"Development Anthropology is a Contact Sport" An Oral History Interview with Michael M. Cernea by Judith Freidenberg

Human Organization, Winter 2007 by Freidenberg, Judith

The editors and editorial board of Human Organization are pleased to introduce readers to the following oral history interview with Michael M. Cernea, a development social scientist who has militated throughout his academic career and applied work for "putting people first," in the forefront of development projects and policies. Working for a long time for the promotion of anthropological and sociological knowledge, either in the activities of the World Bank or in the policies and programs of governments of both developed and developing countries. Dr. Cernea cleared pathways for applied social science that are sure to benefit people in development settings for many years to come.

Undoubtedly many readers already know Dr. Cernea's work well, especially those of us who teach the anthropology of development or work in applied settings and organizations, but this interview embeds his broad body of work into a personal, human, and at times tragic context that opens with brushes with death, Nazi brutality, and exile. It also provides valuable insights for carrying out the work of development anthropologists within large-scale organizations and governments.

This interview with Dr. Cernea was conducted by Dr. Judith Freidenberg, of the University of Maryland, on June 30, 2003, for the Society for Applied Anthropology Oral History Project, headquartered at the University of Kentucky Libraries. This Project aims to create, through the vehicle of oral histories, a record of the life, activities and experiences of number of selected scholars-anthropologists who devoted a great part of their scientific work to research, to applied work in different settings, to inducing development, including to hands-on work on crafting public social policies and actual development programs.

The present transcript of the interview was reviewed by both participants for editorial purposes. Michael M. Cernea expanded some of his oral responses, for historical accuracy or to add relevant elements and facts not provided in the initial oral interaction. Some of the comments made, or questions asked, by Judith Freidenberg were also edited for fluency purposes, to help frame the various parts of the dialogue better. The overall content and structure of the interview were preserved. The subtitles were added during Human Organization s preparation and editing of the text for print.

FREIDENBERG: Hello, Dr. Cernea. Michael, as you know I'm a member of the Oral History Project Committee, created by the Society for Applied Anthropology. As a member of that Committee, I suggested your inclusion in the interview program, given your outstanding career as an applied anthropologist and sociologist specialized in development. Among other areas, I'm intrigued in particular by your interest in the cultural and social impacts of forced population displacements and involuntary resettlement processes. My first question: please comment on when, where, and how you became interested in the field of anthropology and why you became an applied anthropologist.

CERNEA: Thank you, Judith. The short answer to your questions-the roots of my interest in what social science can do for social change-is simple, almost mundane: history and biography. My intellectual attraction to this domain grew as I advanced into it, but what initially led me to it were the circumstances of my life. For better or worse, biographical events nourished that interest from early on. Initially, bad things, hard times, awakened my interest in social issues, and gave me a purpose, a yearning for change.

FREIDENBERG: Could you give me some details about your life circumstances at that time, about what you refer to as "mundane biography and history?"

Biography, History, and the "Yearning for Change"

CERNEA: As you know, I was born in Romania and came to adolescence during World War II. From my early years, I felt the full terrible weight of a political regime which wasn't simply un-democratic: it was outright fascist, a military and racist dictatorship, and anti-Semitic to its core. I myself was thrown out of school when I was eight years old and had barely started the elementary grades, simply for being Jewish. The regime issued a law forbidding the enrollment of Jewish children even in the primary grades of the public school system of the state.

Soon thereafter, my father, an engineer in a textile factory, was fired from his job for the same capital sin: being Jewish. Our family lost its livelihood. We had a very hard life.

When the war started, I was living in Jassy-Iasi, in its original spelling-a city very close to the border between Romania and the former Soviet Union, which had a very large Jewish population. On the fateful day of June 29,1941, exactly one week to the day when Germany and Romania launched war on Russia, a massive pogrom, meticulously organized and unprecedented in size and atrocity in Romania, was carried out against the large Jewish community of Jassy.

During a few days, some 13,000 innocent people were murdered in that pogrom, out of a Jewish population of 4045,000. Mostly men, but also women, teenage boys, and children. Imagine the bloodletting. Imagine the devastation, the tragedy, the terror, the sufferings. The orphans left behind. And the frightful aftermath. I was almost ten at the time. That day, we were all scooped out from our homes, marched in endless columns of people, hands up, and brought to the city's central police station. Thousands and thousands of Jewish men and teenage boys were crowded and squeezed into the police station's large courtyard. My father was pulled into the courtyard. I was on the verge of going in with him, but he pushed me back, to my mother. My mother, I, my kid brother and old grandmother headed back home. On the way, my mother was beaten. Close to our home we were stopped by an armed gang, lined up with our faces to the wall, and were about to be shot on the street. There were bodies strewn on the street from prior killings. By miracle, they changed their mind and didn't shoot us. As they turned the guns away, we ran for our lives, and finally we made it home again. It was a very close call. We barely escaped alive.