary image. What is distinctive about anthropologists appears independent of time. The earliest reference I have found portrays the anthropologist as a journeyman, come from afar (Allen, in 1896). Over a hundred years later, and in the most determinedly of postmodern settings, it is still the anthropologist, now otherwise a student of other academics’ metaphors, who journeys to the other world (Lethem 2001 ). Also, some of the earliest fi ctions were already presenting the anthropologist as a pathetic, jokey fi gure (e.g., Lynch 1930 ; Chernichewski 1935 ; Huxley 1961 ), in a style their postwar successors would repeat many times. The third generalization is sexual: the gender of the anthropologist appears to play no signifi cant role in the schemes I have presented above. As far as I can judge, female anthropologists are as likely as their male counterparts to be pathetic or heroic, humble or pompous, manipulable or manipulative. Sexuality also appears to be irrelevant: the rare examples of gay or lesbian anthropologists fi t easily into the categories I have created above (Stone 1982 : Hearon 1987 ; Griffi th 2002 ). The only area where gender imbalance does loom large is that of the anthropological whodunits. The majority of these amateur sleuths are female anthropologists, and the majority of their authors are women, for example the highly successful Kathy Reichs (1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005). It is as though forensic anthropology, until recently a relatively unknown and highly specialized profession, offered a new, credible way for women to act as detectives. 178 Anthropology in the Public Arena

The fourth generalization is political: it is both surprising and disappointing that only one item (by a Peruvian novelist) out of the 188 I read presents the anthropologist-character as a reforming activist. And even in this case, the anthropologist is just a marginal fi gure, used to prick the political conscience of the protagonist for a few pages (Thays 2008 : 96–103). Many anthropologists might pride themselves on their campaigning for the people with whom they have lived but this aspect of their labor, it seems, never makes it into fi ction. The fi fth generalization is disciplinary: anthropologists appear to be much, much more common in fi ction than other social scientists.33 However, it might be argued that, though anthropologists might occur frequently in fi ction, their often negative image is merely a specifi c case of authors’ more general scorn of all do-gooding academics who presume to authority. For example, I found very few works which included sociologists as characters; however, all but one of those were exercises in mockery.34 So, if authors are usually so scathing about social science, we have to ask, what, other than frequency, is distinctive about the literary image of anthropologists. The answer is fi eldwork and all its consequences. As detailed above, it is fi eldwork which marks out anthropologists as different, and it marks them out in a rich diversity of ways for authors to exploit.35 There is a subpoint about morality here. An exhaustive survey of scientists in fi lms deduced that they were usually seen as engaged in a secretive quest for new knowledge, which was out of control and ethically impermissible. In contrast anthropologists appeared to have “an unchallenged image of trust.” They were “in the large majority depicted as ‘good’ and ‘benevolent’ ” (Weingart, Muhl, and Pansegrau 2003 : 283). In other words anthropologists might be presented as more pathetic than heroic but relatively few are thought to stray perilously from the contemporary moral path. Their knowledge is rarely viewed as dangerous, and personally corrupting. Given that the literary image of anthropologists is so often negative, our next question must be, what can be done? One option, promoted by optimists like Shore ( 1996 ), is to urge colleagues to work against this negative image, by promoting a more modern replacement (e.g., MacClancy 2002a ). The other option is, on investigation, darker and more depressing. The fi rst point to make here is that those all too ready to criticize these authors for sensationalism, over-dramatization, and exoticism have to remember that these are the very sins postmodernists charged so many anthropologists with committing (Clifford and Marcus 1986 ). The trouble with casting the fi rst stone is that a boulder might come back. The second point is how surprisingly many of the authors I have quoted above are anthropologists or anthropology graduates themselves. I have identifi ed sixteen, maybe there are more.36 In total, given their number of publications, these authors represent an important percentage of our list. And their sales are pro- portionally even greater, as some of these anthropologist-authors (especially the forensically trained among them) are very popular. This subgroup becomes even The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 179 more signifi cant if we include the bestselling Ursula LeGuin, daughter of Kroeber and better versed in anthropology than most graduates in the discipline: at least one of her critics treats her as a respected anthropologist who has every right to comment upon the views of earlier anthropologists (Shippey 1977 ; Bittner 1984 ; White 1999 ). To a certain degree, therefore, one might say that this literary image is one of anthropologists created by anthropologists. Moreover, based on anecdotal evidence, it seems that for many anthropologists, part of the fun of reading some of these novels is to titillate themselves with the rumor that character X is said to be based on colleague Y. For instance, could it be true that Iris Murdoch drew on the character of her neighbor, Sybil Wolfram, when creating Honor Klein for A Severed Head? 37 The fl ipside of all this, however, is the painful threat of recognizing oneself in other’ s print, fi nding oneself misrepresented, sneered at, one’ s weaknesses exposed, one’ s polish dulled. Years later John Layard was still “deeply hurt” (R. Layard, pers. comm.) that his former friend W. H. Auden had called him “loony Layard” in a 1930s poem.38 Given all this it would seem that there are some anthropologists, possibly representative of a much greater number, who are ready to lampoon their own profession for fun, a little fame, and the prospect of money. I found it very diffi cult not to read Nigel Barley’ s Island of Demons as a parting volley by a retired anthropologist now free to state what he thinks of his former discipline and its pretensions (Barley 2009 ). For more serious-minded anthropologists concerned about the public face of our discipline, this clutch of the frivolous, the literary- gifted, and the commercially-minded come to be seen as “the enemy within.” At this rate what popular future, other than continued notoriety, is there for anthropology? One answer to that might be the following: for too long, university-trained anthropologists have regarded the academic versions of their discipline as the only kind of anthropology worthy of the name. What some of the works here surveyed suggest is that there is a rich variety of popular anthropologies, existing alongside the more scholastic ones. And taking these popular versions even somewhat seriously helps to unsettle the otherwise almost unquestioned hegemony of academic anthropology. For these works, via the literary device of an anthropologist as key character, demonstrate some of the myriad ways anthropology is used and developed in non-academic arenas to provide possible answers to some of the most common of questions: Who are we? What is common? What are our limits? What can we know of others? How, why, and to what effect do we group ourselves in the ways we do? And so on. In this sense, these works may be regarded as hitherto-neglected forms of public anthropology. At the same time, consideration of these works is a forceful reminder that anthropology is not singular, but plural, and that only a section of its history has been decided within the cloisters of Academe. As I said at the start, modern forces behoove us to better comprehend public understandings of anthropology. On that ground, we should not turn away from these popular works and pretend they did 180 Anthropology in the Public Arena not exist. The very opposite: now more than ever, we need to make ourselves more aware of these stories, and to learn how to work with them.

