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Raymond Firth in the Antipodes: A ‘Capacityfor Organising and Administration as well asFirst-Rate Anthropology’Geoffrey GrayUniversity of Queensland

Christine WinterFlinders University2021

POUR CITER CET ARTICLEGray, Geoffrey & Christine Winter, 2021. “Raymond Firth in the Antipodes: A ‘Capacity for Organising andAdministration as well as First-Rate Anthropology’”, in Bérose - Encyclopédie internationale des histoires del'anthropologie, Paris.

URL Bérose : article2477.html

Publication Bérose : ISSN 2648-2770© UMR9022 Héritages (CY Cergy Paris Université, CNRS, Ministère de la culture)/DIRI, Direction générale despatrimoines et de l'architecture du Ministère de la culture. (Tous droits réservés).Votre utilisation de cet article présuppose votre acceptation des conditions d'utilisation des contenus du site deBérose (www.berose.fr), accessibles ici.Consulté le 29 juin 2022 à 13h20min

Publié dans le cadre du thème de recherche «Histoire de l’anthropologie en Australasie (1900-2000)»,dirigé par Geoffrey Gray (University of Queensland).

Raymond Firth ‘is remembered today principally as an area specialist and by historians of the

discipline as an ‘organization man’. [1] This doesn’t discount his importance as an economic

anthropologist, particularly his ‘work on non-industrial economies’. Indeed British

anthropologist Maurice Bloch credits him with ‘single-handedly’ creating ‘a British form of

economic anthropology, which is still thriving’. [2] John Davis, in an obituary for the British

Academy, described him as an ‘organisation man from the 1930s, both in his theory and in his

administrative activities. … In administration he was a consistent and fair-minded advocate

for anthropology at home and abroad’. [3] It is this aspect – a consistent and fair-minded

advocate for anthropology – that we pursue by examining his place in the establishment and

development of anthropology in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. It is a persona that is

clearly seen after WWII. There were hints before then, such as his role in putting the needs of

the institution ahead of personal friendship in enabling Adolphus Peter Elkin to succeed him

as professor at Sydney in 1932.

Firth was consulted over all senior academic appointments in the Antipodes between 1946

and 1965 during this crucial foundation and consolidation time for academic anthropology in

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Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. [4] He promoted mostly graduates from the LSE,

especially those from the Antipodes. An unexpected consequence was that through these

appointments he introduced new ways of thinking about the discipline that contrasted with

that existent in Australia before the war, which is evident, particularly, in the appointments

of Siegfried Frederick Nadel and John Arundel Barnes. [5] Grown and nurtured in the

Antipodes, we argue, his Southern sensibilities remained throughout his career, and allowed

him in turn to bring fresh approaches to anthropology in the Antipodes.

Beginnings in AustralasiaRaymond William Firth was born in Auckland on 25 March 1901. [6] His English-born father,

Wesley Firth, a builder, had arrived as a thirteen-year-old, while his mother, Mary nee

Cartmill, was born and raised in Auckland. After attending a local primary school, he went to

Auckland Grammar School. He enrolled in economics at Auckland University College, a

constituent college of the University of New Zealand. [7] His university education was

supported by the Senior National Scholarship scheme. He completed a BA in Economics,

whilst also reading courses in English and chemistry. His MA, ‘The Kauri Gum Industry’

(1924), was in economics and history. It ‘took him into the Far North and into the

predominantly Maori communities of the time’. Uncommon for an economics thesis he

interviewed people about their lives and work. He also learnt some Maori. William

Anderson, professor of philosophy at Auckland, pushed Firth’s interests in Maori beyond the

descriptive and towards the anthropological.

Initially he planned to do an economics thesis concentrating on the frozen meat trade, but he

decided to undertake a number of courses in anthropology while writing up his thesis.

Already familiar with Malinowski’s work in the Trobriands he decided after six months to

abandon economics to begin his career in anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski. [8] He

was Malinowski’s first student to successfully complete his doctorate. ‘Primitive Economics

of the New Zealand Māori’ was completed in 1927 and published in 1929. He recalls that his

own observations in the field, “although very scattered, very fragmentary, were part of it, but

mainly it just was the amount of literature on the Maori in New Zealand, and I worked at the

British Museum Library – seat L5 – for something like three years!’ [9]

He had been awarded, in 1928, a Rockefeller Foundation (the Laura Spellman Memorial

Fund) funded research fellowship by the Australian National Research Council. Until 1930

there were no equivalent resources for research in the British empire. ‘As a result, Sydney

became a center from or through which field research was carried on, not only in Australia,

but through the area,’ Melanesia and Oceania. [10] He and Reo Fortune, a fellow New

Zealander who was at Cambridge, had discussed going to either Rennell Island or Tikopia,

Polynesian outliers. Rennell was Firth’s initial choice. [11]Rennell was out as H. Ian Hogbin,

Radcliffe-Brown’s student, was to undertake research there as part of a geological

expedition. After further discussion and advice from Malinowski, Firth settled on ‘the

Massim area, preferably Sudest or Misima in the Louisiades as yet almost unworked’.

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Fortune, however, deciding to work in Dobu (Tewawa Island), freed Tikopia. [12]

On his way to Tikopia, Firth stopped over in Sydney, where he first met A. R. Radcliffe-

Brown and Ian Hogbin; soon after he left for Auckland, returning to Sydney in mid-April,

1928, to prepare for a year on Tikopia. [13] In mid-May Firth and Hogbin left Sydney on the

Burns Philp steamer SS Malaram for Tulagi, the capital of the British Solomon Islands

Protectorate (BSIP), now the Solomon Islands. Travelling on the mission boat Southern Cross,

Hogbin was put down on the coral atoll Ontong Java, and Firth went onto Tikopia. [14] In

August 1929 Firth, having spent 52 weeks on Tikopia, returned briefly to Sydney via Brisbane

before departing for Auckland to see his family.

Bernard Deacon, slated to be lecturer in Radcliffe-Brown’s fledgling department, had died of

blackwater fever in Malekula in the British and French Condominium of the New Hebrides,

now Vanuatu. This led to Radcliffe-Brown taking on all teaching and supervisory

commitments for 1927. Little wonder that he described it as ‘one of the busiest years of my

life’. [15] Cambridge graduate Camilla Wedgwood filled the vacant position the following

year. Firth replaced Wedgwood in 1930. [16] There were few professional opportunities

across the Tasman Sea.

There was no formal anthropology in New Zealand other than a certificate in anthropology

offered at Otago University, Dunedin in the South Island. It was for one year and focused on

museum and archaeology studies. A diploma in social science was offered at Auckland but

anthropology, such as it was, was largely left to the museums. There were other attempts to

introduce a cultural focused anthropology particularly the Board of Maori Ethnological

Research (BMER), established in 1923. [17] Its founders, Apirana Ngata and Peter Buck (Te

Rangi Hiroa) were ‘sandwiched between two generations of New Zealand anthropologists;

between the amateur ethnologists who founded the Polynesian Society in the 1890s,

Stephenson Percy Smith, Edward Tregear and Elsdon Best and the new generation of New

Zealand-born, overseas-trained, anthropologists who came to the fore in the 1920s and

1930s’. Neither had any formal training in ethnology, in ‘our university days’ but they had

‘field experience that few, if any, ethnologists have been favoured with… . Neither the

ethnologists of the old school like Peehi [Best] nor the younger generation like [Henry

Dervish] Skinner … could tackle the things that you or I know to be of importance’. [18]

Indeed, as Conal McCarthy and Paul Tapsell argue, ‘this Maori-conceived, Maori-led and

Maori-funded [board] effectively took over the management of anthropological research in

Aotearoa/New Zealand and exerted considerable influence on related bodies: the

Department of Native Affairs, the Dominion Museum (in Auckland), the Alexander Turnbull

Library, and the Polynesian Society and its journal. It is a remarkable story of indigenous

agency unparalleled in the history of museums and anthropology in settler societies’. [19]

Ngata, lawyer, land reformer, politician and scholar, saw the value of enlisting anthropology

as a way of preserving Maori culture and more generally as part of the ‘armoury of colonial

administration’. He, along with Buck, was ‘keenly interested in the government of native

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races’. [20] As a member of the government and its civil service, he had a practical need: ‘a

function of government … was to discover and appraise “stubborn, conservative elements” of

Maori culture, and “especially to judge whether in their nature they were detrimental to

progress … or worth preserving in a modified form”’. [21] Māori had reached what Firth

called the ‘phase of adaptation’, a problematic assumption for Ngata. [22] Ngata nonetheless

praised Firth as a ‘competent ethnologist who brings to his study honesty of purpose and a

sympathetic understanding of Māori people’. [23] Ngata could be critical of Firth’s work – ‘he

had failed to penetrate the psychological strata of Maori life and thought’ – and he quoted

Firth’s work extensively in his major report to parliament in 1931 on Maori land development.

