The Interviews
Professor Alan Macfarlane is carrying out a unique anthropological project: an anthropology of his discipline. A participant-observer inside his own profession, he has written books, fronted films and, most important for this website, conducted a series of fascinating interviews with academics, thinkers and those around the periphery of academia. It is the latter that concerns me here.
A little history.
I recently finished a book, which used many of these interviews as source material. Professor Macfarlane kindly looked at my work; and suggested I write about the interviews themselves; in the form of an article or monograph. This may yet happen! But for now, I have decided to treat each separate interview as a unique event. They are an extremely rich source of insight and history, and together give a brilliant intellectual, psychological and social picture of university life and the academic mind for at least two generations; covering the period from roughly the 1950s. But how to understand them? What patterns to pull out? Just as with my film pieces I have approached these interviews as a writer, not as a social scientist. To use the writer’s tools, those stylistic picks and shovels, to extract out the gold and silver. And what gold! What silver!….
The originals can be found on Professor Macfarlane’s website, an extraordinary archive, which I encourage you to visit. Each interview is linked to the University of Cambridge’s Streaming Media Service, where, having once donned helmet and lamp, you can descend into academia’s deepest, richest mines.
I would like to thank Professor Macfarlane, both for his work - a true education - and his personal interest, plus the encouragement to start this project. It is unusual, alas, for academics to be so open and generous to outsiders, and reminds me always - in the dark days of my despair over much of what I see in today’s knowledge industry - of the true purpose and actual promise of university life; that journey into enlightenment and wisdom; a search for the self, together with the means to grow it. We start as a few dusty plants in a tiny backyard, and we end (or should end) decades later as a jungle of our own making….
All opinions, ideas, errors and witticisms are my own. There is only one person to punch: me!
The Interviews:
Charmed into subservience.
Bridget Strevens-Marzo: Artist
How to combine talent with success.
Distant places seen close up.
I can hardly look...her nervousness is infectious.
An old way of looking at the landscape. It is to explore rather than research.
We watch as the village shop is replaced by a franchise; a tiny retail outlet for a huge multinational firm. After a little hesitation, life goes on as before; nothing lost, everything gained.
A strange one this. All about a poker! After travelling to the edge of Germany the Schloss returns with an answer to that famous conundrum: when dealing with difficult opponents do philosophers prefer heavy instruments to arguments?
Alan and Professor Marx keep to the anthropology, while Schloss goes all over the place. Greek temple, medieval church, a modern campus, synagogue...where is this man going?
Richard Marshall: Philosopher & Educationalist
The Schloss was told: stick to the path, don't go wandering about, you'll get lost. Does he listen? Does he listen heck! Off he goes, roaming the Brecon Beacons, where he finds some actor chap christening those mountainous beasts with a new name. Naturally the Schloss is on the side of the Beacons, who are not happy with these rainy words, the liberties taken with their nomenclature. Later, he stops for a chat with Ernest Gellner; then stumbles into a river, when he finds Richard staring back at him. Soaked and heading for Cader Idris he vaguely remembers some appointment.....
One should always quote Blake: 'Opposition is True Friendship'. If only the Schloss had kept it this simple; alas he gets carried away, and builds his own geodesic dome around the 1960s: another of his vast conceptual bubbles. As he runs off into the horizon, Alan keeps pulling him back to the job at hand.
McKim Marriott: Anthropologist
An insider within the academic field, though he may have got lucky, escaping its orthodoxies by drifting for a while. The Schloss, of course, comes out with some grand theory, as our man works closely at the details.
An interloper in the interstices of the academic Left. A boy from the Valleys looks on with amusement.
The value of a public school education. Two Old Dragons do more than reminisce; while Mr Schloss sails out onto the high seas of speculation.....
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