Notes

1 The one exception to that generalization is Rosemary Firth. But her article (Firth 1984 ) is a short piece based on her reading of eighteen novels in which anthropologists appear. My trawl has been wider, deeper, longer, for several reasons: so much more has been published since then; I have discovered many other novels penned before then; and I have included playscripts, poems, and short stories, as well as items written in French, Spanish, German, and Basque within my scope. For all these reasons, it is well worth re-traversing the terrain Firth was the fi rst to tour. 2 My choice here is just as arbitrary as the naming of disciplines: after all it was only in the last two decades that the geography of population genetics has become known as “anthropological genetics” (Barbujani 2000 : 134). 3 For presumably similar reasons, Poul Anderson calls his learned space-traveler a “xenologist’ (Anderson 1969 : 114). In The Love Beach (praised as “Wild – Erotic!” by Buffalo News ), the popular author Leslie Thomas does not name the anthropologist character as such in order not to weight a very light novel with academic terms (Thomas 1968 ). In Herland , written in 1915 and today considered a feminist classic, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is so keen to make her feminist utopia a viable counter to the contemporary West that her key character, a male visitor, is a sociologist. To Gilman, anthropologists were only fi t to study the “savage peoples” who live in the hinterlands of her Amazonian Elysium (Gilman 2001 : 64). 4 Catherine Palmer, whose fi rst novel was published in 1988, has already sold over a million copies; Sharyn McCrumb’ s publishers call her “one of America’ s most acclaimed writers”; Aaron Elkins consistently receives rave reviews from, among other papers, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post , and The Washing- ton Times; Kathy Reichs’ s publishers claim she now rivals Patricia Cornwell, current US queen of whodunits; among the many honors the bestselling Toby Hillerman holds is the Special Friend Award of the Navajo. 5 On Psalmanazar, see Needham (1985 ), Stagl (1995 ); on Castaneda, see De Mille (1976 ), Noel (1976 ), Fikes (1993 ). 6 A further aspect to this blurring of boundaries is the way anthropologists may on occasion work together with novelists to give academic credibility to works of fi ction. Kurt Vonnegut was invited to submit “Cat’ s Cradle” to fulfi ll his dissertorial require- ment for his MA in Anthropology at the University of Chicago (Vonnegut 1994 : 413). And, most notoriously, the anthropologists on the University of California Press anthropology board recommended that the press publish Castaneda’ s doctoral thesis, as “The Teachings of Don Juan,” even though several local anthropologists voiced grave doubts about its truthfulness. According to his widow, Jim Quebec, an anthropologist and editor at the UC Press, supported the book despite his doubts because he knew it might sell extremely well: he “saw the specter of hoax all right, but the dollar signs were blocking the view” (Runyan Castaneda 1996: 123). To date, the book The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 181