Despite these reservations Buck and Ngata entertained the possibility of encouraging Firth

to implement Ngata’s proposal to ‘establish a department of anthropological field research

which would later train officials in native affairs and islands administration’. [24] Ngata and

Buck also read Felix Keesing with interest. He was at Auckland a year after Firth; his interest

was in the social and cultural background of Maori. His MA thesis The Changing Maori was

published under the authority of the Board of Maori Ethnological Research. [25] It and his

postgraduate study in Hawai’i was funded by BMER, at the instigation of Buck.

It was their custom to ‘regularly [discuss] their Pakeha protégés’: first Skinner, Firth and

Keesing, then Ivan Sutherland [at Canterbury University College] and later Ernest

Beaglehole [at Victoria University College]. With the exception of Skinner, who could

scarcely be described as a protégé, whom both Ngata and Buck disliked and treated to some

particularly acerbic comments, their judgments tended to be equivocal. Indeed Skinner’s

lack of Maori language skills and focus on material culture/archaeology set him apart. [26]

Skinner produced descriptive rather than analytic accounts of Maori life. There is little doubt

that Skinner did not attract the same interest as Firth, Keesing, Sutherland and

Beaglehole. [27]

As historian Keith Sorrensen wrote: ‘Anthropology for Buck [Hiroa], as for Ngata, was no

mere academic game, but was a necessary means of facilitating action in the field, in land

development and in cultural regeneration’. [28] In the early 1930s Ngata’s endeavours were

marred by criticism including a royal commission investigating financial irregularities. In

the end with Ngata losing his position and Buck in Hawai’i, the BMER petered out. But their

voice was not unheeded or lost. [29]

In Sydney, despite Rockefeller funding for research and subsidizing the chair, the financial

crisis threatened the continuance of anthropology. It was a crisis made worse by Radcliffe-

Brown deciding to leave for Chicago. In early 1929 he had written to Malinowski pointing out

that as soon as Firth returned from fieldwork in Tikopia he would then see his ‘way to getting

back to Europe. I should expect to see him succeed me here’. [30] It was to Chicago (initially

for twelve months, it became five years), not Europe that Radcliffe-Brown was headed, and

finally to Oxford in 1937 where he remained until his retirement.

At the end of 1931 the Rockefeller Foundation renewed its grant for a further five years.

Research funding was assured until 1935 but the situation regarding future funding

5 / 25

subsidizing the chair was not so clear. The Commonwealth, and the state governments, had

indicated they were no longer prepared to fund the department to the extent they had. The

states withdrew financial support with the exception of New South Wales but its grant was

greatly reduced. [31] Without Commonwealth and state government funding, the Rockefeller

subsidy for the chair would cease. These were dire times for anthropology. It was rumoured

that the university ‘could not even guarantee Radcliffe-Brown’s salary’. [32]

Radcliffe-Brown had expressed great confidence in Firth’s abilities and saw him as ‘the only

qualified man with the necessary special knowledge to plan research in the regions with

which Sydney is concerned and to train students for the work in that region’. [33] When Firth

was appointed acting head on Radcliffe-Brown’s departure, the financial future remained

uncertain and the university was reluctant to commit itself beyond 1933. There was, despite

the pessimism, a belief that Firth was the right person for the tasks ahead. It was confirmed

by Wedgwood’s observation that Firth, she told Malinowski, combined a ‘capacity for

organising and administration as well as first-rate anthropology, and such people are about

as rare as icicles in mid-summer’. [34]

The Commonwealth government wisely sought detailed information on the anthropology

department and its training courses, while it considered whether to continue funding the

chair. In a memorandum entitled ‘On the Study of Anthropology in Australia and the

Western Pacific’, Firth provided the first overview of the department since its

foundation. [35] It had no immediate effect on the funding situation and the future of the

department remained as uncertain as ever. [36] A further complication was that after little

more than a year into the job, Firth requested 12 months leave to write up his Tikopia

research at LSE under the supervision of Malinowski. Wedgwood pointed out to Malinowski

that the situation at Sydney had taken its toll on Firth:

Raymond is very tired and I am devoutly thankful for his sake that he isgoing home. All this administrative work has taken up far too much of histime and it is to my mind rather surprizing how much he managed to getthrough. But six months or a year’s leisure to write should enable him tofinish his first two books on Tikopia. [37]

Malinowski discussed with Firth the person best suited as Firth’s locum tenens. It had to be

somebody who would not be ‘difficult afterwards to dislodge’ and an appointment ‘no longer

than a year’, thus leaving the position open for Firth to return. [38] There was no opportunity

for Wedgwood as there was a very strong anti-woman element in the University Senate,

further compounded by her correct belief that a woman would not be acceptable to the men

of the ANRC. [39] Ian Hogbin had recently completed a doctorate under the supervision of

Malinowski, who declared himself to be ‘personally interested in [his] career and

development’; Malinowski understood Hogbin was making ‘very good success’ as a lecturer

and ‘developing in his theoretical grasp’ of anthropology. In short, he would be an ‘excellent

[short-term] successor’. [40] Firth showing his ability to recommend a candidate best for the

interests of the university and concomitantly not letting friendship interfere in his

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judgement, proposed Elkin, a forty-one-year-old ordained Anglican priest, and London

University College-trained anthropologist as his ‘substitute’. [41] He considered Hogbin

unsuitable to ‘handle the ANRC side of things’, aware administration was not one of Hogbin’s

strengths. He added that ‘for a permanent appointment a man can take time to work himself

into the research administration’ but Elkin was ‘equipped from the start’. Moreover, the

deepening financial crisis made it essential to have someone with Elkin’s administrative

abilities. [42] Elkin was well connected. He was on the Australian Board of Missions, the

representative of the Bishop of Newcastle on the Sydney Anglican Diocese Council and had

considerable administrative experience as rector of St James Church in Morpeth, northern

New South Wales. [43] Firth, conscious of responsibilities not only to the department but

also to Radcliffe-Brown, wanted to leave the department with a chance should the situation

improve. He recommended to the university that Elkin take his position on an acting basis

for twelve months.

The financial situation deteriorated and the University Senate presented Firth with an

ultimatum: resign or stay. Twelve months leave was no longer an option. Even had he stayed

his future was not assured. Firth resigned. On hearing of Firth’s imminent departure,

Radcliffe-Brown wrote to Elkin, ‘distressed that Firth is leaving … and that the fate of the

department is so doubtful’. He asked whether there was any chance that Elkin would take

over and assured him of his support. [44] Firth left for London in December 1932. Elkin was

appointed lecturer-in-charge with the task of overseeing the closure of the department. He

spent three days at Sydney and the rest of the week at Morpeth, a country town in northern

New South Wales. He was to accept no new students. [45]

The financial situation improved in late 1933. The university advertised the position of

professor of anthropology for an initial five-year period. There were several scenarios raised,

including the possibility of Radcliffe-Brown returning to Sydney or that Firth might be

induced to return. [46] Firth did not apply. Elkin was informed on 22 December that he was

appointed professor for five years from 1 January 1934. The opportunities for Firth were

greater at LSE, and he was, as Charles Seligman told German anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff,

‘Malinowski’s pet pupil’. [47]

Firth recalls Sydney as

‘… important for my aesthetic development and breadth of culturalunderstanding what I sometimes used to call the “golden years.” We werea cosmopolitan group of diverse interests, but we saw much of oneanother, dining together nearly every night at a Swiss restaurant, theClaremont Cafe, and having frequent parties at one another’s rooms. …. Itwas a lively, amusing period that no doubt helped to strengthen myfeeling for the exotic.’ [48]

There was a dynamic conviviality that grew around the Sydney department. Radcliffe-Brown

frequently ate with them. [49] These young anthropologists included Hogbin, Ralph

Piddington, C.W.M. Hart, W.E.H. Stanner, the Americans W. Lloyd Warner and linguist

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Gerhardt Laves. Taught by Radcliffe-Brown, they were part of a cohort that developed a

strong sense of themselves as emissaries of a new discipline. Piddington enjoyed the

‘solidarity … [during] the old days of the Group’, as he called them, their solidarity being

increased by anthropology’s newness and hence its opposition to other ‘decaying disciplines’.

