Stephen Gudeman interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 14th May 2010

0:05:07 Born in Chicago and lived in a suburb of the city until I went to college; father was a merchant, a high executive, and we lived a middle-class life; my maternal grandfather did not go to college as his father had died early; he was an architect and was extraordinarily successful in Chicago; about three years ago there was a book written by an anthropologist on the Chicago Board of Trade; around 1919-20 there was a competition for the design of the building; the architectural drawings submitted included one by my grandfather; we are, in fact, both mentioned in the book; my paternal grandfather died before I was born; he was a chemist with a PhD from Columbia; he was an industrial chemist and I think was quite successful for a time although by the time of his death he was pretty broke; this spurred my father on to make sure that he succeeded; we were a large family on both sides, living in Chicago; most of them had come from Germany though one part descends from Rabbi from Prague; they arrived in America mainly in the 1850s and 60s; Chicago was the home of pragmatism and Dewey and others had a profound influence on the schooling system, so I was lucky to move through progressive schools; my maternal grandmother was a very strong woman, into psycho-analysis, but a difficult mother; I knew her but was wary of her, and my mother kept her distance; my paternal grandmother died when I was 12-13, and I remember her funeral; she was also involved in charitable work in the Chicago area; to me she seemed much older and more constrained than my other grandmother; she seemed to me to personify the protestant ethic, and passed on to my family a sense of the value of thriftiness and discretion; my mother never really settled happily into anything; in retrospect I think she was supportive, but could be quite critical of us; my father was quite different; he was a very bright man but a businessman; I don't think that either of them valued academic achievement beyond good schooling; they could never quite understand anthropology or why I should want to do it; my father would play with me and was an excellent athlete; he was very organized and creative in his business; I remember him showing me how I should organize my desk when I was a child, and it stuck in my mind; I have always been organized in my work ever since; he encouraged hard work but also to have fun and enjoy life, and I have tried to do that with my own children; he would be disappointed if you didn't work hard, but he was always supportive and proud of me and my older brother; in my twenties I had some difficulties with him as we didn't agree politically; he was a very high executive, but for anti-semitic reasons failed to get the top job; this had a profound effect on him and he left the company that had been his life until then; within six months he went into the Kennedy administration - Jack Kennedy had just been elected; he was there for two years but was not a politician; he then went to New York and became a partner in Lehman Brothers, when Bobby Lehman was alive, but left after ten years; my father had wanted me to go into business with him and I did go to Harvard Business School at one point; he had had a little training in economics but it was not the kind that I do; I did a course in economics before going to Cambridge but didn't find it very interesting; my father was a charming man who could talk on any subject; he was not out to make a profit but wanted to bring goods to people at a good price; it was a time that the economy was expanding in the United States

15:20:20 My earliest memory was of lying in a cot, trying to put a shoe lace into a roll of paper; my father came and did it and I remember thinking that he could do anything; my grandmother had been promoting nursery schooling so I went to a nursery school aged three and then a kindergarten at the age of five; both were public schools as it was a period when the public education system was strong in the United States; I went through elementary school, middle school and high school, and graduated at eighteen and went to college; I was lucky that all these schools were highly rated; I had a very good cohort of friends; we had a jazz band in high school; it was not fee paying but was supported by local taxes; early on I started playing the clarinet but then switched to the saxophone and played it through high school; by the age of about sixteen I had switched to classical music; although my father was not musical he would bring home classical LPs and I would lie listening to Beethoven, for example, in bed, and was entranced; it has been an enduring and lasting love; I have always been interested in maths and at high school  there was a four volume, 'World of Mathematics', in which I found an essay on music and maths and the relation between harmony and mathematics; I have always thought there was a link between maths and the kind of music that I enjoy - a sense of symmetry, pattern, organization; I do not listen to music when I am writing, driving or walking; it is precisely being quiet that works for me when I am thinking; after returning to the United States after finishing my PhD at Cambridge, I was in my first year of teaching, trying to solve a difficult problem about godparenthood, I suddenly had the solution when driving home; I find that when walking I may not be trying to think about a problem but a useful thought will come into my mind; ideas also come in the middle of the night which is rather frustrating; I advise my students to trust the mind and let it solve a problem in its own time rather than pushing it

