Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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a common tariff barrier. The system was soon

eating most of the EU budget, creating huge

stocks and benefiting mostly the larger farm

businesses but also providing a fragile lifeline

to the smaller family units. These policies were

successful on a purely quantitative level. Un-

dercapitalized and antiquated in the 1940s,

French agriculture changed into a highly pro-

ductive and technically up-to-date industry

which, in the early 1990s, provided more than

a quarter of EU production—this proportion

rises to more than a third for wine, not sur-

prisingly. France has also become the world’s

second agricultural exporter, behind the USA.

However, this technical success has its

darker side. Ultimately, the original aims of

the postwar modernization programme have

not been achieved—the medium-sized family

farm is disappearing and the environmental,

social and cultural costs of ensuring food se-

curity are considerable. In environmental

terms, requirements of modern, mechanized

agriculture, compounded with subsidized

drainage, hedge-cutting and soil ‘improve-

ment’, have caused a complete change of land-

scape and a general deterioration of biologi-

cal diversity in many regions. The concepts of

terroir or pays (a subregional geographical

areas forming an ecological, historical, cul-

tural and agricultural unit) have lost their rel-

evance, despite a recent fashionable comeback.

At a social level, the consequences of mod-

ernization policies have been severe. The

number of farms and the size of the workforce

are still falling. The population active in agri-

culture was reduced from 3.9 to 2.1 million

people between 1962 and 1975, and contin-

ued to fall thereafter to only 1.2 million in

1993. It can be expected to fall further, since

more than half of French farmers were aged

50 or more in the early 1990s, and the aver-

age farm surface area is only 28 hectares

(against 65 hectares in Great Britain). There-

fore, rural exodus still affects more remote

regions, with local services slowly disappear-

ing and whole areas becoming deserted.

These trends have accelerated further with

changes in the CAP since the early 1980s. De-

spite numerous protests, from specialized fruit

growers to cattle owners (particularly affected

in 1996 by bovine spongiform encephalopa-

thy, or ‘Mad Cow Disease’), the highly protec-

tive system is being dismantled. The resistance

of farmers has a long history—for instance the

Révolte des Vignerons (Winemakers’ Revolt)

in the south of France in 1907, quelled by the

army, is still in farmers’ memories, and their

descendants violently clashed with police forces

again in 1975–6 against the EC market regu-

lations. Protests against imports of Spanish

fruit or British lamb have been part of life for

decades, as smaller farmers, often heavily in

debt, find themselves unable to survive—their

feeling of betrayal towards agricultural poli-

cy’s failure to maintain the family farm model

of the 1950s explains brutal flare-ups which

are sometimes difficult to understand from

abroad.

FRANÇOIS NECTOUX

See also: dirigisme; economy; European eco-

nomic integration; European Union

Further reading

Flockton, C. and Kofman, E. (1989) France,

London: Paul Chapman (this includes a

succinct description of the modernization

process of agriculture).

Mendras, H. (1970) La Fin des paysans, Paris:

Armand Colin (this remains one of the best

accounts of the sociological consequences

of modernization).

Weber, E. (1979) Peasants into Frenchmen,

London: Chatto & Windus (this analysis

of the ways in which rural agricultural so-

cieties became part of France in the nine-

teenth century has become a classic work).

AIDS

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syn-

drome) is known as Sida (Syndrome

Immunodéficitaire Acquis) in French, and is

the terminal outcome of infection with the

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)—Vi-

rus Immunodéficitaire Humain (VIH).

AIDS

Since the discovery of the HIV virus by Pro-

fessor Luc Montaigner in 1983, the word

AIDS (Sida) has been indelibly imposed on to

human consciousness, and interpersonal con-

tact and conduct irrevocably affected. Al-

though originally believed to target specific

‘risk groups’ such as intravenous drug users,

haemophiliacs and homosexuals, AIDS is now

known to be a danger to all and a particular

problem when compounded by poverty, be it

in the Old, New or Third World.

By the end of this century, the World Health

Organization (WHO) estimates that there will

be between 20 and 40 million victims of HIV

infection worldwide, with some 90 per cent of

the cases in the Third World. Of all European

countries, France is the most affected by AIDS—

1995 figures give total reported cases of HIV

infection as 36,982, with some 60.8 per cent of

these having died; the same estimates give four

new cases of infection in Paris per day.