These young anthropologists were on a journey to make a career in the new discipline of

social anthropology. [50] Firth was a few years older; he was thirty-one. On the cusp of his

international career he was photographed, in 1932, by Sarah Chinnery, wife of EWP

Chinnery, New Guinea government anthropologist: learned in front of his books,

immaculately dressed, urbane with cigarette and cigarette etui in hand, and confidently

holding the gaze. [51] Around this time Margaret Mead, then married to Reo Fortune and on

the brink of leaving him for Gregory Bateson, observed that Firth was ‘an impossible little ex-

Methodist bounder, petty pup in office… He’s just awful, although a pretty boy, with his mask

on’. [52] Whatever charm revealed by Sarah Chinnery did not impress Mead.

With the exception of Warner, who briefly attended some of Malinowki’s seminars before

arriving in Sydney, all of the Sydney cohort went on to attend LSE for doctoral studies in

anthropology. Hogbin completed his doctoral studies in 1931. Malinowski arranged a

position for Firth. Hart and Piddington arrived just before Firth, both funded by Rockefeller

Foundation fellowships. Hart found work at Toronto and helped establish anthropology

there. [53] Piddington, denied a position in Australia, worked for Firth as his research

assistant, and later received funding through Firth to edit Essays in Polynesian Ethnology by

Robert W. Williamson. He was appointed to Aberdeen University in 1938. [54] Theirs was a

friendship that lasted throughout their lives. Other Australians such as Stanner arrived at

LSE in 1937, soon after Phyllis Kaberry, another Sydney graduate. [55] Hogbin retained his

friendship with Firth and took his sabbaticals at LSE.

The Australians had completed an MA with field experience. Their doctorates at LSE were,

afterall, based on their Australian fieldwork. [56] There was no similar preparation for the

New Zealanders; they, too, had to leave to gain further academic qualifications and a career.

Firth’s trajectory is atypical, as was that of fellow New Zealander Reo Fortune, who attended

Cambridge. He had an MA from Auckland, a diploma in anthropology from Cambridge and

completed his PhD at Columbia, New York in 1931. [57] As it was, those New Zealanders who

attended LSE did so after the war. Only Felix Keesing attended LSE, between 1933 and 1934,

when Firth was there. He had completed a DLitt at Auckland. Like Firth he was recruited to

the intelligence services during the war; in 1942 the Office of Strategic Services called him to

Washington, D.C., where he worked with South Pacific materials and lectured to high-

ranking naval officers on the cultures of the area. [58] Firth was attached to British naval

intelligence, compiling Pacific island handbooks and maps.

By the end of the war Firth had replaced Malinowski as professor. He played a key role in

helping to establish the Colonial Social Science Research Council (1944-45) and was its first

Secretary. In part it was set up to provide an empirical base of knowledge for colonial

development after the war. [59] In some sense it can be seen as a continuation of the project,

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‘the Changing African’, developed by Malinowski, JH Oldham and Deidrich Westermann in

the 1930s. Firth’s reputation had grown during the war. In 1947 he was recruited as one of

four academic advisors to the Australian National University, his portfolio was establishing a

Research School of Pacific Studies (RSPacS). [60]

Post War Expansion of Higher Education: Influence, Patronageand PowerThose British trained anthropologists who had established themselves during the interwar

period are described by Adam Kuper as ‘the pioneers’. [61] Of those pioneers Raymond Firth,

E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Daryll Forde stand out in the immediate post war period. Firth was

made professor in 1944; Forde the following year; Evans-Pritchard in 1946. They were

dispensers of patronage; they held ‘key positions on government grant-giving committees’;

they held ‘the decisive voice in the appointment of staff and often in the choice of … graduate

students’. They could ‘effectively withhold or grant promotions, leaves and other privileges,

and his recommendation was crucial in any application for a research grant or for a position

elsewhere. He was generally the only effective channel of communication with the university

authorities and grant-giving bodies’. [62]

The post-war expansion in higher education, especially in Australia and New Zealand

enabled Firth to exercise greater influence over academic appointments than either Evans-

Pritchard or Forde in the Antipodes. [63] Firth appears to have exercised influence

judiciously. He had a skill, recognised by Radcliffe-Brown in 1929, that exceeded mere

administration, but aimed at orchestrating research in the region. Firth brought

anthropological observation and analysis into the arena of academic politics. Part of his

special skill was how he negotiated closeness and distance. He above the others was most

entangled – he had taught most of the anthropologists seeking positions or they had been

colleagues – but was able, so he claimed, and it was generally accepted, to stand apart from

personal friendships and make recommendations which reflected the needs of the respective

university. Evans-Pritchard and Forde were consulted over senior positions within the UK as

well but Evans-Pritchard seemed somewhat disinterested at times, such as when asked to

advise on a professorial appointment at the Australian National University (1957). [64] In

spite of this apparent lack of interest, George Stocking contended that after the war Evans-

Pritchard became the single most important figure in British social anthropology,

dominating the profession both intellectually and institutionally. [65]

During the second half of the 20th century, a tension over its position intellectually and

culturally permeated Australia; the ‘cultural cringe’, conflicting desires of a fledgling

nationalism to hold local culture and identity proud, and an undercurrent of doubt that

handed admiration and worth to a Britishness that resided in the metropole. Firth managed

to assuage this tension, by being both at the same time, Antipodean and at the centre of a

metropolitan Britishness. In the Antipodes, Firth’s influence and authority was rarely

challenged; it reflected, in part, a desire to choose one of their own to advise on senior

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appointments. This was certainly a key factor in his appointment as an advisor to the

fledgling Australian National University. [66] Firth had a cloak of Britishness by virtue of his

professorship at LSE. Institutions in the Antipodes, especially before WWII, frequently

sought advice from British scholars and frequently appointed British born scholars to

university positions. [67] Firth operated successfully in these environments. As one colleague

remarked, he ‘was the centre of power with major connections in corridors that

mattered’. [68] The Aotearoa/New Zealand-born anthropologist Cyril Belshaw (1921-1918),

who regarded Firth as a mentor – ‘I owe him a lot’ – saw him nevertheless as ‘manipulator

number one … always done in an urbane and kindly manner’. Firth, he told one of us, ‘had

come a vast way from being the initially brash but upwardly mobile acolyte of Malinowski. In

the context of the cut-throat competition that was there when he gained the chair, that was

quite an achievement’. [69]

There was hardly an academic position in the Antipodes between 1945 and 1970 in which Firth

didn’t have some say: he was consulted over a proposed position, as an advisor: sometimes as

a selection panel member (usually chair) making a recommendation, or as a referee for some

of the applicants or breaking a deadlock of a local selection committee. This is not to say that

his advice was necessarily accepted, although more often than not it was; sometimes local

competitors (gatekeepers) challenged or attempted to undermine Firth’s recommendations.

Notably, when advising on a successor to Elkin at the University of Sydney he met opposition

from Elkin himself. Elkin saw himself as the pre-eminent anthropologist of Australia (if not

the region) and he had no compunction in interfering in the appointment of his successor, as

well as the appointment of a foundation professor at Auckland University College and that of

a senior lectureship in anthropology at the University of Western Australia.

Elkin took a personal interest in his favoured students and their advancement. He was a

provider of patronage, a gift giver adept at withholding his bounty to those who crossed him

as well as promoting his chosen students. [70] Firth sought a role different to that of Elkin.

Unlike Elkin he protected no legacy and he was free to assist in making an appointment that

best suited, in his view, the needs of the university. In short, Firth’s method was to take the

institution, look at the individual, and explicate a fit that met the implicit criteria. [71] His

skill shifted from the descriptive and analytic to the predictive. How would this person

perform in the position in the structure of the institution? He was able to write a personal

report, for the selection committee; often suggesting a short list which was usually adopted

by the selection committee, including even those for whom he had acted as a referee. He

seamlessly shifted to a new persona, disengaged from earlier actions, and turning instead to

the selection committee as his primary concern as he set out the criteria by which one or

more of the candidates were a fit for the university. Firth made assessments on the qualities

he thought a professor and head of department required: accepting responsibility, providing

intellectual leadership and having the ability to deal with the brightest students. The focus in

the end was on ‘the fit’ of the applicant to the needs of the university. He did not always voice

a choice, leaving that to the university selection panel. Despite personal entanglements he

was able to overcome possible conflicts of interest. [72] To illuminate the way Firth went

10 / 25

about this work, we discuss appointment of S. F. Nadel to the foundation chair of

anthropology at the ANU and the appointment of R. O. Piddington to the foundation chair at

Auckland University College.

