Thinking Allowed - 02/12/2009

Anthropology in an unusual setting: Wall Street. Laurie Taylor talks to the anthropologist who gave up her academic life for over a year to become an investment banker in order to study life on Wall Street. She explains why she immersed herself in the culture of high finance, high risk and high reward and why she thinks it was the culture of Wall Streeters which brought the world's financial system to the edge of catastrophe. Also in the programme, Laurie asks if there is such a thing as an idyllic English village life. While some media reports suggest that life in rural communities is seriously under threat and even dying, Laurie talks to the geographer who thinks that, far from it, village life is thriving and in many places a new kind of idyllic life is being created. Did the rural idyll ever exist and what form might it take in the 21st century?