French government reaction and campaigns

could arguably be described as slow, perhaps

due to the traditional Republican respect of

the individual coupled with a reluctance to

admit to the existence of smaller groups within

the République unie et indivisible (the united

and indivisible Republic). It was not until 1988,

for example, that the government established

the Agence Nationale de Recherches sur le Sida

(ANRS) to co-ordinate research into the syn-

drome. Its activities include the launch of the

1991 Analyse des Comportements Sexuels en

France, a telephone enquiry involving some

20,000 people aged between 18 and 69 fol-

lowed up by a longer questionnaire completed

by the 25 per cent or so reporting sexual con-

duct judged to put them at risk from the virus.

Before this, in 1988, the first ever advertising

campaigns for condoms were produced in

France. Previous pro-natalist legislation had

banned all such material.

It was left instead to interested groups in

the voluntary sector to become involved ear-

lier. 1983, for example, saw the creation of

Vaincre Le Sida (VLS), the first anti-AIDS

group, followed by Aides, founded in 1984

by Foucault’s partner Daniel Defert.

In 1986, AIDS in France became a notifi-

able disease, and 1987 saw the first sales of

AZT, a drug which helps to fight some effects

of HIV infection. Despite a later Anglo-French

Concorde trial indicating potential mitigating

effects of AZT in its treatment of symptoms,

the drug continues to be used, more often as

part of a ‘cocktail’ intended to prevent the HIV

virus reproducing itself.

Interestingly, the whole question of AIDS

as it appears in France has not been polarized

by the press as it has been by British journal-

ists, who have created ‘innocent’ (haemophili-

acs, children…) and ‘guilty’ (homosexuals,

drug users…) victims; it has not tended to be

used as an excuse to ‘gay-bash’ or to pick on

minorities owing to France’s attitudes towards

the public and private life of the individual.

Perhaps the most notorious situation relat-

ing to AIDS in France is that of the affaire du

sang contaminé, which arose in 1985 when it

was revealed that the delay in the launch of

American testing kits in France until such a

time as French ones could be commercialized

had resulted in the contamination of blood

transfusion stocks and in the subsequent in-

fection of haemophiliacs. One year later, in

1986, the French social security system agreed

to take on 100 per cent of medical costs in-

curred by those suffering from AIDS. Those

judged responsible for the affaire—ministers,

doctors and civil servants—were severely criti-

cized. The principal protagonists, including Dr

Michel Garetta (former Director of the national

Blood Transfusion Service), were sentenced to

prison (sentences were confirmed in July 1993).

Coincidentally, two more HIV antibody tests

were withdrawn in the same year.

More general public awareness was in-

creased on the evening of 7 March 1994. An

event unique in French history saw all televi-

sion channels (and some in Belgium and Lux-

embourg) transmitting Sidaction, a series of

programmes about AIDS and those affected

by it. This received widespread press

coverage and arguably contributed to greater

knowledge of the syndrome. The experiment

was repeated on 30 November 1995—the eve

of World AIDS Day (1 December). The

success of the March 1996 Sidaction was

AIDS

almost negated by the difference of approach

favoured by members of radical proponents

of gay activism, ACT-UP.

AIDS has also led to the establishment of

groups aimed at preventing the spread of the

disease. The Syndicat National des Entreprises

Gaies (SNEG) was founded in 1990 and acts

as a means of making information on preven-

tion available to its membership of some 600

who, as the organization’s name suggests, are

gay-and lesbian-run companies. Their activi-

ties are not exclusively directed at this base,

however—SNEG worked closely with the Min-

istry of Health in the elaboration of the sum-

mer 1995 AIDS awareness poster campaign.

The presence of AIDS worldwide has had

an indelible effect on human behaviour and

conduct. In its position as the AIDS capital of

Europe, France has not always acted with sen-

sitivity or alacrity, leaving activists and those

most directly affected to act as the govern-

ment’s conscience. While at the forefront of

research into the discovery of AIDS, France

still has further to go in dealing with the re-

percussions.

STEVE WHARTON

Further reading

ACT-UP Paris (1994) Le Sida: combien de di-

visions?, Paris: Éditions Dagorno (a good

overview of the motivations and activities

of ACT-UP, written by those most directly

involved).

