Rodney Needham in conversation with James J. Fox in Canberra, 1979, filmed by Timothy Asch 0:10:14 Needham's misgivings about making films; author should be known by works in print; this is not communication as we know each other so well that none of the questions will be real; [Fox really interested to know about the early days in Oxford]; Needham went to Oxford in 1948; Evans-Pritchard was there from 1947, Dumont later but both Bohannan's there and David Pocock; John Beattie came 1969, Mary Douglas there and Fred Bailey; Francis Huxley was just going off to do fieldwork; a very tiny world; we were in a gardener's cottage in South Parks Road opposite the entrance to Rhodes House; underneath were the beginnings of the organic chemistry department; mullioned windows and Gothic arches; upstairs we had a tiny set of rooms for five or six of us; one of many moves of social anthropology always from the prestigious centre out towards the suburbs; moved to Keble Road next door to the house where Joyce Cary lived; move outwards reflected the loss of esteem the subject suffered; when it started in 1905 when the Diploma in Anthropology was started it was initiated by enormously prestigious people led by T.H. Huxley who said that anthropology was going to be the new Greats and a challenge to all former methods of studying civilizations; on the committee that established it was a professor from each one of the faculties of the day; first Reader from about 1910 was Marett, the Rector of Exeter College; was a tiny organization with enormous favour but as it increased in numbers and in independence its reputation fell; fairly normal in a university that as a subject grows it becomes bureaucratized and subject to negative publicity 8:01:55 In 1948 Evans-Pritchard was dark-haired, vigorous, looking like a Welsh magician or Lloyd George; almost prurient degree of curiosity, intensely interested in human beings, a superb ethnographer; Radcliffe-Brown had not really formed the Institute; since 1914 there was a Department of Social Anthropology which had been established my Marett which was in existence when Radcliffe-Brown arrived; he came with enormous ambition to found an honours school in Social Anthropology; contemptuous of museum people like Balfour so Pitt Rivers Museum shunned; got the name changed to 'Institute' thinking it sounded more impressive; did not change the status as it has had no statutory status until a couple of years ago when I procured the change; Radcliffe-Brown came in 1937 and shortly after the War began; he appointed Meyer Fortes to a position there, Franz Steiner came later and there were only three or four students, including Bill Newell and Henriques; when war came Radcliffe-Brown left Oxford and went to San Paolo to represent British intellectual interests and stayed there until the war ended at which point the tenure of his Chair was almost up and Evans-Pritchard took over; hard to see how he had any effect on social anthropology in Oxford; Evans-Pritchard said Steiner was the most scholarly person in social anthropology; he appointed Godfrey Lienhardt and after Franz Steiner died of a heart attack he appointed John Beattie to that position; also brought Peter Lienhardt, Godfrey's brother, and then Louis Dumont introduced a knowledge of Dumezil; Evans-Pritchard's knowledge of Hertz and conflict of recollection between him and Dumont 16:31:14 Dumont was my supervisor; Srinivas was the lecturer in Indian sociology; Evans-Pritchard was my supervisor for a time but never really knew whether he read anything one wrote; he used to say of ethnography there was no programme or matrix but that impressions were the things that really count; think he also got impressions of theses as he examined two of mine and I felt that he really hadn't read the thesis on either occasion; [Fox had Evans-Pritchard and Leach as his D.Phil examiners and seemed that he had not read beyond the first twenty pages whereas Leach was very thorough]; Leach's work very important to me as in some ways I dogged his footsteps - Burma, Sarawak; Leach's advice on how to get to Borneo and get money etc.; why interest in Borneo? Had been to Malaysia and committed to South East Asia; thought of places like Bali but had been at Leiden and convinced that couldn't work there without reading Dutch literature going back to 1597, some knowledge of Sanskrit and modern Balinese, which would take time I hadn't got; Borneo second best; romantic impulse as Hose and MacDougall's pictures showed people as very handsome, also in 1947 someone from the Field Museum had gone there looking for Penan in central Borneo and had come back saying there were no such people; sceptical as had found them in Dutch literature and went to find them; romantic impulse is important; Evans-Pritchard a romantic and most really good ethnographies are by those that are and not Radcliffe-Brownian “scientists” 22:54:15 Returned to Oxford the end of 1952 and wrote thesis in a year, then went off to Sumba to study circulating connubiun; went back briefly to Borneo in 1955 and then again in 1958; hated going back in 1958 as changes quite marked; people no longer using blowpipes and increasing use of shotguns; moral contrast and incipient signs of degradation ; Evans-Pritchard's ageing [When Fox arrived in Oxford he was an old man]; came back from Sumba in 1955 and almost immediately offered a temporary job at the University of Illinois by friends Edward Winter and others while Julian Steward was on leave; beginning of a long love affair with the United States; University of Illinois was isolated but a centre of civilization; while there offered a lectureship at Oxford as well as possibilities in Cambridge and London, also Harvard, but opted for Oxford 28:44:07 Evans-Pritchard tempted me back; link with Merton College; from earliest days I can recall the Institute was riven on grounds of religion, sexual predilection and life-style; when Evans-Pritchard in his prime, until about 1956, there was a collective conscience; we all focussed intensely on Evans-Pritchard; [Fox: 1962 the year of my Diploma was probably the most exciting intellectual year of my life; heady discussions with Evans-Pritchard at the pub]; subject itself can be really exciting but the possibility that it will become central to an intellectual education recedes; anthropology as a comparative epistemology rather than comparative sociology; study of prescriptive alliances and simple societal forms; [Fox: what is the future of anthropology when such societies are disappearing?]