has sold over a million copies. The online bookseller Amazon now classifi es it under “Self-Improvement and Inspiration.” 7 For further examples, see Wallace (1964 : 296–7); Davin (1972 ); Diski (1987 ); Shriver ( 1988 ); Krüger ( 1994 ); Picoult ( 1995 ); Saul ( 1997 : 26); Sesto ( 1999 : 18, 34, 61); Vander- bes (2003 ); Kaufmann (2004 ); Aw (2009 ). 8 See also Pym (1955 : 205); Garcia (1994 ); Grandes (1996 : 135–160); Popescu (1996 ); Parks (2008 ). 9 See also LeGuin (1966 : 93); Yolen (1984 : 138); Picoult (1995 : 129); Loucks and Loucks (1998 : 206); Connor (2000 : 400–401). 10 See also La Farge ( 1965 : 137); Picoult ( 1995 : 170); Connor ( 1998 : 51); Bennett ( 1998 : 13, 111); Durant (1999 : 38–39, 44); Sesto (1999 : 55, 193, 224). 11 Johnson ( 2003 : 322–323) portrays an anthropologist so constituted by his profession that, in a post-holocaust scene with only a handful of humans left on Earth, he still feels it necessary to don his gown and grant his two research students their doctorates. 12 See, for example, Lynch (1930 : 9–11); Tracy (1956 : 32); Crichton (1969 : 54–55); Gelman and Richter (1977 ); Arnold (1988a: 48, 54, 204; 1989b: 129; 1990b: 85); Garcia ( 1994 : 182); Curtis ( 1996 : 66); Grandes ( 1996 : 137, 144–145); Gaffney ( 1997 : 25–26); Palmer (2000 : 1). 13 For further unfl attering portraits of anthropologists, see Vidal (1968 ); Brain (1977 ); Pym ( 1986 ); Hillerman ( 1973, 1990, 1997 ); Jevons (1985 ); Arnold (1989a ); Popescu ( 1996 : 391–392); Williamson ( 1996 ); Sesto ( 1999 : 76, 206–208, 259–260); Gardner (2002 ); Zaldua (2002 : 17–40). J. G. Ballard makes the visionary psychopath of his Cocaine Nights an anthropology graduate who, like Siberiam shamans, dreams “his” people’ s dreams for them (Ballard 1996 : 246, 310). 14 For example, the characters of Trenholm in La Farge ( 1965 : 189–239); Rocannon in LeGuin ( 1966 ); A ’ ron in Yolen ( 1984 ); Brian in Garcia ( 1994 ); the protagonist of Nimmo ( 1994 ); Miguel in Curtis ( 1996 ); Lauder in Popescu ( 1996 ); Christina in Loucks and Loucks (1998 ); Jim Dutton in Gear and Gear (2001 ). 15 If being an anthropologist gives some an opportunity to display their heroic qualities, studying anthropology may provide some members of the marginalized with a source of fulfi llment or a desire for self-realization: to one woman of mixed parentage, knowledge of anthropology gave her a cultural heritage and a direction to her life; to a Navajo policeman, it made him want to journey to Asia to “see if he could fi nd any roots to his Athabaskan origins” (Hillerman 1990 : 154; Rathbun 1999 : 56) 16 The image of anthropologists may be equivocal. That of museum curators is, as far as I can judge, always negative. One curator at the British Museum is mocked as a sexual incompetent who chooses to marry (Huxley 1961 ), another is portrayed as an unwitting dupe (Marks 1987 : 146–154), while a Mexican curator is presented as a political shark, a self-destructive glory-hunter (Garcia 1994 : 204, 236, 337). In Janow- itz’ s satire about a cannibal in New York, the visitor wonders how an “unctuous” character’ s “gill-less fl oundering and pompous inadequacy had taken him to the” curatorship of a major ethnographic museum (Janowitz 1987 : 199). 17 For examples of: the widening of anthropologists ’ horizons, see Oliver (1954 : 88); Tracy ( 1956 : 122–123); Kaysen ( 1990 ); Picoult ( 1995 : 411); Payne ( 2001 ); Griffi th (2002 ); Berlinski (2007 ); of the gilded opportunity fi eldwork offers, see La Farge (1965 : 182 Anthropology in the Public Arena