INSEE (1993) ‘Le Sida en France 1982–1992’,

in Données sociales 1993 [Social Statistics

1993], Paris: Hachette (a dispassionate,

‘scientific’ discussion of the spread of AIDS

in France and of various associated fac-

tors).

Martet, C. (1993) Les combattants du Sida

Paris: Flammarion (the history of ACT-UP

in France from one of its founder mem-

bers).

Paillard, B. (1994) L’Épidémie—carnets d’un

sociologue, Paris: Stock (a sociologist recounts

his experiences from direct interviews with

AIDS sufferers and their families).

Wharton, S. (1996) ‘The Pink Economy in

France’, in Cross, M. (ed.) (1996) Voices of

France, London: Cassell (an overview of

the activities of SNEG).

Aimée, Anouk

b. 1932, Paris

Actor

She appeared as an idealized love-object in

Astruc’s Le Rideau cramoisi of 1953, but is

better remembered for her roles for Fellini (La

dolce vita of 1960 and 8 1/2 of 1963), Demy

(Lola of 1961) and above all Claude Lelouch—

Un homme et une femme of 1966, the

bestknown incarnation of her as a sensuous

creature of destiny. Her recent screen appear-

ances have been few and far between, and she

probably last came to the attention of a British

public when she was married to Albert Finney.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Délégation Générale à la Lutte Centre la

Drogue (1994) La Demande sociale de

drogues, Paris: La documentation française

(the official approach).

Ehrenberg, A. (ed.) (1992) État des lieux,

textes réunis, Paris: Éditions Descartes (per-

sonal viewpoints).

Algerian war

Immediately preceded by France’s catastrophic

defeat in the Indochina conflict (1945–54), the

Algerian war (1954–62) was the climax of the

traumatic French experience of decolonization.

France’s oldest and most important colony,

Algeria was home to a million settlers (known

as the pieds-noirs), together with some 9 mil-

lion ‘Muslims’ of Arabo-Berber origin. This

large European presence underlay the deter-

mination of successive governments to resist

Algerian nationalism with massive military

force, a strategy further rationalized in terms

of the territory’s unique legal status as three,

theoretically fully integrated départements of

the Republic. Measures taken included the

building of electrified fortifications along Al-

geria’s frontiers with Morocco and Tunisia, the

forcible relocation of large sections of the in-

digenous population, and the mobilization of

nearly 3 million metropolitan conscripts over

the course of the eight-year campaign against

the revolutionary Front de Libération

Nationale (FLN). The principal victims of what

became a brutal guerrilla war were Algerian

civilians (up to a million of whom may have

died), with the FLN at least as willing as the

French army to use coercion whenever persua-

sion failed. With neither obvious fronts nor

set-piece battles, the war reached a crux with

the so-called Battle of Algiers of 1956–7, in

which paratroopers made systematic use of

torture and summary execution to crush the

FLN’s bombing networks. Although such tac-

tics enabled the French to achieve military

dominance, they also encouraged support for

the nationalist cause both within Algeria and

abroad. The army’s response was a campaign

of political ‘activism’ which culminated, in

May 1958, in the collapse of the ineffectual

Fourth Republic and the return to power of

the country’s wartime ‘saviour’, General

Algerian war

Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle, backed by the

armed forces in the belief that he would safe-

guard Algérie française (French Algeria),

quickly realized that the war was politically

unwinnable and set about ridding the country

of what had become a threat to the Republic

and a barrier to postwar reconstruction. Skil-

fully exploiting his personal prestige, the semi-

presidential constitution of the new Fifth Re-

public, and his incomparable mastery of the

mass media, de Gaulle was able finally to break

the settler and military stranglehold on Alge-

rian policy. His declaration of the Algerians’

right to self-determination on 16 September

1959 was a watershed, prompting armed chal-

lenges to his authority by the forces of colo-

nial reaction. Having faced down the pieds-

noirs during the so-called ‘Week of the Barri-

cades’ in January 1960, he would overcome

an attempted army putsch in April 1961. Sub-

sequent negotiations with the FLN led to a

ceasefire on 19 March 1962, with Algerian in-

dependence being declared a few months later.

PHILIP DINE

Further reading

Droz, B. and Lever, E. (1982) Histoire de la

guerre d’Algérie, 1954–1962, Paris:

Éditions du Seuil (the best French-language

introduction to the war).

