Summary: Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of 20th-century France's most celebrated intellectuals. He set out to show in his work that human thought processes were universal, whether people lived in tribal rainforest societies or in the rich intellectual life of Paris. He was the leading exponent of structuralism, and his books about the nature of myth, thought and kinship are now seen as some of the most important anthropological texts. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Adam Kuper, Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Boston University; Christina Howells, Professor of French at Oxford University and Vincent Debaene, Associate Professor of French Literature at Columbia University.