1–17); Barker ( 1993 : 235); Niehoff ( 1999 : 10–11); of going native, see Vance ( 1975 : 63); Theroux ( 1977 : 95); Yolen ( 1984 : 183); Rhodes ( 2000 ); of going native for reasons of fantasy or reencounter, see Hearon (1987 ); Garcia (1994 : 49, 103); Dooling (1995 ); Curtis ( 1996 : 20); Popescu ( 1996 : 276); Sturz ( 2001 : 285). Dickinson ( 1969 ) supplies a unique form of going native: the female anthropologist who takes the war-threatened Melanesian group she has lived with back to her home in London and marries one of them. 18 See also La Farge ( 1957: 157–173); LeGuin ( 1966: 131); Furnas ( 1968 : 133–136); Borges (1969 ); Robertson (1987 : 270–274); Garcia (1994 : 289–290); Gardner (2002 ); Gruber (2003 ). 19 For example, Wallace (1964 ); Furnas (1968 : 257); Diski (1987 ); Curtis (1996 ); Reichs (1998; 2000: 290, 320); Sturz (2001 : 293). 20 Furnas (1968 : 51); Hillerman (1973 ); Jay (1974 : 117); Hearon (1987 : 271); Hynes (1997 ). 21 For a discussion of how Barker portrays Rivers’ application of his ethnographic skills in his therapeutic practice, see Westman ( 2001 : 35–39). A slightly different example of local exploitation of the anthropological image occurs in Franzen (2001 ). He has US children use the ﬁ gure for their games: “[The baby-sitter Denise] joined Sinéad in raiding drawers for costumes. ‘Denise and I will be ethnologists,’ Sinéad said, ‘and, Erin, you can be a Hmong person’ ” (Franzen 2001 : 469). 22 For example, Burgess (1980 : 580–582, 626–629); McCrumb (1985; 2000: 259–262, 275–279); Garcia (1994 : 337); Long (2002 : 250); Sturz (2001 : 224, 273–275, 279, 291); Zaldua (2002 : 95–102); Kent (2011 ). 23 According to one of her colleagues, Barbara Pym saw herself as a ﬁ eldworker of anthropologists (Holt 1990 : 168–169). One of her commentators argues that Pym invited readers to indulge in the vicarious pleasure of observing professional observers, and seeing how bad they were at the game (Rosen 1987 : 105). 24 See also Higson (2007 : 30–31, 38–39). 25 For example, Pym (1955: 160; 1952: 95, 119); Allen (1897 : 133–135); Davin (1972 : 78, 102–103, 123–127); Arnold (1992 : 224); Palmer (2000 : 93). For a terse example of the culturally relative ploy, see Pynchon (2007 : 676). 26 Nabokov is also good at deriding anthropologists for the recondite and frequently ludicrous nature of their research, while Walcott mocks their pomposity and cultural blinkers (Nabokov 1957: 115; 1959: 32; Walcott 1986 : 24; see also Hillerman 1996 : 110; Pym n.d. ). 27 Heinlein (1957 : 87); Huxley (1961 : 96–97); Davin (1973); Silverberg (1974 ); Lodge (1991 ); Curtis (1996 : 147–151); Cartwright (1999); Palmer (2000 : 142–144); Sturz (2001 ). See also Edelman (1967 : 35); Vonnegut (1970 : 6). 28 Robinson (2000 : 337). See also Perec (1987 : 48); Wallace (1995 : 3–4); Hillerman (2002 : 103). 29 On relating muscle insertions, see Elkins ( 1990: 280; 1997; 2000 : 198–206); on relating people biologically, see Connor (1997 : 231, 238); Reichs (1999: 267, 380–381; 2002: 34–35, 277; 2003 : 258–259, 266–275). The Holmes reference is Conan Doyle ( 1993 : 43, 283–284). 30 Elkins ( 1987: 113; 1990: 146; 1997 : 97); McCrumb ( 1988 : 63); North ( 1996 : 54); Beckett (2006 : 60). The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 183

31 See also McCrumb ( 1984, 1986, 1992, 1995 ); (Elkins 1989, 1994 ); Connor ( 1996, 1999 ). Some of McCrumb’ s characters regard her forensic anthropologist as a “medical vulture” who is “up the wall” because she works with human remains (McCrumb 1991: 59; 2000 : 81). 32 It is revealing that in Jevons ’ s ( 1985 ) whodunit the occupation of the anthropologist is not mentioned until well into the second half of the novel. It is as though stating his discipline would immediately alert the reader to the most likely suspect, as though in a mystery novel the anthropologist could be little else than the murderer, or the detective. On Hillerman, see also Gross (2005 ). 33 A keyword search on the barnesandnoble.com website generated no works of fi ction among the 323 hits for “geographer,” two works among the 125 hits for “political scientist,” and one work among the 364 hits for “sociologist.” Out of the 729 hits for “anthropologist,” eight of the fi rst ten were novels. Despite my repeated requests to sociologist colleagues for examples of sociologists in fi ction, I was only able to garner six titles. 34 Lurie (1967 ); Bradbury (1975 ); Priestley (1984 ); Irwin (1996 ); Houellebecq (2003 ). The exception is Gilman (2001 ). And then there is of course W. H. Auden’ s much-quoted line, “And let me not commit a social science.” 35 Historians are the only academics with a literary image whose popularity even begins to approach that of anthropologists. But very few of these works, as far as I can judge, have any cross-cultural dimension. Instead, most of them are straightforward whodunits with the historian as amateur sleuth. 36 My list is: Joan Abelove, Margot Arnold, Robert Brain, Beverly Connor, Michael Crichton, Isadore Durant, Aaron Elkins, Katy Gardner, the Gears, Oliver La Farge, Arthur Niehoff, Arlo Nimmo, Chad Oliver, Kathy Reichs, Kurt Vonnegut (Vonnegut 1994 : 386–387, 412–413). On the interrelations between Oliver ’ s anthropology and his fi ction, see Collins (2008 : ch. 3). 37 Is it merely gossip that “Felix Mainwaring,” head of the anthropology institute in Less Than Angels , is Pym ’ s transformation of Daryll Forde, director of the International African Institute during her time there? And what did Jean Rouch think of being used by her as the inspiration for the comic French anthropologist in Less Than Angels (Holt 1990 : 169)? 38 In 1972 Dan Davin used his book to chide his friend Godfrey Lienhardt, to jibe at Evans-Pritchard, and to poke fun at Rodney Needham. It is also said that the inspiration for the lascivious anthropologist in Rainforest (Diski 1987 ) recognized the carica- ture and was wounded (C. Hill, pers. comm.) 7 Parting Comments Public Interest, Multiple Anthropologies