In 1946 the Australian government enabled through legislation and funding the

establishment of the Australian National University in Canberra, the capital. [73] The

foundation of the ANU created a novel and prestigious Commonwealth-funded university

dominated by research and interested in connections with politics and policy advice. An

initial problem for the ANU and its academic advisors was finding suitable Australian

applicants for senior academic positions. Thus the university sought to encourage the return

of expatriate scholars, many of whom were part of the (interwar) brain drain to the United

Kingdom. [74] To this end the interim university council appointed a London-based

Academic Advisory Board consisting of eminent Australian scholars, Howard Florey

(medicine), Mark Oliphant (physics), Keith Hancock (social science) and New Zealander

Raymond Firth (Pacific studies). Each was expected to accept appointment as director of

their specific schools once the university was formally established. In the event, only

Oliphant stayed on to direct a school although Hancock returned in the mid-50s to direct the

School of Social Sciences. [75]

One of Firth’s tasks was finding an anthropologist with the ‘right capacity and also with

much first-hand acquaintance of Pacific problems’. It would be difficult. Firth considered

suitable Australian candidates, including Elkin, but ‘someone rather different is needed at

Canberra’. This left two Australian candidates: Hogbin (then reader at the University of

Sydney) and Stanner (then director of the East African Institute of Social and Economic

Research, Makerere College, Uganda), of which only Hogbin deserved ‘very serious

consideration’. [76] Firth knew him well and had ‘a very great respect for his capacity’. But he

would not, Firth felt, ‘be the best person to occupy the Chair of Anthropology, and be

responsible for the ultimate standard of teaching and research’. He should be ‘offered a

Readership in the new School, a Professor should be looked for elsewhere’. [77]

Firth had discussed the position with Evans-Pritchard, and they agreed ‘there were only two

men in England, S.F. Nadel and M. Fortes, of the right calibre’. There was one other

possibility, Audrey Richards, trained under Malinowski, academically accomplished and

experienced in university and colonial administration. Her career at the time was

exceptional given the paucity of women in senior academic positions and the impediments

confronting them. [78] In Firth’s view Richards was ‘not only of high quality scientifically but

also is deeply associated with anthropological research in the Colonial field’. [79] Hancock,

who knew and liked Richards, was keen, if she could be persuaded. The unexpected

resignation of Stanner as director of the Institute for Social Research at Makerere College in

Uganda solved the issue. Richards was sounded out to replace him. [80]

Hancock, disregarding Firth’s preference for Nadel, supported Meyer Fortes. Nevertheless,

he asked Firth to tell him ‘a little about Nadel personally – his parentage, education, age,

character, etc?’ [81] Firth provided a short biography that talked him up. [82] In May 1949

11 / 25

Hancock resigned from the Academic Advisory Committee. [83] Disappointed that Hancock

had withdrawn, Firth urged the council to fill the positions in anthropology ‘as soon as

possible’. He noted that a chair was being created at Liverpool, ‘and there was a chance that

Nadel might be lost … unless the opportunity of securing him was seized at once’. Firth

underlined the qualities Nadel possessed which he considered were necessary for such a

position. He reiterated what he had told Hancock. Nadel, an ambitious man about 40 years

old, was

relatively easy to get on with, and extremely able. Talks very freely butwell with ideas. A very good knowledge [of] sociology and psychology … aswell as in Social Anthropology and with a cultivated taste in the arts andan especially good knowledge of music… The theory in his publications …is implicit rather than manifest, but he has an extremely good theoreticalequipment. Very stimulating to students of all grades. [84]

Firth told the council that he could ‘think of no one better to occupy a new Chair in such an

important field that demands high theoretical capacity’. As for his lack of experience in the

Pacific he had no doubt Nadel would ‘remedy this very rapidly, and his comparative

experience in Africa would be of the greatest value’. [85] He also recommended Oskar Spate,

geography, and J. W.(Jim) Davidson, Pacific history.

Firth discussed with Nadel the conditions of employment in early November 1948, noting

that formal duties would not begin until 1951. He described the position as ‘attractive —

directing and doing research, and postgraduate teaching’. [86] He also informed Nadel of the

probable appointments of Melanesianist H Ian Hogbin and Australianist W.E.H. Stanner as

readers, telling him, that as they both have ‘knowledge of the Pacific field’ it would relieve

him ‘of the initial burden, leaving… [him] free to plan the work of the anthropology

department’. [87] Douglas Copland, Vice-Chancellor of the ANU, cabled Nadel formally

offering the Chair; Nadel accepted the following day. [88]

We have often wondered if Firth had an ulterior reason for pushing Nadel toward ANU. It

seems to us that the answer lies in his personal relationship with Nadel. We have a hint of

this when Firth declined the directorship of the RSPacS; the ANU Vice-Chancellor asked Firth

whether it had anything to do with Nadel. Firth assured him it was not Nadel, rather a

decision he and Rosemary had made, but it revealed a tension between Nadel and Firth. [89]

As Firth noted, Nadel had a sensitivity to ‘his professional status and with most decided

opinions upon the best way to set up and organize academic institutions’. [90]

Nadel’s appointment addressed the lack of theory in Australian anthropology, but he had

limited impact on Australian Aboriginalist anthropology. Stanner was critical of the Sydney

department, especially its teaching and the journal Oceania. In his opinion both reflected a

lack of interest in theory; he was critical also of the ‘thin sociological studies of the

Middletown type’ pursued by the department. He told Firth that ‘since you and Radcliffe-

Brown left I can’t find one theoretical gleam’. [91] A view shared by Lester Hiatt, for example,

an undergraduate student at Sydney in the early 1950s, who recalled that ‘what may have

12 / 25

passed as modern theory in the dying days of Elkin’s regime was no longer regarded as the

state of the art north of the Equator’. [92] At Sydney it was addressed by the appointment of

John Arundel Barnes, who although developing network theory with Clyde Mitchell rarely

invoked it when teaching his students; one of his doctoral students recalled ‘in our four years

of supervisorial relationship, I don’t think he mentioned Network Theory even once.’ [93]

Nadel arrived in Australia in February 1951. He had a detailed research agenda, which he

developed with Firth and in discussions with anthropologists he met in the United States of

America on his way to Australia. [94] Nadel proved to be an excellent fit for the ANU, and as

Firth promised, developed a direction of research that encompassed the Pacific and wider

region, even stretching to India. [95] Though Nadel died young, the parameters he set

remained a strength at the ANU until the dismantling of the Research School of Pacific and

Asian Studies around 2010.

At Auckland University College the situation was far from straightforward and like ANU the

task was to establish a new department, which had first been proposed in 1937. [96] It was

raised again in 1945 but deferred until the war had ended. At the end of 1946 there was a

submission to the College Council that a lectureship in Māori language be created as ‘a step

towards the later establishment of a chair in Māori and Polynesian ethnology’. The whole

matter of the chair and its staffing was thus raised; it was resolved that Ernest Beaglehole

(Victoria University College, Wellington), H. D. Skinner (University of Otago), Raymond

Firth (LSE), Sir Peter Buck (Bernice P Bishop Museum, Honolulu), Felix Keesing (Stanford

University) and A. P. Elkin (University of Sydney) be invited to express ‘their views (in the

form of a memorandum) to the proposed course’. [97] They were asked to advise on

Staffing requirement for School (number of members, status andtechnical assistants); Administration —including space for museum andlaboratories; Equipment; Library; Amount and kind of practical workrequired for each stage; whether the study of Anthropology should beincluded as part of the B.Sc. Degree; whether it is desirable or necessaryto link the study of the Māori Language with that of Anthropology; in whatdirection the study of Anthropology would be of benefit in the socialstudies of Māori people in relation to their future (Buck, Firth andBeaglehole); Relationship to Maori Welfare (Buck); Relationship to CivilService Course in [the] Pacific (Firth and Elkin).

Only Beaglehole and Elkin provided detailed suggestions: staffing, course content and the

relationship to New Zealand’s dependencies and the colonial Civil Service. Elkin and Firth

strongly advocated a chair in Social Anthropology and advised how such a department could

be staffed. Firth suggested one professor who ‘is a specialist in Social Anthropology, and who

is prepared to apply himself to the study of the Pacific and in particular to Polynesian

problems’. There were views on Maori studies and language. Archaeology and physical

anthropology should be taught; however, there was no shared vision but a view that these

subjects need not be housed in anthropology. [98] There was consensus addressing ‘the

problems of the Maori people, of the island peoples whom New Zealand has in its

13 / 25

charge’. [99] Elkin was not in favour of teaching Maori. Felix Keesing did not reply.

After some prevarication the position was advertised. Applicants were advised that the

School of Anthropology ‘shall provide for study in the whole field of Anthropology’. They

were further advised that the staff ‘will include a lecturer in Maori and Polynesian languages

and linguistics’. The appointment was initially for five years, ‘renewal thereafter

indefinitely’. A London-based selection panel – Firth, Evans-Pritchard and Forde – was

convened. The applicants were Ralph Piddington, W. R. Geddes, W. E. H. Stanner, Harry

Hawthorn, Richard Taylor and Percival Hadfield.