28:44:09 Ours was not a religious household; I was not bar mitzvahed; I recognise that I was growing up at a time when Jews still felt uncomfortable and were keen to assimilate; my father's uncle was born in the United States and was a good classicist; however he could not get a job so went to Germany; could not get a job there either, was there during the First World War, failed to get out of Germany in 1932 as he was not allowed back into the United States, and died in the camps; in my father's case, the chairman of the board said that my father could not head the company as he would not be allowed to join the most influential social clubs; it has changed quite a bit now; as a child I would occasionally go to a Sunday School but that seemed to me to be a waste of time; it has never been of great interest to me personally; ironically, when doing work on godparenthood I found myself reading St Thomas Aquinas and learned much more about theology than I even expected, and was fascinated by it; in my first fieldwork in Panama I did quite a bit on the people's theology; I wrote some of it up and gave it to the bishop so that he would know what I was doing; he was amused and also tried to help me as he believed I was trying to do something for the people; I say that I am agnostic because I don't know how the universe started; on the recent attacks on religion - there are all sorts of reasons for aggression, not just religious; believers form communities very naturally but on the negative side they can become exclusive and totalitarian; the difficultly is seeking a balance between the two; it is fine that people have their beliefs as long as they are liberal enough to accept other opinions

37:17:00 I don't remember any remarkable teachers in my life until I got to Cambridge when the world exploded for me intellectually; I had teachers who were nice to me; at Harvard I was a bit entranced with Parsonian sociology but I got over that; I always enjoyed math, but did a full range of subjects through school; I don't feel that one subject stood out from the others; I did not know what I wanted to be; at Harvard, where I went to college, I remember that at the end of my first year there was an evening where people talked about their subjects; there was one man who looked like a dried fish, and talked about anthropology; as I walked out I still did not know what I wanted to do except I knew I would never want to be an anthropologist because it was so boring; I did more sociology at Harvard and social psychology; Vogt had a big project in Mexico and I did go there for six weeks one summer, but I didn't do any other anthropology; at the end of Harvard I still did not know what I wanted to do but applied for a Marshall scholarship given by the British Government for a fellowship; it was very competitive, but I got one, despite not knowing what I wanted to do; there was little sociology offered in the UK and the only undergraduate course in anthropology was at Cambridge, which was Part II of the tripos; I knew there was a Cambridge college with a beautiful chapel and that there were some anthropologists there, so I went to King's; I went there in 1961; I was put in the Garden Hostel, which was fine; it was arranged that I should meet my supervisor; I had hoped it would be Fortes but I was assigned to Leach; we met at the Porters' Lodge and we walked around; he was giggling which was one of the things that he did when he was nervous; he was not sure what to do with me, but showed me to the library; I went to his office on the Downing Street site a couple of days later; we were both wearing gowns which I thought was bizarre; another man came in, similarly dressed, wanting to borrow a book; Leach told him that he could not as he hadn't returned an earlier loan, and they started tugging and wrestling over the book; that was Reo Fortune, who I later got to know and appreciate; Edmund throughout encouraged me to read what I wanted to read; it was a most wonderful year; I would read, and he would agree with my interpretations, but then come out with much wider observations; I would come out of supervisions feeling that I was studying the most important subject in the world, like Keynes felt when leaving supervisions with Marshall; Leach had tremendous charisma, and he, more than any other teacher, encouraged me to think independently; I loved being in the College and spent hours talking to people on all sorts of subjects; the difference with Harvard was that it had courses with exams, and much more based on lectures; at Cambridge at that time there were lectures, perhaps once a week, but it was not intensive and you were supposed to learn a lot on your own with the advice of your supervisor; also, there were no exams; looking back, I wonder if I should have worked harder, but I began to feel a sense of discovery in anthropology, which I still feel; I was lucky that it was Edmund's high time and Levi-Strauss was just coming in; I arrived just after the publication of 'Rethinking Anthropology' which we all read, and thought was the key; Edmund's publications were enormously popular at the time, but I don't think they have lasted that well; he was certainly an entrancing writer; I always had the feeling that whatever he said there was more to discover behind it; I think that 'Political Systems of Highland Burma' is beautiful; I couldn't find a copy and Edmund gave me the last copy he had of the first edition which he affectionately inscribed to me; I still think his essay on matrilateral cross-cousin marriage is marvellous; I don't assign his work to students now as it is out of favour in the United States, but it will probably come back