Home, A. (1977) A Savage War of Peace: Al-

geria, 1954–1962, London: Macmillan

(still the standard English-language history

of the conflict).

Stora, B. (1992) La Gangrène et l’oubli: la

mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: La

Découverte (an examination of the difficul-

ties still faced by France and Algeria in

coming to terms with the war).

Althusser, Louis

b. 1918, Birmandreïs, Algeria;

d. 1990, La Verrière, Yvelines

Marxist philosopher

A Catholic militant in his youth, Althusser

received his political education as a prisoner

of war and in 1948 joined the French Com-

munist Party (PCF). As a philosopher at the

École Normale Supérieure, he influenced a

generation of young people, who responded

with enthusiasm to his attempt to revitalize

the stultified Marxist theory of the 1950s.

Applying his theory of symptomatic reading

to the classic texts of Marxism, analysing gaps

and silences, unanswered questions, as well as

answers to unasked questions, he attempted

to construct the conceptual system Marx him-

self had not been able to complete.

Rejecting the interpretation of Marxism as

an ethical humanism, which dominated Euro-

pean Communist parties after the Twentieth

Congress of the Soviet Communist Party,

Althusser denied any continuity with Hegelian

philosophy, stressing Marxism’s revolutionary

originality. In For Marx (Pour Marx) and

Reading Capital (Lire le Capital), he applied

principles learned from the Bachelardian

school of historical epistemology to demon-

strate that Marxism was a new development,

inaugurating the science of history, through

an epistemological break with previous ideo-

logical, non-scientific thinking. As a science,

it was subject only to scientific criteria of va-

lidity, not to political pressures. Knowledge

production was a process confined solely to

the domain of thought, which he defined as

theoretical practice. This position owed much

to Spinoza’s notion that truth contained its

own norms of validity, but ran counter to or-

thodox communism’s reflection theory of

knowledge, which Althusser rejected as em-

piricist.

Only scientific knowledge had the status of

knowledge; all else was dismissed as ideology,

though in his key 1970 essay, ‘Ideology and the

Ideological State Apparatuses’ (‘Idéologie et

appareils idéologiques d’État’), Althusser

admitted that ideology was more than mere lack

of knowledge or error. Not only was ideology a

social practice, the mode in which individuals

Althusser, Louis

operated within the Ideological State

Apparatuses, it was also the vehicle whereby

individuals were constituted into subjects, as

‘supports’ for the reproduction of class rela-

tions of production. The theory of the consti-

tution of the subject owed much to Jacques

Lacan.

Influenced also by structuralism, the

Althusserian social formation was constituted

by combinations of elements, apart from hu-

man beings, who did not create these struc-

tures nor determine their meaning, but had

their own meaning determined by them; his-

tory was not made by men, but was a ‘process

without subject or end(s)’. His theory of

overdetermination, rejecting vulgar economic

determinism, acknowledged the complexity of

real social processes, although it failed to ex-

plain the transition from one mode of produc-

tion to another.

Despite the influence of militant French

Maoism, Althusser remained in the PCF.

Modifying his position on the autonomy of

theory, he adopted a view of philosophy as

‘class struggle in theory’ from the late 1960s.

Politics played a more important role in his

theoretical analyses, though his own political

involvement receded, until, following the

Left’s failure in the 1978 elections, he openly

criticised the PCF in What Must Change in

the Party (Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le

parti communiste). Dogged by depressive ill-

ness, Althusser played no further part in pub-

lic life after killing his wife in 1980. By then,

he had already renounced most of his theo-

retical principles, though not his faith in the

communist movement.

MARGARET MAJUMDAR

See also: class; May 1968; parties and move-

ments

Further reading

Boutang, Y.M. (1992) Louis Althusser: la for-

mation du mythe (1918–1956), Paris:

Grasset (first volume of Althusser’s biogra-

phy).

Elliott, G. (1987) Althusser, the Detour of

Theory, London and New York: Verso (ma-

jor overview of Althusser’s work).

——(ed.) (1994) Althusser: A Critical Reader,

Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell

(contains bibliography of Althusser’s writ-

ings, and essays assessing his work and in-

fluence).