Firth, as often happened was in a peculiar but not unusual position, being named as a referee

by three of the candidates, Piddington, Stanner and Geddes. Firth not only encouraged

Stanner to apply for the chair, [100] but also provided a glowing general assessment of

Piddington, which was attached to Piddington’s application. [101] Geddes had recently

completed his doctorate, supervised by Firth. Only Piddington and Hawthorn had current

senior academic positions. Hadfield and Taylor were quickly eliminated. [102] When asked

to provide a reference, Firth’s practice ‘on these occasions’ was to ‘act as a reference … on the

understanding that I do not just write a glowing testimonial but give a frank estimate of [a

candidate’s] capacities and qualities’. [103]

On 10 May the committee interviewed Piddington and Stanner. Hawthorn was considered in

his absence. After carefully considering the ‘testimonials and letters of reference’ about

Hawthorn, it ‘endeavoured to assess his qualifications as accurately as possible without the

advantage of a personal interview’. While his ‘testimonials were good, his publications were

diffuse and rather thin’, and he was ranked below Piddington and Stanner. Stanner lacked

the interest and enthusiasm of Piddington, as well as experience in setting up a department,

and his teaching experience was nugatory. The London committee summed up:

‘There is … some doubt in the depth of interest in anthropologicalscholarship as distinct from practical affairs, and his career suggests, asone member of the Committee put it, “he often goes to the starting postbut does not always run.” On present anthropological publications, hisrecord is somewhat weak. Dr Stanner is therefore an unknown quantity,while there is no doubt that Dr Piddington would do the job well if hecould be attracted to the Chair.’ [104]

The panel recommended Piddington.

Unbeknownst to the London Committee, Elkin had been asked to provide his opinion on the

candidates. [105] His views were contrary to those of the committee. Elkin’s report, with its

impression of an insider able to comment on the abilities and qualities of the candidates

albeit uncertain about the candidates other than Stanner and Piddington, is a

conglomeration of hearsay, gossip, anecdote and fact, it was a deliberate misrepresenting of

the qualities and abilities of the applicants, specifically against Piddington. He was

dismissive of both Geddes and Hawthorn, even questioning the value of their doctorates.

Despite a cunning veneer of restraint, it is a thoroughly dishonest document. [106] Elkin

14 / 25

harboured a deep animosity towards Piddington since Piddington’s field research in

Western Australia in 1931-32, that led to Piddington publicly criticising the treatment of

Australian Indigenous workers. Elkin’s approach to state and commonwealth governments

was circumspect, cautious and accommodating for the sake of access to field sites and a

general containment and advancement of Indigenous people under anthropological

guidance. [107] Elkin brazenly informed Auckland that Piddington’s Western Australian

research had not been original, but plagiarised Elkin’s own field notes. [108] The upshot was

that Auckland offered the position to Stanner. Why they believed Elkin’s judgement above

the London committee’s is unclear as there is no paper trail in the archives at Auckland.

Stanner, not untypically, dithered. He wrote to Firth seeking his advice. Firth pointed out

that if he accepted the Auckland position he would be better placed to seek a more attractive

chair sometime in the future. [109] Perhaps he was thinking of Sydney. Stanner had made no

secret that he expected to be Elkin’s successor at Sydney. Elkin had not dissuaded him. [110]

Elkin was due to retire in 1955 which coincided with Stanner’s view that he would be ‘fully

ready’ for a professorship in ‘a couple of years at least’. Stanner’s career had stalled; the war

and other things made it later than even I wanted to be’, he told Elkin. [111]

Firth’s recommendation had gained Stanner his first position of leadership in anthropology

as director of the Institute for Social Research at Makerere College in Uganda in 1947. He

resigned after little more than a year, leaving Firth annoyed. [112] Stanner notified Auckland

that he was declining their offer. They immediately turned to Piddington.

Piddington wrote to Firth toward the middle of November thanking him ‘for all you did to

secure this appointment for me and for your invaluable preliminary guidance. Thanks to

your introductions, I have made very pleasant contacts’. Moreover, he was grateful that

Geddes had accepted the lectureship that he understood was on the basis of Firth’s

insistence. He introduced Maori language, appointing Bruce Biggs, and later Jack Golson to

archaeology. He arranged for Biggs to do his doctoral studies at Indiana university, and he

encouraged and supported Mahataia Winiata to undertake postgraduate studies at

Edinburgh University. [113] In Edinburgh he worked under Kenneth Little, and later studied,

briefly, at the LSE under Firth. He and Biggs were the first Maori to gain their doctorates

overseas. [114]

The remarkable aspect of the appointment process for the Auckland chair is not Firth’s initial

recommendation that rated Piddington as the best candidate to fit local needs, or Elkin’s

dishonest and spiteful attempt to thwart Piddington, nor Stanner’s self-destructive

vacillation between longing for and fearing responsibility. The remarkable element for us is

Firth’s advice to Stanner to accept the chair. In the wider scheme, this advice undermined

Firth’s assessment for Auckland University College. But he was responding to Stanner who

asked what he should do. His advice was made solely with Stanner’s career in mind. It is here

that we see a peculiar approach of Firth’s, which we might call a compartmentalisation of his

allegiances. As a final observation Stanner was already earmarked for a position at ANU. This

was his fallback. It took another fifteen years before he was made professor, in 1964.

15 / 25

ConclusionFirth oversaw the institutional emergence and consolidation of social anthropology in the

Antipodes. He was there at its birth, when he was at the University of Sydney under

Radcliffe-Brown. After a brief time as head of department, he enabled Elkin to succeed him.

On his return to LSE he witnessed, and was a participant in, a discipline that was increasingly

confident of itself and as opportunity arose he moved into higher and more authoritative

positions. Importantly, he had the support of Malinowski although LSE was increasingly

focussed on British Africa rather than the South West Pacific. He was offered the LSE chair

in 1944 but did not take it up until December 1945. From there his influence spread and his

reputation for balanced and thoughtful advice on teaching anthropology and appointments

to senior positions was recognised outside of the British Isles. After the war he was critical in

making the senior foundational appointments at the ANU, and the University of Auckland.

He oversaw Elkin’s replacement and subsequently, for Barnes in 1957, at Sydney. He was

consulted, in 1955, over anthropology at the University of Western Australia. His advice was

sought, in 1963, by Monash University over establishing a department of anthropology.

Firth retired in 1968. His retirement coincided with the decade that saw a major expansion of

anthropology across both Australia and New Zealand, yet he was sidelined for much of that

post-1968 period as an authoritative figure able to advise and recommend. [115] The

universities used local selection panels, such as the ANU when in 1964 it offered a second

chair to FJ Bailey. He declined. Firth quickly advised Stanner, by now close to retirement, to

apply. It was a final gesture to an old friend that ensured he was appointed. And it wisely

took into account Stanner’s predicament to prefer being second to accepting real

responsibility.

Firth’s focus was on ‘the fit’ of the applicant matched to the needs of the university. His

appointments were free of theoretical considerations outside that of the ANU. He knew or

had taught most of the applicants. Despite such entanglements he was able to overcome, or

rather compartmentalise, possible conflicts of interest. On the other hand, not all

appointments he recommended were met with satisfaction. For example, when he was

consulted over appointments to the University of British Columbia, Cyril Belshaw told one of

us that Firth’s choices were unsatisfactory: ‘He recommended with flowery language two

people to my department when I was recruiting. One turned out to be pompously hopeless

and the other, while doing some fairly good work, earned a reputation for manipulating

women students to recruit them to feminist ideology in a rather extreme way’. [116] While

Belshaw had a personal axe to grind, there is some merit to his assessment. At times Firth

did not have the institution’s best interest at heart, but individual academics longer-term

careers, and, more importantly a chess board of British-Anglo anthropology appointments

in Britain, its dominions and spheres of influence. He oversaw the development of the

discipline on a grand scale, while paying close attention to local differences and needs. Was

his eye sharpened by the place Ngata and Buck attempted to crate for anthropology? Did the

fleeting power of Sydney as a regional centre allow him to analyse and utilise a potential for

16 / 25

LSE and his role in it? A Southern sensibility, we claim, permeated his politics, that ensued

universality and recognised difference and locality. He also trusted the locality to draw in the

anthropological researcher. The Pacific, as in the case of the ANU, or Maori studies and

linguistics, would grow on the respective scholar. This is a reversal to the idea that expertise

of a specific locale or culture was a pre-requisite. This, too, we see as a Southern sensibility.