55:27:02 Being a student of Leach's, everything that Fortes did was wrong; there was also Jack Goody, and everything that he did was wrong; I would never say that now as I admire both of them; I went to Fortes' lectures; Meyer was very nice to me and allowed me to attend the seminar for post-graduate students; this was originally held in the Gibbs Building, and I think I learned a lot of anthropology by listening to the questions people asked; Meyer's responses where always in a certain vein, but very good; Jack was writing 'Death, Property and the Ancestors' at the time, and I went to his lectures, and again I would learn from questions; Reo's questions were very obscure; I didn't know at the time that he was also going off to lectures on physics, and that there is a whole mathematical deduction named after him; he would try to encourage me to go into physics; I went to Gwilym Jones's lectures on development but I didn't get to know him until much later; Ray Abrahams was just coming in, and Martin Southwold was off for a number of years; I never got to know Audrey Richards but have come to admire her work; I remember going to a series of lectures on methodology by her and she was very wise; 'Land, Labour and Diet among the Bemba' is a very fine work; my contemporaries in the tripos year were Andrew and Marilyn Strathern, Nick Peterson was in King's with me, Geoffrey Benjamin; I went back to the Harvard Business School and did two years there, and when I came back, people like Jonny Parry and Caroline Humfrey were there; I went out right away to do fieldwork, and when I came back Jonny and Caroline were there, so was Keith Hart; in my second year of the tripos, Adam Kuper had arrived to begin his dissertation, and above all others we have remained great friends ever since

Second Part

0:05:07 I used to go to Edmund's house in Storey's Way for dinner every three weeks or so, and I got to know Celia quite well; she was a marvellous cook and they treated me like pseudo parents; in the Spring he said he was going skiing in Italy and invited me to go with him; I was in pretty good physical shape as I was playing rugby all the time; I encouraged him to go to the top of a mountain and he fell and broke his shoulder; I was horrified but he never blamed me; I had a wonderful first year though I didn't do much work; after that year, back in the United States, Jack Kennedy was President, his Senate seat was still empty, I still didn't know what I wanted to do and wondered about politics; I managed through connections of my father's to work for Teddy Kennedy, who was running for a seat; I had a wonderful summer learning about politics, but did not find it stimulating enough to hold me; I came back to Cambridge for a second year and then I began to get serious; that was when Adam Kuper arrived and we spent hours talking about anthropology, and we still do; he was preparing to leave for South Africa and we were both in King's; he knew much more anthropology than I did and would recommend books like Schapera's 'Tswana Law and Customs', which did not please Edmund; even by the middle of my second year I had not read 'The Nuer', yet I could see the others absorbing anthropology around me; I had other interests, playing a lot of rugby and tennis, and other sorts of reading; when I was finishing, Meyer said he could get some money if I would like to do some fieldwork in Thailand; I asked Edmund and he said it was CIA money; I was psychologically not ready to do fieldwork and still did not know what I wanted to do; I went back to the United States, and the Vietnam War meant that unless you were in school or college you would be drafted; I thought I might become a businessman so went to Harvard Business School; I did not like it; I did not like the people and their attitudes; I didn't learn economics there; the largest department was something on human relations - sociology out of the 1930s and 40s, equilibrium theories, and statistics, which I did enjoy; I was ready to leave but saw it through, and in the second year there I met George Cabot Lodge; he had run against Teddy Kennedy in the election and was a liberal Republican; he was a professor but we became friends; he was interested in development and that did appeal to me; there was this thing going on in Panama with an Archbishop who was starting up cooperatives; the Business School was going to set up another business school in Guatemala; we worked out a deal which was paid for by USAID that I would write business cases for Harvard Business School, would work with this cooperative movement, and do my fieldwork; I went back to Cambridge for a few months in the Fall - I was married by then - and set out a project on decision theory; I was going to analyse the agricultural choices of these peasants; everybody thought this was terrific; Edmund was to supervise me though he knew nothing about it; no one went to Panama then; I found within a day that swidden farmers are not making decisions like those I had envisaged; I did do an extensive household survey and a statistical survey of household flows, but I didn't know what I was going to do with it as I had no theory; because of Cambridge, I thought I had better look at kinship and family; however, there was nothing that would help me to analyse these messy households where people kept coming and going - the only thing at the time was some stuff on the Caribbean; I did discover godparenthood and got interested in it; within the Roman Catholic church there is Baptism, with godmother and godfather who are parents in the church; through the compadrazgo they form spiritual relationships with the baptised child and with the parents of the child, so you get an elaborate kind of network; you can have it over Confirmation, Marriage, none of which is recognised in the Church any more, and all kinds of variations; what I saw was that it was a reverse mirror of the nuclear family; they would say that you had to keep respect for them, which actually meant they had a spiritual relationship; at that time, kinship was thought of as biogenetic and not cultural, and it was very hard to think what a spiritual relationship would be; that took me to a different way of thinking about kinship; I did my dissertation on it; it was between households and nuclear families; they would not use the link for borrowing money as they said that compadre should never argue, but keep respectful; Mintz and others suggest they would use these links pragmatically but I found they didn't; I published a long essay after my dissertation, which won the Curl Essay Prize, then I put it down and have never worked on it since; I got into religious symbolism during fieldwork; the Bishop gave me four leather-bound volumes of Butler's 'Lives of the Saints' which I still have; the fieldwork was very hard; Panama is very hot and wet, a jungle area, that was physically demanding; Roxane, my wife, was with me; she was a PhD student at Harvard on a special program on development psychology; she was doing research on children's language acquisition before taking the full PhD course, which became a complication later on; she would find out things from the women, particularly on abuse by their husbands; she is a photographer so an enormous help; we came back to Cambridge where fairly soon she had our first daughter, and I was trying to write a PhD; Edmund was not much help; there were very few models for me; there was some stuff from Mexico and most of the writing was American which I have always found difficult to integrate with European models; George Foster had worked in a Mexican village with peasant potters, but the academic language was not what I was used to - also Eric Wolf and Sydney Mintz's work feels different; this difference has persisted so that my work must feel strange to them 