Kaplan, E.A. and Sprinker, M. (eds) (1993)

The Althusserian Legacy, London and New

York: Verso (assessment of Althusser’s

legacy from a variety of perspectives).

Majumdar, M.A. (1995) Althusser and the

End of Leninism?, London and East Ha-

ven, CT: Pluto (examines the changes in

Althusser’s thought, with particular empha-

sis on the central question of Leninism).

Amont, Marcel

b. 1929, Bordeaux

Singer, real name Jean-Pierre

Miramon

Having studied at the Conservatoire, Marcel

Amont performed in light operas and musical

comedies before turning to cabaret in the

1950s. His very successful career as a solo

singer includes appearances at Bobino and the

Olympia, tours throughout France and abroad

and work on television and in films. Hit songs

include the humorous Un Mexicain (A Mexi-

can) and Ping-Pong.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Bradby, D. (1991) Modern French Theatre

1940–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press (contains a chapter on philo-

sophical melodrama, dealing with

Anouilh’s work alongside that of Sartre and

Camus).

Anouilh, Jean

Vier, J. (1976) Le Théâtre de Jean Anouilh,

Paris: SEDES.

anthropology and ethnology

As an academic discipline anthropology was

established relatively late in France. Despite a

distinguished tradition of ‘armchair’ anthro-

pology (Durkheim, Mauss, Lévy-Bruhl), spe-

cialized fieldwork was not undertaken until

the 1930s, symbolically inaugurated with the

famous Dakar-Djibouti expedition in 1931–

3. This first generation of fieldworkers was

instrumental in the notable expansion of

French anthropology in the postwar years.

The development of anthropology in post-

war France cannot be properly understood

without reference to the sociology of

Durkheim and Mauss earlier in the century.

In his later work Émile Durkheim (d. 1917)

made extensive use of ethnographic data in

his attempt to formulate a universal theory of

social cohesion, and ethnological interests fea-

tured strongly in the research team that formed

around his journal, L’Année sociologique. It

was, however, Durkheim’s nephew and close

collaborator, Marcel Mauss (d. 1950), often

called the ‘father’ of French ethnology, who

came to specialize in the discipline and who

made a crucial contribution to its academic

provision in the university. The phenomenally

erudite Mauss was an inspirational teacher to

many of the first generation of professional

ethnologists; he was also author of the remark-

able The Gift (Essai sur le don), one of the

most influential texts in twentieth-century an-

thropology. The main thesis of the essay is that

exchange in non-Western cultures does not

have the utilitarian and individualist functions

it possesses in industrial capitalist societies. The

exchange of gifts in traditional societies is a

collective phenomenon, and must be viewed as

a ‘total social fact’ to the extent that it involves

not only economic, but also moral, religious,

legal and cultural-aesthetic considerations. As

such, gift exchange is an important agent of

social cohesion, ensuring the integration of

different social groups and the resolution of

potential conflict between them.

The influence of Mauss’s theory of the gift

extends well beyond the academic disciplines

of sociology and anthropology, and is discern-

ible in much contemporary French thought. In

anthropology, the most important mediator of

Mauss and the Durkheimian school in the post-

war period is Claude Lévi-Strauss. While the

fieldwork initiated in the 1930s was provid-

ing French ethnology with a growing empiri-

cal base, the discipline suffered from a distinct

lack of theorization. Lévi-Strauss’s originality

was to combine the insights of Mauss’s theory

of exchange with binary models borrowed

from structural linguistics, as demonstrated in

his first major work, The Elementary Struc-

tures of Kinship (Les Structures élémentaires

de la parenté), published in 1949. His work

on kinship structures not only brought a new

level of theoretical sophistication to French

ethnology, but also suggested a wider pro-

gramme of research for the discipline. Since

Durkheim and Mauss, ethnological studies had

focused primarily on aspects of religion and

ritual, notable examples including Alfred

Métraux’s studies of voodoo practices in Haiti

or Marcel Griaule’s work on Dogon cosmol-

ogy. Lévi-Strauss’s venture into the highly tech-

nical domain of kinship relations moved the

focus from religion to social organization, tra-

ditionally the preserve of British anthropology.

Significantly, when after 1950 he himself be-

gan to specialize in the anthropology of reli-

gions, Lévi-Strauss concentrated on myth

rather than ritual, on non-Western thought

rather than non-Western religion.