[1] Freddy Foks, 2020. “Raymond Firth, Between Economics and Anthropology”, in BEROSE International

Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

[2] Maurice Bloch, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/feb/26/guardianobituaries.obituaries

[3] J. H. R. Davis. “Raymond William Firth 1901-2002”. Proceedings of the British Academy 124, 2004, 88 (71-88).

[4] We have drawn on Geoffrey Gray and Doug Munro, “Australian Aboriginal Anthropology at the

Crossroads: Finding a Successor to A. P. Elkin, 1955”, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 22 (3), 2011,

351-369; Geoffrey Gray and Doug Munro, ‘Leach would be first rate – if you could get him: Edmund Leach

and the Australian National University, 1956’, History Compass, 10/11, 2012: 802-811; Geoffrey and Doug

Munro, ‘Establishing anthropology and Maori language (studies), Auckland University College: the

appointment of Ralph Piddington, 1949’, in Regna Darnell and Frederic W Gleach (Eds.), Histories of

Anthropology Annual, Volume 7, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012: 49-82; Geoffrey Gray and Doug

Munro, ‘The Department was in some disarray’: the politics of choosing a successor to S.F. Nadel, 1957, in

Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach (Eds.), Histories of Anthropology Annual, Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 2014; Geoffrey Gray, A Cautious Silence; the politics of Australian anthropology, Canberra,

2007.

[5] Jana Salat, Reasoning as Enterprise, Edition Herodot, 1983 ; Barnes, like Nadel an Africanist, was taught

and mentored by Isaac Schapera, Max Gluckman, Meyer Fortes, EP Evans-Pritchard and Daryll Forde.

Barnes had a research fellowship at Manchester, followed by a Readers’ appointment at LSE.

[6] A fuller account of Firth’s early life in New Zealand, see Patrick Laviolette, Mana and Māori culture:

Raymond Firth’s pre-Tikopia years, History and Anthropology, 2020; also J. H. R. Davis. “Raymond William

Firth 1901-2002.” Proceedings of the British Academy 124,2004, 71–88.

[7] Auckland, Victoria University College (Wellington), Canterbury (Christchurch), and Otago (Dunedin).

[8] M Freedman (ed.), Social Organization. Essays presented to Raymond Firth, vii-ix. London: Frank Cass & Co.

Ltd. 1967, viii.

[9] Paul Thompson, University of Essex, Department of Sociology: ’Interview with Raymond Firth’ in

’Pioneers of Social Research, 1996-2018’ 4th Edition, UK Data Service [distributor], 2019-04-08, SN:6226,

P a r a . 1 - 1 2 3 4 .

17 / 25

http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-6226-6, https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk//QualiBank/Document/?id=

q-f62c40b4-f352-4e24-a157-cb39f0b2f29c

[10] George W Stocking Jr, After Tylor. British Social Anthropology 1888-1951, University of Wisconsin Press,

1995, 340. See also Geoffrey Gray, A Cautious Silence. 2007 including appendices; ‘Dividing Oceania:

transnational anthropology, 1928-30’, in Regna Darnell and Frederic W Gleach (eds.), Histories of

Anthropology Annual, Volume 6, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010, 48-65.

[11] Radcliffe-Brown to HE Gregory (Bernice P Bishop Museum), 2 April, 1928. Elkin Papers (University of

Sydney) hereafter EP: 164/4/2/12. Richard Feinberg and Richard Scaglion, Introduction: The Polynesian

Outliers, in Richard Feinberg and Richard Scaglion, (eds.), Polynesian Outliers: The State of the Art,

Ethnology Monograph 21, University of Pittsburgh, 2012.

[12] Firth to Radcliffe-Brown, 21 September 1927. Archive of Sir Raymond Firth, British Archive of Political

and Economic Science, London School of Economics. FIRTH7/10/4. Radcliffe-Brown told HE Gregory of the

Bernice P Bishop Museum in Honolulu that ‘Firth being a New Zealander is already well qualified in Maori

and general Polynesian ethnology’. Radcliffe-Brown to HE Gregory, 2 April, 1928. EP: 164/4/2/12.

[13] This is not pertinent to this essay but the purchase of stores not only foodstuffs and such like but items

for exchange (especially cultural items) and purchase (food and cultural items) are also included.

[14] Hogbin to Radcliffe-Brown, 20 May 1928. EP: 159/4/1/49. Besides Law and Order (1934), Hogbin wrote a

n u m b e r o f s c h o l a r l y a r t i c l e s o n O n t o n g J a v a . F o r H o g b i n ’ s c a r e e r , s e e

http://www.berose.fr/?An-Accomplished-Fieldworker-A-Biography-of-H-Ian-Hogbin Firth wrote several

important ethnographic monographs on Tikopia. See, for example, We, the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of

Kinship in Primitive Polynesia (1936); Primitive Polynesian Economy (1939); The Work of the Gods in Tikopia

(1940). He made two subsequent visits, 1952 and 1966.

[15] Radcliffe-Brown to Robert Lowie, 3 July 1928, EP, 41/17.

[16] Wedgwood had been at LSE with Firth, Edward Evans-Pritchard, Hortense Powdermaker and Isaac

Schapera; Of this young cohort who found themselves in Sydney, only Reo Fortune and Raymond Firth

were born in Australasia, Hogbin came to Australia as a child. She was also an external and viva examiner

of Hogbin’s PhD thesis.

[17] Board of Maori Ethnological Research, The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 32, No. 4(128)

(December, 1923), 253-254. Conal McCarthy and Paul Tapsell, Te Poari Whakapapa: The Origins, Operation

And Tribal Networks of The Board Of Maori Ethnological Research 1923–1935. Journal of the Polynesian

Society, 128 (1), 2019, 92 (87–106).

[18] M. P. K. Sorrenson, ‘Polynesian Corpuscles and Pacific Anthropology: the home-made anthropology of

Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 91 (1), 7 (7-27).

[19] McCarthy and Tapsell 2019, op. cit., 88.

18 / 25

[20] Sorrenson, op. cit., 1992, 17. Information on many of the individuals referred to in this article may be

gleaned from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb

[21] Apirana Ngata (ed.) 1931. “Māori Land Development.” Appendices to the Journal of the House of

Representatives. Wellington: Government Printer, 1931, 1-21.

[22] Raymond W Firth. Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Māori. Wellington: R.E. Owen Government

Printer. 1929

[23] Ngata, op. cit., 1931, 8.

[24] Cf. I. C. Campbell, Staffing Native Administration in the Mandated Territory of Samoa. New Zealand

Journal of History, 34, 2 , 2000. 276-295. Cf . The University of Sydney training colonial officials in

anthropology.

[25] Felix Keesing, The Changing Maori, New Plymouth, Printed by Thomas Avery, 1928 [Memoirs of the

Board of Maori Ethnological Research Vol. 4].

[26] McCarthy and Tapsell, op. cit., 2019, 128 (1), 92 .

[27] Oliver Sutherland, Paikea. the life of I.L.G. Sutherland. Christchurch. Canterbury University Press.2013,

152.

[28] MPK Sorrenson ‘Buck, Peter Henry’, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the

E n c y c l o p e d i a o f N e w Z e a l a n d , u p d a t e d 3 0 - O c t - 2 0 1 2 U R L :

h t t p : / / w w w . T e A r a . g o v t . n z / e n / b i o g r a p h i e s / 3 b 5 4 / b u c k - p e t e r - h e n r y

[29] See Gray and Munro, op. cit., 2011.

[30] Radcliffe-Brown to Malinowski, 2 January 1929. NLA, MS 482, 850 (c).

[31] Memo, Prime Minister’s Department, 7 April 1932, NAA: A518, P806/1/1, Part I; Mitchell (Premier of

Western Australia) to Robert Wallace (Vice-Chancellor, University of Sydney), 13 June 1931, SROWA: ACC

653, 120; Memorandum, Prime Minister’s Department. 30 November 1932, NAA: A518, P806/1/1, Part II.

[32] Stanner to Firth, 8 August 1956, FIRTH8/5/8.

[33] Radcliffe-Brown to Malinowski, 2 January 1929; Radcliffe-Brown to HG Chapman (hon. Treasurer,

ANRC), 24 December 1931, ANRC Papers, NLA, MS 482, file 850 (c).

[34] Wedgwood to Malinowski, 25 December 1931 (provided from the Malinowski Papers at the Yale

University Library by Michael Young). Wedgwood and Firth shared the same birth-date.

[35] McLaren to Radcliffe-Brown, 24 February 1931, EP: 165/4/2/46; Raymond Firth, Memorandum on the

Study of Anthropology in Australia and the Western Pacific, c.1932, ANRC Papers, NLA, MS 482, file 849; also

19 / 25

EP: 163/4/1/105 (hereafter Memorandum). Firth, Report on the Committee on Anthropological Research,

July 1931 – July 1932, EP: 161/4/1/63; Radcliffe-Brown to secretary Prime Minister’s Department, 26 February

1931, EP, 163/4/1/46.