This is sometimes called the age of the specialist; it is also the age of the brilliant and voluble amateur. In some sciences, as mathematics and physics, the specialist is highly respected; in some, as in anthropology, it is difﬁ cult for the outsider always to distinguish between the specialist and the brilliant amateur. ( The Monthly Criterion, May 1927 : 253)

Those words had force in the interwar period. Uttered today they would be quickly dismissed by the vast majority of academic anthropologists. Throughout this book I have argued against that kind of precipitate rejection. Instead I have contended we should recognize and give value to a plurality of anthropologies, whether sternly academic, openly popular, or some varying mixture of the two. Restricting one ’ s vision of anthropology has clear benefi ts: theoretical rigor (and the possibility of identifi able advance within each paradigm); methodological purity, and its continuing refi nement within specifi able limits; a cumulative bank of comparable knowledge; all of these together offering the promise of signifi cant generalizations, both ethnographic and anthropological. This, or something close to it, was the underlying rationale to postwar British anthropology, and the reason it gained such prestige, at least for a certain period. The downsides to this disciplinary style are equally clear: the increasing probability of intellectual staleness the longer the restrictions last; the multiple exclusions that need to be continually exercised in order to achieve and maintain hegemony. The foregoing chapters have exemplifi ed these disciplining practices. Layard’ s version of Jung and Gorer’ s neo-Freudianism were summarily ignored, as the rhetorical boundary between psychology and anthropology was strictly policed. Graves’ s anthropologically inspired incursions into intellectual terrain usually controlled by academics was rebuffed by most of them. The call of the

Anthropology in the Public Arena: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, First Edition. Jeremy MacClancy. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Parting Comments 185 leading Mass Observers for a democratizing anthropology was not heeded, while the promise of a productive encounter between Surrealism and ethnography was left underexplored. A further downside to this concern with theoretical rigor and methodological purity was that ethnography produced in diffi cult conditions where, for conditions of exigency, a researcher could not fulfi ll all the conventional criteria of fi eldwork, was easily undervalued and often did not fi nd its way into print. In reaction the Mars have argued strongly for the “good enough” principle. Using comparative examples from their own fi eldwork in Italy and Georgia, they laud the worth of “imperfect” fi eldwork (Mars and Mars 2004 ). Even if our fi eld data are incomplete does not mean they cannot still yield important insights. The sidelining of freethinking anthropologists was perhaps understandable, but still premature, maybe even self-damaging. For Layard ’ s work remains highly esteemed by the Jungian-inclined, among others. Gorer’ s surveys are still sifted through for contemporary relevance; his travel writing is praised for its unorthodox (and thus revealing) anthropological insight (Weiner 2007 ). Graves ’ s ethnographically dense books sell in remarkably large quantities. Mass Observation, reconstituted in 1970, continues to send out directives. National and international researchers working through its archives, today based at the University of Sussex, produce a series of well-regarded books both illuminating and demythologizing. Yet we can, for instance, ask: since psychoanalysis has recently reentered mainstream anthropological theory (e.g., Social Analysis, Summer 2006; Moore 2007 ), what effect would that return have had if it had occurred twenty or thirty years previously? Given the elitism of interwar Britain, it is unsurprising there are multiple connections between the key players I have chosen. All were members of the intellectual–artistic nexus within upper-middle-class Britain. It is not just they all went to famous public schools, Graves and Gorer went to the same one, Charterhouse, as did Bateson. Indeed Bateson, one year older than Gorer, starts his initial letter to him with “Though we did not know one another at school . . . ” (GB to GG, i 1937, GGA). Also, the poet W. H. Auden was a lover of Layard ’ s, and a lifelong friend of Gorer ’ s, as he was of Margaret Mead, while he and Harrisson sniped at one another in print (Heimann 2002 : 146–147, 150); he and Graves, as fellow poets, were well acquainted. Layard and Harrisson were united by their ethnographic interest in Vanuatu; Gorer commented in print on Mass Observation. Sally Chilver, the anthropologist-niece of Robert Graves, was a close Oxford friend of Madge’ s second wife; her husband, Richard, had been a friend of Madge ’ s at Winchester (Madge n.d. : 79–80). I could go on. All preached, if not openly reveled in, the freedoms of non-disciplinarity or a creative interdisciplinarity. Even the most scientifi cally inclined among them had broader pursuits. It has been argued that Harrisson ’ s one published poem, “Coconut moon,” is a signifi cant literary product of the period (Jardine 2012 ), while his content analysis of interwar modernist poetry has been judged the 186 Anthropology in the Public Arena single most important piece of literary criticism in the 1930s (Cunningham 1988 ). Madge, who spent the second half of his life as a professor of sociology, continued to produce poetry until his fi nal years. But, postwar, the increasing specialization of knowledge production in British universities did not suit the determinedly independent. When, on his return to the United Kingdom in 1946 after demobilization, Harrisson realized funded sociology was moving strongly toward the statistical, he left to be the curator of the Sarawak Museum. At least one friend of his, a plantation manager in Vanuatu, was very well aware of the changes. In a masculinist prose, he wrote to one of Harrisson’ s scientist-companions on that trip:

It is a pity the colonial times are over, when a well-bronzed man could still excite the glands of a well-fed Parliament, or the femininity of a romantic country . . . Men like Tom will have to sacriﬁ ce half their personalities to please the actual times. The shame is that the dullest of all engineers or any technician is welcome to make love with our time . . . Poor Tom must become a specialist (or rot). (A. Guthman to J. Marshall 1946, quoted in Heimann 2002 : 243)

Of course there are dangers, for both the tenured and the lone ranger, as to just how far one can stray from an orthodox academic path. Leach later came to think his claims in his broadcast Reith Lectures were too wild and would become openly irritated when others referred to them (Leach 1967 ). Colin Turnbull’ s bestselling account of fi eldwork in Uganda was later much questioned; his reputation did not survive (Turnbull 1972 ; Heine 1985 ). Professional popularizers who go too far in the eyes of their tenured peers, endure not their mannered indiffer- ence but their outright hostility. Carlos Casteneda’ s notorious books on shaman- ism in northern Mexico were broadly criticized; the online bookseller Amazon today classes his works under “Self-improvement” (De Mille 1976 ; Fikes 1993 ). Perhaps the worst case exemplifi ed in this book is the open scorn poured on Gorer’ s swaddling hypothesis. Freedom is not free; it comes with a price. In the cases of both Layard and Gorer, that liberty was, to an important extent, undergirded by a private income, however meager at times; Graves funded his own independent lifestyle by residing in a cheap country; Harrisson was magisterial at fi nding sponsors. Whether their self-proclaimed freedoms were more a mask for disappointment at marginaliza- tion by academic anthropologists I cannot judge. But their place on the edge did give each a unique vantage point from which to assess the limitations of contemporary British anthropology, in a predictably negative manner. Independent characters they might have been, they were also careful to manage their own careers. As demonstrated in chapter 3 , Mead and Gorer had few qualms about mutual back-scratching. Further, all four engaged in their own, personally constructed research networks, of academics and fellow marginals or populariz- Parting Comments 187 ers. In particular Gorer, Graves, and Harrisson each maintained, as Darwin had done, an extensive web of correspondence, which kept them informed and boosted their public persona (Savage 2010 : 104). Graves went a step further by even funding anthropological research done by members of his circle. It is also important to recognize the power of well-placed intermediaries benevolent toward anthropology. The role of, for instance, T. S. Eliot in the development of a broadly based British anthropology has been so far understated. As fi rst an employee and later a director of Faber and Faber between 1925 and 1965, Eliot championed Mass Observation ’ s May 12th, worked hard to get the house to publish Graves’ s White Goddess , and, I suspect though cannot yet prove, was deeply involved in the company’ s support of Meyerowitz’ s series of works. Disciplines are not just disciplining in an intellectual sense; that self-restriction includes psychological and social dimensions as well. All four discussed here were notable for their personalities, if not indeed their eccentricities. Unbounded by departmental ties, they did not need to rein in their characters. In contrast, their tenured colleagues had to observe at least a minimum of social niceties in order not to disturb their academic fellows too much. To the extent it is relevant, it is worth noting also that all four experienced degrees of sexual indeterminacy. Neither the sexuality of Layard nor of Gorer is completely clear; Harrisson’ s biographer questions his sexual orientation when young, while Graves ’ s youthful queries about his own are well documented (Heimann 2002 ; Seymour 1995 ). Layard, Gorer, Graves, Harrisson: the work, industry, and trajectories of them all highlight what might have been: how much was lost, how many opportunities were not taken up. And yet, they are but exceptionally good exemplars, not excep- tions. After all, as one senior anthropologist put it, “The long march of anthropology has nearly always involved a loosely connected crowd of coteries and loners, innovators and stragglers, curmudgeons and mavericks” (Hannerz 2010 : 160). To be more exact, I have researched these four because the life-course of each well exemplifi es the strictures of conventional historiography on British anthropology. What has been missing from that history has been recognition of that sustained diversity and the efforts made to keep many out of the canon. This is not a paro- chial or Anglocentric concern, if we accept Herbert S. Lewis ’ s claim that the history of “most of American anthropologists . . . is elided with the tacit assumption that the representation of British anthropology can stand for American anthropology as well” (Lewis 1999 : 718). It is not diffi cult to argue that Gorer and the leading Mass Observers all played important roles in establishing the preconditions for cultural studies. I have already argued the case for Gorer, at the end of chapter 3 . The closing section of Raymond Williams’ foundational text Culture and Society is entitled “Mass Observation” (Wil- liams 1958 ). For the fi rst two postwar years, Madge edited Pilot Papers: Social Essays and Documents , whose range of topics closely prefi gured those of cultural studies, e.g., Butlins, penny dreadfuls, comics (Hubble 2012 ). Richard Hoggart, founding 188 Anthropology