ROFESSOR C. L1tVI-STRAUSS has written recently of Jan effort to revive the great French sociological tradition running X from Montesquieu to Durkheim as a result of appreciation of and interest in it abroad since the war.l Is there such a thing as a French tradition or school of anthropology? The internationally recognized existence of a British school of social anthropology makes us perhaps apt to forget that the existence of a school in a particular country or city is not an inevitable part of the life of an academic discipline. It can depend rather on close contact between a certain number of scholars at a particular point in their career, usually in their formative years when they study together under the influence of an important teacher. If, then, a school is primarily a matter of schooling, it may well, before attempting to discuss whether there has been or still is a French school of anthropology, to look at the means that might favour or disfavour its exlstence. French academic life is still to a large extent ruled by the old tripartite division between the Facultes de lettres, de droit and de sciences. Broadly speaking, sociology and psychology depend on lettres, economics and political science on droit and anthropology on lettres and sciences. There is no such thing as a faculty of social sciences and the latter, increasingly since I945, have had to squeeze themselves into the old organization or demand the creation of new institutes to supplement its work. Academic training and modes of obtaining degrees remain very largely oriented towards the formation of teachers for secondary and higher education, a formation which includes little in the way of social sciences (Unesco, I953: 98-9). One must note the differences between the statuses and qualifications of faculty and institute staffs, between university 'teaching' and 'free' degrees and institute diplomas and between the facilities offered by Paris on the one hand and the provincial centres on the other: only Bordeaux and Strasbourg have chairs of sociology; only Bordeaux and Lyon chairs of anthropology. The few students who study anthropology take part of a 'free' rather than a 'teaching' degree with all that this implies in the way