[36] It was unusual for the Commonwealth government to subsidise a state university chair.

[37] Wedgwood to Malinowski, 29 October 1932. Malinowski Papers (MP), Yale University Library, courtesy

of Michael Young. Although raised in New Zealand, Firth saw himself as going ‘home’ to England. Firth on

Firth: Reflections of an Anthropologist. Videorecording, lnstitut fur den Wissenschaftichen Film,

Gottingen, Germany. 1992. When interviewed in 1974 he declared that he and Rosemary were European in

outlook and this mitigated against his remaining at ANU as director of Research School of Pacific Studies.

Raymond Firth interviewed by Margaret Murphy. http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-215006398

[38] Malinowski to Firth, 25 May 1932. MP.

[39] Wedgwood to Malinowski, 25 December 1931. MP.

[40] Malinowski to Firth, 25 May 1932; Firth to Malinowski, 1 June 1932. MP.

[41] Wedgwood was 31, Hogbin 28. Elkin had trained under diffusionists and Egyptologists Grafton Elliot

Smith and WJ Perry.

[42] Firth to Malinowski, 1 June 1932. MP.

[43] Tigger Wise, The Self-made Anthropologist: A life of AP Elkin, Allen and Unwin, 1985, 73-111.

[44] Radcliffe-Brown to Elkin, 2 August 1932; Elkin to Firth, 11 September 1932; Firth to Elkin, 18 September

1932, EP: 158/4/1/41; Wedgwood to Malinowski, 29 October 1932. MP.

[45] See Gray, A Cautious Silence, 2007, 70-76.

[46] Malinowski to Masson, 3 May 1933, ANRC Papers, NLA, MS 482, file 853 (c).

[47] Seligman to Kirchhoff, 19 April 1932. Malinowski Papers, LSE File7/3.

[48] David Parkin. An Interview with Raymond Firth, Current Anthropology, 29 (2), 1988, 328. The Claremont

Café (Kings Cross) was run by ‘German émigré Walter Magnus; he introduced an exotic, international

flavour to the dining experience’. Dunn, Mark, Kings Cross, Dictionary of Sydney, 2011,

http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/kings_cross, viewed 30 Jan 2021.

[49] Stocking Jr, After Tylor. 1995, 347.

[50] Piddington to CWM Hart, 31 March 1955. Copy in authors’ possession, courtesy of Kenneth Piddington.

[51] Sarah Chinnery, Portrait of Sydney University anthropologist Professor Raymond Firth, Anthropology,

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Sydney, 1932 [picture], National Library of Australia, PIC/11131/65 LOC Album 1116/2.

[52] Margaret Mead to Ruth Benedict, letter dated 26 October 1931. MMP S3, LOC. Cited in Caroline Thomas,

The Sorcerers’ Apprentice. A Life of Reo Franklin Fortune, Anthropologist, 2015, 104. Unpublished.

[53] It was revealed in 1956 that he had not completed his doctorate.

[54] Edited by Ralph Piddington ; with an analysis of recent studies in Polynesian history by the Editor.

Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] University Press, 1939. See also Gray Geoffrey, 2018. “A Desire for Social

Justice : Life and Work of Ralph O’Reilly Piddington” in Bérose, Encyclopédie en ligne sur l’histoire de

l’anthropologie et des savoirs ethnographiques, Paris, Lahic-iiac, UMR 8177.; also Geoffrey Gray,

‘“Piddington’s indiscretion”: Ralph Piddington, the Australian National Research Council and Academic

freedom’. Oceania, vol. 64 (3), March, 1994. 217-245.

[55] Gray 2007, op. cit., passim for their careers trajectories. .

[56] For example: Hogbin was awarded his MA from Sydney in 1929 and his PhD from LSE in 1931. ‘Dr

Hogbin is a graduate of Sydney University and after doing considerable field work in Ongtong Java, came

to the School to work up his results under the direction of Professor Malinowski.’ Secretary to The

Principal, University of London, 10 March 1932. Student Record , Herbert Ian Hogbin, LSE Archives. See also

field reports published in the journal Oceania.

[57] See Geoffrey Gray, ’Being honest to my science’: Reo Fortune and J.H.P. Murray, 1927-30. The Australian

Journal of Anthropology, vol 10 (1),1999, 61.

[58] Geoffrey Gray, ‘Australian Anthropologists and WWII’, Anthropology Today, vol 21 (3), June 2005, 18-21.

[59] David Mills, Difficult Folk. A Political History of Social Anthropology, Berghahn, 2008; Davis, op. cit., 2005.

[60] SG Foster and Margaret M Varghese, The Making of the Australian National University 1946-1996, Allen &

Unwin 1996, 3-82.

[61] For a detailed account of the interwar students (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) at LSE see

Goody, The Expansive Moment, 1995, 26-28 and passim. Most of the major figures, with few exceptions, in

the post-war institutionalisation of the discipline across the British Empire trained at the LSE, under

Seligman and Malinowski, including Firth, Audrey Richards, Edmund Leach, Isaac Schapera, Meyer Fortes,

Siegfried Nadel, Ian Hogbin, Monica Hunter (later Wilson), Godfrey Wilson and Max Gluckman.

[62] Adam Kuper, Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School, London: Routledge, 1983, 125.

[63] He is not regarded as major theorist, although at the time most professors had some theory which

they propounded, or as Kuper notes, it was, a time ‘when every professor had to have a theory’. Adam

Kuper, Meyer Fortes: the person, the role, the theory. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34 (2). 2016, 131

(127-139). Cf. Goody, The Expansive Moment, 1995, 24-25. The way in which Forde and Evans-Pritchard

exercised their authority in the United Kingdom is outside the interest of the authors’ of this paper.

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[64] See Goody, op. cit, 1995, 81-83. Audrey Richards and Phyllis Kaberry never had a chair; Lucy Mair had

to wait until 1963.

[65] Stocking, op. cit., 1995, 430.

[66] Despite recognising difference, Australians and New Zealanders have a symbiotic relationship with

each other, despite fierce sporting rivalry, so that at times they are interchangeable.

[67] Tamson Pietsch. Empire of Scholars. Manchester University Press. 2013.

[68] Cyril Belshaw. Bumps on a Long Road, volume 1. Webzines of Vancouver, British Columbia. (Print on

demand) 2009, 61.

[69] Belshaw to Gray, e-mail, 12 January 2010. Firth told a story of accidently being in the right place at the

opportune moment, first when Malinowski was ill and secondly when he was offered the LSE chair.

[70] See Geoffrey Gray, The “ANRC has Withdrawn its Offer”: Paul Kirchhoff, Academic Freedom and the

Australian Academic Establishment, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol 52(3), 2006, 367-369

(362-377). Initially he supported Stanner; he moved his support to Phyllis Kaberry; when she declined his

offers Elkin turned his attention to Ronald Berndt, who with his wife Catherine became the much sought-

after husband and wife team. Geoffrey Gray, ‘“You are … my anthropological children”: AP Elkin, Ronald

Berndt and Catherine Berndt, 1940-1956’, Aboriginal History, vol. 29, 2005, 77-106.

[ 7 1 ] M a u r i c e B l o c h . S i r R a y m o n d F i r t h . T h e G u a r d i a n . O b i t u a r i e s S e c t i o n . 2 0 0 2 .

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/feb/26/guardianobituaries.obituaries.

[72] There is an exception that we are aware of: Firth wrote to one of us that he had taken a personal

interest in Ralph Piddington’s career and had helped him finding suitable employment (Firth to Gray

3 February 1993). This included Aberdeen before the war and Edinburgh after the war.

[73] The foundation of the ANU is discussed in, Foster & Varghese, op. cit., 3-82; Raymond Firth, The

Founding of the Research School of Pacific Studies. Journal of Pacific History 31 (1), 1996, 3-5.

[74] See Pietsch, op. cit., , 2013.

[75] Foster and Varghese op. cit., 24-27, 41, 44-50, 126-29, 137-39.

[76] Firth had recommended Stanner for the position at Makerere.

[77] Firth to Copland. 25 January 1949. School of Pacific Studies — Notes on Discussion between the Vice-

Chancellor and Professor Firth on Monday 23rd May 1949, FIRTH7/5/8.

[78] The only other instances of senior university appointments and long-lasting careers in anthropology

and sister disciplines in Britain around that time were Eileen Power and Lucy Mair at LSE and Margery

Perham at Oxford. Power was professor of economic history at LSE; Perham was an Africanist based at

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Balliol College, Oxford; Mair was, successively, reader in colonial administration and reader (later

professor) in applied anthropology at LSE.

