Jonathan Benthall interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 6th December 2005

0:00:05 Born 1941 in Calcutta; father a businessman in a reserved occupation running jute mills; spent early years in Darjeeling; father an amateur botanist and fellow of the Linnean Society, wrote a book on the trees of Calcutta and learnt Hindi and Bengali; particularly good on folk-lore of trees; both parents supported the Oxford Mission to Calcutta as thought Hinduism and Islam had been bad for India; sent back to have a rather Kiplingesque childhood in England; went back to India when about twelve which must have had an influence; mother came from a Scottish family, her father a mining engineer; she met father in Devon but spent most of their lives in India

0:03:19 Sent back to England to boarding school at five; transition from Darjeeling to England in the bad winter of 1947 quite painful; went to Spyway Preparatory school in Dorset; remember a classics master who helped me get a scholarship to Eton; wrote on corporal punishment at Eton in the fifties for journal 'Child Abuse and Neglect'; effect of film 'If' in 1968 was to stop this; there were very good teachers at Eton and had a traditional grounding in classics that went back to the middle ages; great headmaster Robert Birley; science was taught badly

0:07:29 Went to King's, Cambridge; wanted to read law but told by Senior Tutor, John Raven, that it was not a proper education; read English; wanted to change to anthropology as had become interested in Levi-Strauss but both Leach and Fortes in the field and directed to read 'The Tiv' which I couldn't cope with, so abandoned the idea; came to King's in 1959; accepted for a college studentship to do a doctoral thesis on right-wing tendencies among twentieth century writers; abandoned it, possibly because a student of George Steiner who was  unpopular with the faculty, but for what ever reason the faculty refused it; had some very good teachers like Raymond Williams

0:11:40 King's was an exciting place at that time; made friend with E.M. Forster; tail-end of the Bloomsbury era; people like Sir John Shephard and Professor Pigou; E.M. Forster very approachable man

0:12:40 Decided technology would be important in the future; took a job with a firm that did programmed learning - teaching machines; then took job at IBM as a trainee systems engineer for three years; then got a job in the City as an investment analyst and at that time became interested in contemporary art, particularly high-tech art using computers and holography; started working for the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London and had a monthly column in 'Studio International'; met Mary Douglas when in charge of a lecture series at I.C.A.; she gave influential lecture 'Environments at Risk' in 1971 in a series on ecology; made me realize that anthropology was the discipline to follow; got to know Edmund Leach and John Szwed, an American anthropologist; went on to organize a mixed media programme on 'The Body as a Medium of Expression'; John Szwed gave lecture on 'Race and the Body' which was proceeded by a short ballet choreographed by Richard Alston;I was secretary of I.C.A. and organized a French programme in 1973 on Britain's entry into the Common Market where Dan Sperber and Roland Barthes lectured

0:18:40 Felt that avant-garde contemporary art was a dead end and became very interested in anthropology; the Royal Anthropological Institute advertised for a Director; first appointee lasted for about three months then they asked me again; 1974 took the job although had no anthroplogical qualifications; have never done any sustained period of field work; suffer intensely from home-sickness; remember Calcutta as extremely racist; memories of poverty in India

0:22:40 Started when the R.A.I was in a dreary building in Craven Street; after that rented rooms at the Royal Asiatic Society for ten years; when their lease ended got premises in Fitzroy Street where it is today; no room for library which went to the British Museum; first twelve years of 'RAIN' which matured into 'Anthropology Today' in 1986 with great encouragement from Edmund Leach

0:24:38 Have written about theoretical changes in anthropology over this time in the introduction to 'Best of Anthropology Today'; one of the biggest was the crisis of representation - Said, Foucault and Berger; analogy with rise of feminism; confrontation between Edward Said and Ernest Gellner; Gellner blind to the feminist movement; got interested in Islam through Gellner and Akbar Ahmed, also Hastings Donnan; interested in Islam as an alternative univeralism; 

0:31:54 Have co-written a book on Islamic charities; also interested in application of anthropology to development where early influence was Lucy Mair, also Peter Loizos and Frances D'Souza; was also on committee of 'Save the Children' for some time; wrote book on 'Disasters, Relief and the Media' in 1993; decided to look at Red Crescent societies as interested why thirty countries have a red crescent rather than a red cross; Islamic philanthropy; prosletysing and relief

0:37:06 Own belief - an Anglican by birth and education; feel one should not abandon religious doctrine; had arguments with Raymond Firth who believed you could extrapolate a moral philosophy from science and anthropology, but I don't believe this is possible; memories of Raymond and Rosemary Firth; got to know them well because of the Cyril Belshaw affair; Belshaw was prosecuted in Switzerland for allegedly murdering his wife Betty; Belshaw had been a favorite pupil of Firth's and was then editor of 'Current Anthropology' and President of the Union of Anthropological and Ethnographical Sciences; Betty Belshaw best friend of Rosemary Firth; Betty Belshaw's dental records were in my office as a post restante address; body found in Switzerland; visited by Interpol; at first Firths refused to admit that murder was a possibility; found that Belshaw had falsified wife's dental records; doubt led to him being acquitted; he was outstanding man who enjoyed dealing with U.N. bodies and this case set back the cause of anthropology

0:42:07 Edmund Leach was a wonderful supporter for 'Anthropology Today' through his Esperanza Trust; odd that he got on so badly with Mary Douglas; work on the Bible that Mary Douglas has done in her retirement said to be a major contribution; she could have become a major public intellectual; Edmund gave himself up to sometimes rather superficial journalism

0:44:53 Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf; very good President ot the R.A.I. and very good person to work with; never found his anthropology exciting but he was an engaging, original man; admire Jack Goody but never got to know him well; admire Julian Pitt-Rivers for the first major work on European society in anthropological context; liked John Blacking ideas on music; wish I'd done more on music when Director but there was not an audience for it then; find Alfie Gell's work on technology and magic interesting; encouragement for 'Rain' from Levi-Strauss 

0:49:15 On financial support for anthropology Seligmans were early donors then Edmund Leach with the Esperanza Trust; William Fagg left his whole estate to the R.A.I. library; George Appell offered money for urgent anthropology to the R.A.I. after apparently being turned down by all relevant American associations; became the basis for the urgent anthropology fund to which others have now contributed

0:50:27 Anthropology as surrogate for religion; Eric Fromm said all societies need a frame of orientation and object for devotion; Clifford Geertz had said that one thing people can't stand is the idea that life might be meaningless; have to have a substitute for religion when religious hierachies are beginning to be eroded; anthropology in its more popular form is and example; conservation movement and animal rights movement are others; anthropology has been likened rather frivolously to a church, with fieldwork likened to blood of the martyrs, and the apostolic succession where every anthropologist looks back to his tutor's tutor's tutor; more seriously can see quite a lot of commonalities; fear that anthropology will be pushed to the margins but admire what David Parkin is trying to do at Oxford which is to revive the idea of holistic anthopology; anthropology could become popular if it could project itself as a way in which people could improve themselves in an individual and spiritual way which is what Margaret Mead and some popularisers were trying to do; trend has been to adopt a more cynical interpretations of human societies; perhaps anthropology should go back to valueing important things in so-called primitive societies more explicitly; anthropologists like Philippe Descola point the way to how this could be done

0:54:25 Found for myself that being attached to an ideological movement which has things in common with anthropology very important; disappointed that claims of Sol Tax that anthropology could save us have never been realized; an example of what could have been done was David Maybury-Lewis's 'Millenium' series, but not done well; influenced by theory of Logier, a sociologist, on individual globalism; thinking of writing on the idea of para-religious movements