A true Maltese passes away

I believe that Jeremy Boissevain will remain the biggest influence in my life.  

He was not only a liberal and intellectual in his own right but a Maltese in the true sense of the word. He was never condescending and could express very strong views but was never arrogant about them.

He opened up a new world for me that made me love my country, the one that sometimes I just want to hate. It may sound silly but I considered Jeremy to be my mentor in so many ways.

He was perhaps Malta’s most caring anthropologist, in the sense that not only did he study Maltese society, he also had a high esteem for Malta and the Maltese. 

He was my real mentor.  

When I was leaving the green groups to set up the political party Alternattiva Demokratika, he encouraged me to take the bold step. When I left teaching and started journalism, he told me to go on.

I loved Jeremy. My friendship with the Boissevains started off in St Lucy Street, Naxxar. I first met the inseparable couple at a party at the home of a British expat. We became friends and sooner rather than later we were treated to Inga’s slow cooking, Jeremy’s mind-blowing Maltese home made red wine, Maltese olives and an evening with interesting debates and discussions.

I would take long walks with Jeremy in the countryside and we even travelled together and met up in France and the Netherlands.

With Jeremy I also learned to sail, and spent countless hours learning to sail on the same kind of small sailing boat he had owned in the early seventies – the robust and Maltese-built Calypso.

There were also some very memorable moments with Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff, two old friends of Jeremy, when the four of us would go over anecdotes about Maltese politics and politicians.

I met Jeremy when I was 23, and just married, and he embraced my anger and anarchism with a lot of laughter but always encouraged me to continue, but also to widen my horizons.

I had only one bone to pick, his defence of the Maltese fireworks culture. To him fireworks were essentially an exclusive and special aspect of Maltese culture.

Boissevain could read Malta and the Maltese through an objective eyepiece. He was saddened at the way Malta had been changed and barbarically destroyed and he was very critical of the way planning, or the lack of it, had butchered the Maltese landscape.

He returned year after year to meet up with neighbours with whom he would practise his Maltese and discuss everything. Never high brow. He was loved in Kirkop and Naxxar alike. And though I would have loved him to like Naxxar more, he really adored Kirkop more than anywhere else.

He was known as ‘Jerry’ to the locals and he and Inga were loved by all.

He loved MaltaToday’s irreverence and he loved the environmental crusades it captained.

Jeremy would always joke about his triple nationality, Dutch, American and British. Yet I think that he was still closest to being Dutch in his outlook.  

He was a raconteur and his life experiences would take up much of the nights as we drank good wine and fine food. But he would also listen and ask many questions as any good anthropologist would.

As an anthropologist his main research in Malta brought to the fore the festa-partiti theory.

He built his anthropological work mainly through research on the southern Mediterranean, exploring the effects of tourism on society and the environment, patronage and politics. 

But he was widely travelled, having gone all over the world, including Japan and the Philippines.

Inga and Jeremy were particularly attracted to the Mediterranean, and apart from Malta they had lived for some time in Palma di Montechiaro, a town and comune in the province of Agrigento.

A week ago, Inga emailed me and informed me in her dry humour: “We missed Malta in November – my legs are too long, so things go wrong with them now and then, usually at holiday time... Since we have to go to Sicily in November for the opera and some mafioso company in Palma di Montechiaro, we won’t make it to Malta until early next year.”

The night before he died, he was with a party of friends. Inga told me on the phone: “Nicest thing is we went to gorgeous party last night with all the people we like most.”

Boissevain came to Malta as an anthropologist in September 1961, and wrote his doctoral thesis – later published as 'Saints and Fireworks – Religion and Politics in Rural Malta' – in the summer of 1962.   

Before that he had visited Malta as a representative of the food agency CARE.  

He was besotted with Dom Mintoff and his fiery politics, and was more than taken aback by the Church’s politics of ‘interdett’ of the early sixties. But later on he turned his back on Mintoff and was openly critical of his bullish style and politics. 

And he would also publish some short studies about his oratorical style.

Nine years ago MaltaToday invited him for a talk at Palazzo Capua and he humbly admitted that his prediction about Maltese festi disappearing from the scene altogether was wrong. In a collection of essays, ‘Factions, Friends and Feasts: Anthropological Perspectives on the Mediterranean’, Boissevain publicly acknowledges that his 1965 prediction about Maltese festi was wrong-headed. 

His note to fellow anthropologists was to ‘beware predictions... especially when they appear to align in a perfectly logical rhythm’. 

Mark-Anthony Falzon, head of the department of sociology at the University of Malta, said on Facebook that Boissevain’s departure “leaves a great void, to put it mildly. I’ll be writing a longer appreciation once I get over the shock.” 

David Zammit, a lecturer at the Faculty of Laws who specialises in legal anthropology, said Boissevain will be sorely and deeply missed. “Like Margaret Mead, he was more than just an isolated cynical observer of Maltese social life. His loves for fieldwork and for people were inseparable. 

“He effortlessly taught generations of students that research can be fun, does not need to rely on mystifying vocabulary and can produce valuable practical insights. He occupied an incredibly significant role in facilitating the development of an anthropology of Euro-Atlantic societies and in the transition from functionalism to post-structuralist anthropology. Malta has lost its leading ethnographer." 

His argument about the decline of feasts was articulated in ‘Saints and Fireworks’ (1965), he observed how substantial migration from Malta in the 1950s drained a lot of the manpower necessary for the organisation of feasts, while an improved transport system enabled people to socialise outside their immediate village core – which would instantly drain some of the appeal of the local festa.

Jeremy maintained that the increasing popularity of football was drawing young people away from the band club as a social contact point, while public attention was increasingly being diverted away from entrenched religious traditions, and instead to the machinations of local politicians.  

“By the 1970s, however, I became aware that my prophecy had failed,” Boissevain wrote. “Village festi were noisier, more crowded and contested with greater vigour than I had ever seen.” 

When the Boissevains left Malta and their beautiful home in St Lucy Street in Naxxar, I thought that I would be missing a friendship forever, but it turned out that we kept contact.  

He was sad that many old academic friends had sort of parted and not kept contact. The Boissevains would return to Naxxar year after year and rent a run down old house in St Lucy Street.  

And there we would revive the interminable debate about Malta. I always told my friends that I could connect with him because his observations were fresh.  At 87 he was a lively left-winger and liberal.

The last time we met at our home in Naxxar he was incisive, lucid, funny and sharp.  We ate well and drank well. Inga as usual had the small presents for the children.

We will miss him. Inga and his four daughters and grandchildren will, too.