ABSTRACT
The growth of the population was one of the stimuli fueling France's post-war economic expansion. It created a larger market for all kinds of products, and assured manufacturers that the number of consumers would continue to grow in the future. Preoccupied with political conflicts at home and colonial wars abroad, both French politicians and much of the population were slow to recognize how profoundly their society and culture were changing in the decades after the war. Intellectuals like Sartre and de Beauvoir lamented the conformity of American life and the hectic pace imposed by the unending quest for efficiency, in contrast to the supposedly slower and more humane tempo of French society. The political stability and economic prosperity of the decade following de Gaulle's assumption of power set the stage for profound transformations in French society. The anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss used his analysis of primitive societies to suggest that all human interactions were governed by certain fundamental patterns or structures.