in the Public Arena director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, acknowledged the link by attending the opening ceremony of the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex in 1970; his successor, Stuart Hall, attended a conference celebrating Madge there in 2010. Given that both spent decades at the same university and had clearly overlapping interests, I fi nd it diffi cult to believe that Madge and Hoggart did not know one another well and confer. When a defi nitive history of cultural studies is fi nally written, we may learn why the contribution to its development of literary criticism, psychoanalytical theory, and Gramscite Marxism have all been lauded, and that of a broadly conceived anthropology underplayed. My chosen four, as examples within a broadened history of British anthropology, underline how the discipline we have today is not a necessary product of the intellectual dimension of our past. Things could have been so different. If not for Rockefeller money, how high would Malinowski’ s star be today, and how low Elliot Smith’ s? Without their access to CCSRC funds, how well would we remember Evans-Pritchard, Fortes, and Firth? Similar caveats apply to the historical periods I have looked at. Let us imagine for a minute: would I have written a chapter on Layard if there had beena survey boat available up the Fly River? Would Graves have taken up anthropology so, if it had not been, thanks to his trauma- tized friend Siegfried Sassoon, for meeting with Rivers? How would Mass Observa- tion have turned out if the letters of Harrisson and of Madge and Jennings had not appeared next to one another in The New Statesman ? And so on. Presentist histories run the constant risk of making theoretical progress appear almost inevitable, of sliding toward the predeterminist. My brief turn to the counterfactual deliberately contests that trend. Instead I here emphasize just how near-aleatory is the course of much of our history. Ideas and theories often survive for extra- intellectual reasons. To argue my case further, I wish to step back from a fi ne-grained focus, and regard the bigger picture. In other words, quite simply, what is the point of anthropology today? In the late 1990s the then Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute asked me to edit a book which would demonstrate the contribution anthropology can make toward our understanding of matters of contemporary social concern. Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines (MacClancy 2002a ) was criticized by at least one colleague as downplaying the distinctive intellectual contributions and attitudes of anthropologists. Taking a leaf from Foucault, those contributions and attitudes were said to constitute “an undoubted and inexhaust- ible treasure-hoard of experiences and concepts, and above all a perpetual principle of dissatisfaction, of calling into question, of criticism and contestation of what may seem, in other respects, to be established” (Foucault 1973 , quoted in Hart 2004 : 5). At base here is a tension between conceptions of our pursuit, between the desire for a pragmatic benefi t, whether near-immediate or more long term, and the achievable dream of a “humanistic anti-discipline,” which would act as more a provocation to thought than as a prescription for it (Herzfeld 2001 : Parting Comments 189 xi; Hart 2004 : 5). This tension is as creative as it is constant, as productive as it is irresoluble. On a related tack Sperber, infl uenced by Needham, has argued that our pursuit has two main products: ethnography, whose aim is to open our understanding of the lived reality of peoples; the results feed anthropology proper, whose aim is to generate cross-cultural insights, whether universal generalizations or comparative concepts, about the social and cultural nature of human diversity and its limits (Sperber 1985 ). As Needham used to argue in our tutorials, that encompassing ethnographic aim can, in the hands of a skillful writer, be more effectively achieved by an unorthodox, popular account than by an academic tome, however well grounded in extended fi eldwork. Similarly, successful popular anthropology can generate public debate, with which academic anthropologists may feel obliged to engage. On top of that, anthropologists who do write for popular audiences are not just communicating their ideas, but developing them in the process as well (Sutton 1991 : 100). To think otherwise is to insult non-academic audiences, by implying they could never come up with a question worth considering seriously. If we follow this general line of argument, popular work can be as successful, or even more successful than its academic counterparts in fulfi lling the aims of our discipline. Anthropological provocation to thought is not limited to scholastic mono- graphs. In 1973 Talal Asad famously attacked the complicity of anthropology within the colonialist project (Asad 1973 ). While that criticism is today generally accepted, though often in a qualifi ed manner, this historical complicity did not preclude anthropologists or the anthropologically very well-informed from exploiting the freedoms of fi ction for provocative, emancipatory end. Indeed some, like the maverick Spanish anthropologist Jaime de Angulo, thought literature “a better way to apprehend and represent indigenous subjectivities” (de Angulo 1979 ; Brightman 2004 ). Three further examples, whose aim was to reform public ignorance about others, come from the same ethnographic region, over a hundred-year span. Adolph Bandelier, pioneer anthropologist of the Southwest United States, wrote his novel The Delight Makers out of