18:51:00 It was good to return to the United States, and my first book was a rewritten dissertation; I did not have any connections there; Vogt said there were jobs at Indiana and Minnesota and I was offered jobs at both; it turned out that Minnesota had an outstanding department of child development which was relevant to Roxane; I like the politics as it was a very liberal State, so I went there; Roxane shifted her degree work there; we had a second child, so life got more complicated for everybody and it slowed down her progress; I then got interested in economics, read Joan Robison and Sraffa, and got very interested in Marx and the transformation problem, then dependency theory which originates in Latin America and was coming out; within a year or two my economics material made sense and I sat down and wrote a book; ‘The Demist of a Rural Economy’ came out very well and is still in print; it was influenced by political economy in the classic sense from Adam Smith through Ricardo to Marx; I liked it because it started with the class structure - who owns what - and that was much more anthropological than the neo-classical one; I thought this was going to solve everything, but then it didn't; one of the things that I think from early on in anthropology, I have always tended not to get what people say in meetings; I would have to work hard to understand their intellectual language and this got me into a more cultural kind of analysis; I met Clifford Geertz in the seventies and he invited me to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton; Albert Hirschman was handling it that year and they were really focussing on economics with people doing wilder stuff; the economists were very nice and let me attend their seminars; Joe Stiglizt was working on information theory, Ollie Williamson was there and has recently got the Nobel Prize, too; I would sit, like I did at Cambridge, and just listen to their questions; I got into some fierce fights but, on the one hand, it helped me to get a much better grasp of economics, and on the other, I got into culture; from Marx I got into these people called the physiocrats and was entranced and wrote about them; I then tried to think about economics as culture which does lead to a more relativist position about economics, an began a book on the subject while at the Institute; I have had difficulties with economists from time to time, but also with other economic anthropologists

28:34:19 In economic anthropology, formalism is really neoclassical theory, certainly not Marxism, maximizing economic goals; it is the easiest model for anthropologists to apply as Raymond Firth's work shows; substantivism, as exemplified by Polanyi, claimed that the two things that make society are land and labour, and when you put these on the market and sell them they are, what he called, fictitious commodities; the more you do that the more you destroy society, and it becomes disembedded; formalism is very rationalistic and deductive; substantivism is classical empiricism; Polanyi had trouble with another form, the household economy, which he had witnessed in Hungary where he grew up; I have had to look at those and they don't really fit into a nice typology; there has also been the Marxist approach which gained great favour in the sixties and seventies; I have worked more in the domain of, what I call, local models - what are the people's models - which gets more Weberian; I went back to Colombia with a former student and got their model for the household economy; I then tried to develop a more cross-cultural comparative economics which was not formalist nor substantivist; I finally published a book in 2001, 'Anthropology of Economy', which was not very satisfactory; I wrote another book, 'Economy’s Tension' which tried to clarify it further; examples of increasing abstraction of economic models in the banking and investment world

47:24:18 Keith Hart and I have a long relationship; he has supported me but we do sometimes disagree; I liked his Malinowski Lecture on the two sides of the coin because that obviously fits what I believe; I like his work on trust and the building of trust; we take a different approach on the subject of money; the question of what advise to give to a young student is very difficult today; firstly you have to work on what interests you, to want to listen to others and to try to see patterns in their behaviour; don't see how you can be an anthropologist without a feel for it; Clifford Geertz's book 'Interpretation of Cultures' is a wonderful book; his work took me to the Institute; I have not followed all his work since then; my own work is in trying to make sense of people's practises which is rather different; I read Sahlins 'Culture and Practical Reason'; I have not read his latest work, but 'Stone Age Economics' was a wonderful book and had an enormous influence; our daughters have been a central part of our life; two of them are lawyers, the third daughter is a soccer coach at Carlton College in Minnesota; they all went to Harvard, and it was there that I met Roxane