Lévi-Strauss’s attempt to construct a rigor-

ous theoretical framework for French anthro-

pology needs to be viewed in the context of a

general realignment of the sciences humaines

(human sciences) in postwar France. Lévi-

Strauss contributed actively to this realign-

ment in that he presented ethnology as no

longer the adjunct of sociology, as it had been

for Durkheim and even for Mauss, but as a

discipline in its own right, with its own dis-

tinct objects, methods and goals. More than

this, he expanded the conventional definition

anthropology and ethnology

of the discipline by substituting the term

‘anthropologie’ for the more common

‘ethnologie’, distinguishing between three

stages or moments of anthropological inquiry:

ethnography, the preliminary collection of

data in the field; ethnology, the synthesis of

data provided by ethnography; and anthro-

pology, the comparative analysis of ethnologi-

cal material, leading to a general theory of

human society. Lévi-Strauss’s redefinition of

the scope of anthropology meant that it was

not restricted to the so-called ‘primitive’ soci-

eties which had traditionally been the object

of ethnology. It also meant that the previous

subordination of ethnology to sociology was

reversed, sociology becoming in effect a sub-

sidiary component of anthropology.

The implications of Lévi-Strauss’s ambitious

programme for anthropology were obviously

more general than its historically ambivalent

relationship with sociology. This programme

placed anthropology at the very centre of the

human sciences, also challenging more firmly

established disciplines such as history and phi-

losophy. The new historian Fernand Braudel’s

famous article ‘La longue durée’, published in

1958, was allegedly written in response to Lévi-

Strauss’s Structural Anthropology

(Anthropologie structural), the seminal collec-

tion of essays on the scope and methods of the

new anthropology. For his part, the philoso-

pher and historian Michel Foucault anticipated

the dissolution and absorption of philosophy

into other disciplines, presenting his ‘archae-

ology’ of the human sciences as an attempt to

view our own cultural history with the sense

of defamiliarization and distantiation achieved

in Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology.

Despite the undisputed influence of Lévi-

Strauss, it would be wrong to attribute these

interdisciplinary effects of anthropology solely

to his individual initiative. The special status

of ethnology in the years following the war

can be explained by a number of factors spe-

cific to that context. The devastation caused

by the war was psychological as well as physi-

cal: for the second time in the century Europe

had unleashed destructive forces which had

enveloped the world, and the wave of

decolonization which followed the war was

both a reminder of European responsibility and

a symptom of the decline of the former colo-

nial powers. These events caused many to ques-

tion the pre-eminence of European culture and

consciousness and also to criticize its ethno-

centrism. In this context it was therefore logi-

cal that ethnology, as a privileged mediator of

non-Western cultures, should become the spe-

cial focus of such questioning and criticism.

Indeed, in the 1950s ethnology came to be re-

garded as a ‘new humanism’, with a wider vi-

sion of humanity than the traditional philo-

sophical version of humanism, whose concep-

tion of the individual subject was culture-spe-

cific and thus far from achieving the univer-

sality it claimed. The resultant sense of the di-

versity of human existence was also accompa-

nied by an acute awareness of the increasing

homogenization of the post-colonial world,

subject as it was to the continuing influence of

Western civilization. Again, ethnology became

the repository of alternative values, values dif-

ferent to those of an increasingly consumerist

and materialistic society. This mood and these

ideas were eloquently expressed in Lévi-

Strauss’s autobiographical account Tristes

tropiques, published in 1955 in Jean Malaurie’s

aptly named Terre humaine series. The book

struck a chord not only among the French in-

telligentsia but also with a wider literate pub-

lic, thus confirming ethnology’s position as the

human science most attuned to the complexi-

ties and ambiguities of the modern world.

Lévi-Strauss’s successful promotion of an-

thropology has sometimes tended to over-

shadow the achievements of his other French

colleagues, whose contribution to the disci-

pline has often been no less distinguished

(Bastide, Balandier, Dumont, Griaule, Leiris,

Métraux). Nevertheless, it was Lévi-Strauss

who was the most influential in bringing an

anthropological perspective to the wider in-

tellectual debates which have traditionally

been so important in France, and it was his

formulation of a structural anthropology

which inspired the movement known as

structuralism. At the same time, his version

of anthropology did not go unchallenged.

anthropology and ethnology