a conviction that however scientiﬁ c works may tell the truth about the Indian, they exercise always a limited inﬂ uence upon the general public; in our country as well as abroad, the Indian has remained as good as unknown. By clothing sober facts in the garb of romance I have hoped to make the “Truth about the Pueblo Indians” more accessible and perhaps more acceptable to the public in general. (Bandelier 1890 : xxiii)

It is now considered a classic of Southwest literature and kept in print. Writing a hundred years later Tony Hillerman, 1990 recipient of the Anthropology in the Media Award of the American Anthropological Association, had both very similar, and similarly explicit, aims.1 Hillerman, deeply learned in the anthropology of the 190 Anthropology in the Public Arena

Navajo and the Zunis, wanted to dent “the ignorance of Americans about Navajo culture” (Hillerman 2001 : 274), to stop them “thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated” (quoted in The Daily Telegraph , October 29, 2008). Later, galled that so many Americans thought “all Indians are alike” (Hillerman 2001 : 283–284), he wrote a novel about the Zunis. He appears to have succeeded in his goals: the Navajo praise his ethnographically rich novels; many are enduring bestsellers. Historically almost midway between Bandelier and Hillerman, the anthropologist and Pulitzer prize- winning writer about native Americans Oliver La Farge stated in 1953, when invited to produce a book about Cochise for children, “I see in this a marvelous opportunity to insert in young minds a great number of concepts concerning Indians and white men which are exactly the reverse of those which they are generally fed” (February 12, 1953, quoted in Caffey 1988 : 9, n.7). I wish to be clear. I am not a lone ﬁ rebrand lighting the way for others, in a contest against the historically ignorant, the diehard reactionary, or the just plain ill-informed. For perhaps the greatest propounder in recent decades of the varieties of anthropology was David Pocock, distinguished anthropologist and ﬁ rst Director of the revived version of Mass Observation. In 1990 he stated:

I have always been very conscious of the fact that modern academic anthropology is only one variant of the many anthropologies and that the very word . . . has a much older history and invites a much wider ﬁ eld of speculation than most of our colleagues seem to know. (October 1990, quoted in Fardon 1999 : 44)

In his infl uential introductory book to the subject, Pocock argued that everyone has their own personal anthropology: “the mass of assumptions and evaluations which a person makes about human nature and, because to be human is to be social, about society” (Pocock 1975 : 7; Mills 2011 ). Each personal anthropology, as a complex, is unique though parts of it, because shared with others, are social. The purpose of a university training in anthropology was thus to help students become conscious of the values underlying their personal anthropology and to compare them, in a continuing conversation, with other values (Parry and Simpson 2010 : 341). Therefore, social anthropology “has as much to do with living as with learning” (Pocock 1975 : 8). It is a continuing moral enquiry, which cross-cuts any division between the academic and the popular (MacClancy 1998 ). This lack of division has characterized anthropology for the majority of its history. In the nineteenth century those who practiced anthropology addressed key issues of their day. As I argued in chapter 1 , a neglected line of writers-cum-anthropologists contributed importantly throughout this long period to the general development of our pursuit. At the turn of the century and into the fi rst decades of the new, fi rst Haddon, then Rivers and, most notoriously, Malinowski developed the idea that it was anthropologists themselves who should do fi eldwork. Like Parting Comments 191

Frazer, all three wrote books aimed at and read by the educated public. These various efforts were so successful that, during this broad period, knowledge of anthropology was almost de rigueur for modernist literati. It was part of being modern for writers to include seamlessly in their practice anthropological modes of knowledge, commentary, and dissemination (Highmore 2006 : 71). The early years of Mass Observation and the many novels then written about anthropologists are only two more examples of this blending of anthropology and literature. In the postwar decades the public prestige of the discipline remained high while its new hegemons, busy with professionalization, retreated into Academe. They chose to see popularization as a distinct activity, which they left to others, like Gorer and Graves. Yet Gorer, for instance, needs to be recognized for his innovative social surveys in the United Kingdom, whose promise of liberatory potential, democratizing impulse, and participatory role in the creation of a mass society comes across as intellectually parallel to many of the aims of Mass Observation, and as a belated emulation of what had already become routine in the United States (Igo 2007 ). The subject retained its public renown through into the 1970s, though in an ever-more abstruse form, thanks above all to the promotion of Lévi-Straussian structuralism. The rise of postmodernism in the 1980s failed to repeat this level of success. Today, with the very concept of “the primitive” now long outmoded, a discipline at one point keen to sideline others is being sidelined itself. As one practitioner, discussing our present plight, puts it, “It sometimes feels as though one has been pigeon-holed once and for all as a dated romantic writing impenetra- ble texts, burnished, as it were, with the damning mark of anthropology” (Eriksen 2006 : 130). This unnecessary separation of the academic and the popular dovetails with a similar parting of the ways between anthropology and the arts which, despite some valiant initiatives (e.g., Schneider and Wright 2005, 2010 ), are generally seen as increasingly distant. In 2012 the leading British art critic crabbed an exhibition by acclaimed artist, and graduate in the discipline, Susan Hiller as “too much anthropology . . . not enough art” (Januszczak 2012 : 11). A UK broadsheet castigated an Inuit feature ﬁ lm for its “inevitable ethnographic seriousness,” though “that shouldn’ t put you off an extraordinary and unique fable” (The Independent, The Guide , May 20, 2006: 48). A reviewer in the same paper criticized Amitav Ghosh, the postcolonial Indian writer, for feeling “the need to insert cultural anthropology for authenticity,” meaning his novel “can expect a limited readership – however interesting his theme might be” (Dutta 2004 ). To summarize all this in the language of public relations, contemporary anthropology has an image problem and a shrinking audience. None of this would be the case if so many anthropologists today were not maintaining, by decision or default, the separation of the academic from the popular. I wrote this book in the belief that if anthropology is not to be threatened with sustained decline, anthropologists need, among other things, to revalorize 192 Anthropology in the Public Arena the amateur and further boost the interdisciplinary. It is time to open up the discipline again, not assist in closing it down. For this is the moment for anthropologists to stop beating its bounds, and start becoming repeat boundary-crossers.

Note

1 Ursula LeGuin was awarded the same accolade the following year, 1991. Bibliography