[79] Firth to Copland. 25 January 1949. School of Pacific Studies — Notes on Discussion between the Vice-

Chancellor and Professor Firth on Monday 23rd May 1949, FIRTH7/5/8.

[80] See David Mills, ‘How Not to be a “Government House Pet”: Audrey Richards and the East African

Institute for Social Research’, in Mwenda Ntarangwi, David Mills and Mustafa Babiker (eds), African

Anthropologies: History, critique and practice. London: Zed Books, 2006, 76–98.; cf. Melinda Hinkson, ‘Stanner

and Makerere: On the “insuperable” challenges of practical anthropology in post-war East Africa’, in

Melinda Hinkson and Jeremy Beckett (eds.), An Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal

Australia. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2008, 44–57.

[81] Hancock to Firth, 3 March 1949, FIRTH7/7/11. See also Geoffrey Gray, 2018. “A figure of importance. Life

and Work of Siegfried Frederick Nadel” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology,

Paris, 2018.

[82] Firth to Hancock, 9 March 1949, FIRTH7/7/11.

[83] Hancock to Copland, 3 May 1949; Hancock to Copland, 24 May 1949. (carbon copy), FIRTH7/7/11.

[84] Firth to Hancock, 9 March 1949, FIRTH7/7/11. We have to comment that overall Nadel was not easy

to’get on with’ see Gray, op. cit. 2018.

[85] Extract from Firth, 6 July 1949. ANUA19/19.

[86] £A2000 per annum, ‘but if a Professor is stationed in the U.K. pending establishment of the University

at Canberra, £2000 sterling’ Superannuation, FSSU or analogous. Tenure, till 65. Study leave: one year

away in four on full pay, ‘with a substantial contribution to overseas travel – quite apart from field

research travel. This allows frequent visits to Europe.

He added that the university would provide reasonable travel and removal expenses. Firth to Nadel,

25 July 1949; Firth to Nadel, 12 November 1948; Firth to Nadel 28 January 1948, FIRTH7/7/26.

[87] Firth to Nadel, 8 June 1949, FIRTH7/7/26. Firth had funded Hogbin, as an ANU research fellow, to

conduct a survey of the state of anthropology in Melanesia preparatory to him taking up the readership.

[88] Firth enabled a doctoral placement for Peter Lawrence (who had a tortured relationship with Reo

Fortune, his Cambridge supervisor), and in conjunction with Nadel, research fellowships for K.E. Read and

Cyril Belshaw (1950), both had completed their doctorates under Firth. Derek Freeman, also an LSE

graduate, was appointed research fellow in the same year.

[89] Raymond Firth Interview with Margaret Murphy 1974. National Library of Australia.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-215006398

[90] Raymond Firth, ‘Obituary: Siegfried Frederick Nadel’, American Anthropologist, 59 (1), 1957, 122

23 / 25

(117-124).

[91] Stanner to Firth, 6 April 1946, FIRTH7/7/31.

[92] L. R. Hiatt, Kinship and Conflict. A Study of an Aboriginal Community in Northern Arnhem Land. Canberra:

ANU Press. 1965, 17. J.A. Barnes was Hiatt’s doctoral supervisor at the ANU.

[93] Paul Henley, John Barnes – An Appreciation. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 29,

Complimentary special issue: in memory of John Barnes (2011), 14 (13-15). See also Lyn Schumaker,

Africanising Anthropology. Fieldwork, networks, and the making of cultural knowledge in Central Africa. Duke

University Press, 2001.

[94] Judith Wilson and Michael Young, 1996. ‘Anthropology at the Research School of Pacific and Asian

Studies: A Partial History’, Canberra Anthropology, 19 (2), 62-91.

[95] In 1951 Kenelm Burridge and Peter Worsley started their doctoral studies. Marie Reay, Richard

Salisbury, Robert Glasse, Ralph Bulmer and Jean Martin followed soon after. Jeremy Beckett arrived at the

end of 1955. See Terence Hays (ed.), Ethnographic Presents. University of California Press, 1993.

[96] The following is drawn from the file, ‘Chair of Anthropology and Maori language’, University of

Auckland Archives (UAA). The University of New Zealand had four constituent colleges – Auckland,

Wellington, Christchurch and Otago (Dunedin).

[97] Elkin was the only non-New Zealander, but he had family connections into New Zealand. His father,

from whom he was estranged, was born in New Zealand, and he had spent part of his childhood in

Auckland. His parents separated and his mother returned to Australia. She died soon after and he was

brought up by his German-speaking grandparents.

[98] Cf. Raymond Firth, The Future of Social Anthropology, Man, vol 44 (Jan-Feb, 1944), 19-22.

[99] For a full account of the various suggestions and recommendations see Gray and Munro, Establishing

anthropology and Maori language (studies), 2011, 57-61.

[100] Firth to W.E.H. Stanner, 7 December, 1948. FIRTH7/7/31.

[101] Firth ‘To whom it may concern’, 8 February, 1949. FIRTH 8/1/96.

[102] Dr Taylor, a dentist by training and the Health Department’s principal dental officer, had particular

interests in anatomy and zoology. In 1937 on the grounds of dental arrangements he declared the

‘Piltdown man’ a hoax. Percival Hadfield had previously authored two scholarly books, on totemism

(1938), with Australia being a core region, and on divine kingship in Africa (1949), before enrolling post-

WWII for a PhD in biblical history and literature at the University of Sheffield. The resulting thesis

‘Matthew’s Gospel and the apocalyptic writers’ was finalized in 1952. Hadfield finished his career in the

church as vicar of Youlgraeve in Derbyshire. He died in 1970. One reviewer dismissed his scholarly work, as

‘a thing of shreds and patches, a rehash of older views … and a collection of facts not too skillfully

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arranged, gathered by earlier workers in the field’. He authored: The savage and his totem, London :

Allenson & Co., Ltd., [1938]; Traits of Divine Kingship in Africa. By P. Hadfield, M.A., B.D. London: Watts &

Co. 1949.

[103] Firth to Stanner, 11 March 1955, FIRTH7/7/31.

[104] London Committee 1949

[105] Elkin to William Hollis Cocker (President of the Auckland University College), 23 April 1949,

attachment in Minutes of Council, Auckland University College, 9 June 1949, UAA. The initiating

correspondence is not located so the reason for seeking Elkin’s advice is unknown.

[106] Gray and Munro, op. cit., 2011, 67-70.

[107] Gray, op.cit., 2007, passim.

[108] Geoffrey Gary, ‘“Piddington’s indiscretion”: Ralph Piddington, the Australian National Research

Council and Academic freedom’. Oceania, vol. 64 (3), March, 1994. 217-245.

[109] Firth to W.E.H. Stanner, 12 August 1949, FIRTH7/7/31.

[110] Elkin to Stanner, 8 December 1944. EP: 197/4/2/573.

[111] Stanner to Elkin, 25 October 1948. EP: 197/4/2/573. See Geoffrey Gray, ‘Stanner’s war’ in Geoffrey Gray,

Doug Munro and Christine Winter (eds.), Scholars at War, ANU Press, 2012.

[112] Firth would comment later: ‘Essentially he has seemed unwilling to face responsibility. His refusal of

the Directorship of the East African Institute of Social Research was symptomatic of his tendency to dwell

upon the difficulties inherent in the situation rather than the possibilities of what can be made out of it.

His desire for a really worthwhile achievement sometimes makes him over-elaborate his argument.…

How far complete responsibility for a Research Department would settle and strengthen him as an

administrator I do not know’. Board of Graduate Studies(ANU) Minutes, 27 August 1957, ANUA 193.

Referees’ reports, ‘Electoral Committee [Meeting] for the Chair of Anthropology’, 20 August 1957,

Davidson Papers, ANUA 57/30.

[113] Piddington to Firth, 13 November 1950, FIRTH8/1/96; Firth to Geddes, 14 November 1950, FIRTH8/1/36.

[114] His PhD was published in 1967 as The changing role of the leader in Maori society.

[115] For his continued association with ANU see Spate to Firth 23 December 1968. FIRTH8/2/17; Firth to

Spate 23 January 1969. FIRTH8/2/7; Firth to Spate 16 April 1969. FIRTH8/2/7; Spate to Firth, 29 May 1972

FIRTH7/6/18. Firth’s longer legacy in the Antipodes would be a subject to consider separately and is not our

focus here, although there is no doubt his appointments led to long-lasting change and a more robust

Antipodean anthropology than before the war.

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[116] Belshaw to Gray, e-mail, 12 January 2010.