Sidney Mintz in conversation with Sonia Ryang 7th April 2007

FIRST PART

0:00:01 R: Influence of war on work as an anthropologist and views on current war in Iraq. 
M: Undergraduate at Brooklyn College, in 1941 living with sister, Pearl Harbour made war inevitable; witnessed about 75,000 people at the recruiting office next day; feeling of being American; some friends did enlist but I stayed in school until February 1943 when joined the Air Force; conscription was a rite de passage, men stripped and remade as a 'family' of fighters for the duration of the war; many men regretted the loss of that intimacy when they returned to normal life after the war; in that sense war experiences are not all bad; that was a war US had to fight as it was attacked; after the war ended treated enemies with understanding so the world could be rebuilt with us as helpers; for me it was the defining division in my life; we are now and have been for some time the most powerful nation in the world and as such should use power with understanding and a lot of imagination; this has been missing since 9/11; have put ourselves into difficult position nationally and internationally; saddened by loss of reputation

00:10:33 R: Should anthropologists be engaged in this situation? 
M: My undergraduate degree was in psychology and ended up teaching navigation in the Air Force; anthropologists played an important part in that war; David Price convened a meeting on anthropologists in World War II and I gave a paper on combat teams of Japanese-Americans who won more decorations for valour as a group than any others, who came out of the camps in order to serve. Also talked about American Indians, Navaho's in particular, and black Americans, and how the war was a test of Americanism for them in a way that it was not for white Americans; since the war many such groups have been accepted into society; for anthropologists after that war the picture is more murky; participation by some in Vietnam War split the AAA; since then same issues arise with some anthropologists recruiting for the US Government; attitude to 'my country right or wrong' has made some anthropologists do so; I do think this is wrong; Nixon got rid of conscription and now hardly anyone in Congress has a relative in an army that is in large measure drawn from the least privileged in the population; I believe in the draft and think it a tragedy that we gave it up

00:15:28 R: Memories of Ruth Benedict. 
M: Took first class with Benedict when I was entering anthropology, in fact hearing her lecture was one of the main reasons I decided to try anthropology; remember her as tall, spare and silver-haired, blue-eyed, quite drawn in; leaned toward navy blue as her colour; used lipstick inexpertly; when she lectured she gazed into space; hard of hearing but refused to wear a hearing aid as a result didn't always understand questions; found her arresting in presentations though following her was not easy; one lecture struck me forcibly; my background is anti-imperialist 'pinko', and she pondered whether the submissive colonies should have gone to Dutch and aggressive to British; latter love belligerent peoples like the Masai, Gurkhas, and Maoris as they think them worthy enemies so worthy subjects; Dutch are wonderful with servile people but can't deal with belligerence; I was shocked but there was some thread of the possibility of how to think that excited me, not that she was right; remember having to write a paper on a Jewish religious service; fun to write as my father was anti-religious and mother a radical; could write about my grandparents and siblings as religious belief had skipped a generation; Benedict complimented me on the writing not the substance particularly; found her enormously encouraging; a good American, she wrote on race and said things that other people were unwilling to say; however only two who liked Benedict were Eric Wolf and me; [Sonia Ryang's thoughts on the importance of Benedict's book on Japanese culture]

00:25:02 R: Thoughts on the importance of fieldwork and Margaret Mead. 
M: Knew some professors who were good teachers but lousy fieldworkers; Robert Redfield and Ruth Benedict both knew it and were not frightened to say so; now lousy fieldworkers don't admit it but write novels; I was good friends with Margaret Mead and when I went on leave she taught my course at Yale one year when Bush was a student in the class; she didn't want to grade them so gave them all the same mark, B+, I think the highest grade our esteemed President got at Yale; think she was criticized much more than she deserved by Derek Freeman; she did like to be famous and one of my problems with her book about Benedict is that it is hard to find Benedict in it; what was important was that she became a spokesman for anthropology and we have had no one since.

SECOND PART

00:00:01 R: Comparisons of Caribbean diaspora through slavery and immigration.
M: Differences may result in treatment. In C19 about 100,000,000 people left their homelands and about half of these were Europeans; Europeans were mainly diasporic populations and went to places like Canada, Argentina and Uruguay, South Africa and United States; other half also diasporic, but non-whites and went mostly to Cuba, Jamaica, India and South Africa, those parts of the tropical world still engaged in overseas production to feed Europe; comparing two segments, white half went mostly to democratic countries and non-white half went to countries that did not have democratic constitutions; white half went where there were public universities and education, and voting rights, and the other half went where there was none; looked at from the point of view of long term success of these two populations, to become successful in the Caribbean, for instance, the competition was the entire population of where you lived; in Canada or US, possible for son of a cook to become a Yale professor; not distinctions between individuals but fates of populations; one's fate bound with place to which one's parents had gone; fate of the enslaved was terrible as they could do nothing to improve the fate of their children; the main reason why people migrate to the US is for the sake of their children

00:06:30 R: After war Hannah Arendt writes about refugees saying that unless you have national citizenship you do not have human rights
M: True. My mother, a political radical, said one of the things she noticed in the US, coming from Tsarist Russia, was looking out of the back window she could see the policeman standing at the corner of the street where there was a school, and when it rained he would cover children with his raincoat and take them across to the school, like a mother hen. In the Russia if you saw a policeman you would run the other way; most people I have told this to agree, but a black student said that in his neighbourhood they ran from cops ie. not yet a full citizen; a society where the policemen are not enemies is on the way to becoming civilized

00:09:37 R: Came to US in 1997 and have found since that anthropology has become a little stifling due to accountability on how scientific it is
M: It bothers me but talking about our field as one that straddles the boundary of science and humanities is stimulating; when anthropology was four fields that were assumed to cover the study of man there was not such a problem; lot goes back to the changes in the bureaucratic structure and the desire to emphasize science, but part is our own fault; backing away from fieldwork has weakened us; anthropology benefits from uncertainty, we learn things that are vital to our survival, that make us humble about the way we do things ourselves; might have learnt there were differences between Sunnis and Shiites before we went into this war; problem for us is lack of a public voice, but do we have a common purpose; I am not so much pessimistic about anthropology but sad about it; think we could be contributing so much more

00:13:58 R: Who is your favourite theorist and composer?
M: Eric Wolf; when I first knew him I was struck by his erudition; found I live on and from his theoretical ideas, even today; admire him as a war hero, but someone also who understood his own limitations; also great admirer of Karl Marx as a theorist; admire Plekhanov's paper 'The Role of the Individual in History' - a very interesting figure in history of thought; my teacher Alexander Lesser also a smart man; my favourite composer is Sibelius, then Beethoven; I asked Levi-Strauss this question and he said Wagner, I was so surprised, but then Wagner was my mother's favourite; Sibelius was the first composer whose music I got to know well; I finished high school at 15; at that time favourite radio listening was Saturday night, 'Lucky Strike hit parade'; problem was only one radio and this was time Toscanini conducted the M.B.C. symphony and mother wanted to listen; moved in with my sister who was a music teacher who played classical music on the radio all the time; gave up 'Lucky Strike' completely; sister was marvellous as she would never make you listen, like my father who would cook a new food which he did not force me to eat but encouraged me to taste and the next time he cooked it I would want to eat it; sister encouraged serious listening, within weeks transformed

00:20:45 M: Thoughts on anthropology - cultural and social, American and British, a narrowing gap between them
R: Does British anthropology have a man like Franz Boas? 
M: In British social anthropology there were two different figures, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, who had different conceptions about what anthropology was or could be; hard to find an organizing figure, but pinnacle would be Firth who lived nearly the length of British anthropology; in terms of fieldwork feel Malinowski had a greater influence (than R-B); also there are figures who could stand beside Franz Boas in American anthropology, so should look for a Radcliffe-Brown figure here