Structuralism represents an intellectual movement and a methodological framework, predominantly within the social sciences, which analyzes components of human culture through their interconnections within a larger system. Its objective is to reveal the underlying structural configurations that govern human actions, cognitions, perceptions, and emotions.
Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns that underlie all things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.
Philosopher Simon Blackburn offers an alternative summary, defining structuralism as:
"The belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure."
Historical Context
The designation structuralism carries inherent ambiguity, encompassing diverse intellectual traditions across various domains. Consequently, the structuralist movement within the humanities and social sciences maintains a connection to sociology. Émile Durkheim's sociological framework, founded on the principles of 'structure' and 'function,' notably gave rise to the structural functionalism approach in sociology.
Beyond Durkheim's application of the term structure, Ferdinand de Saussure's semiological framework proved foundational for structuralism. Saussure conceptualized both language and society as intricate systems of interconnected relations. Furthermore, his linguistic methodology served as a direct challenge to evolutionary linguistics.
European structuralism emerged during the early 20th century, primarily in France and the Russian Empire, rooted in Ferdinand de Saussure's structural linguistics and the subsequent Prague, Moscow, and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. As an intellectual current, structuralism succeeded existentialism. Following World War II, numerous humanities scholars adopted Saussure's theoretical constructs for application within their disciplines. Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist, is widely considered the pioneering figure in this adoption, thereby igniting extensive interest in structuralism.
During the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, notably articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre, constituted the preeminent intellectual paradigm in Europe. Structuralism subsequently gained significant traction in France, particularly throughout the 1960s, following the decline of existentialism. Its initial success in France facilitated its global dissemination. By the early 1960s, structuralism had solidified its identity as a distinct movement, with some proponents envisioning it as a comprehensive, unifying framework applicable across all academic disciplines concerning human existence.
Toward the close of the 1960s, numerous foundational principles of structuralism faced critique from an emergent cohort of primarily French intellectuals and philosophers, including historian Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and literary critic Roland Barthes. While aspects of their scholarship inherently connect with and are informed by structuralism, these theorists were eventually categorized as post-structuralists. Nevertheless, several structuralist advocates, such as Lacan, maintain their influence on continental philosophy, and many core premises held by certain post-structuralist critics represent an evolution of structuralist thought.
Roman Jakobson, a Russian functional linguist, played a crucial role in extending structural analysis beyond linguistics into fields such as philosophy, anthropology, and literary theory. Jakobson significantly influenced anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose scholarship first introduced the term structuralism in the context of the social sciences. Lévi-Strauss's contributions subsequently initiated the structuralist movement in France, often termed French structuralism, impacting the intellectual trajectory of various other scholars. Notably, many of these scholars, including Louis Althusser, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and Nicos Poulantzas (known for structural Marxism), later distanced themselves from the movement. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, for instance, concentrated on the applicability of structuralism to literary analysis.
Ferdinand de Saussure
The genesis of structuralism is intrinsically linked to Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic research, alongside the contributions from the Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Concisely, Saussure's structural linguistics advanced three interconnected theoretical constructs.
- Saussure posited a fundamental dichotomy between langue, representing an idealized, abstract system of language, and parole, which denotes language as it is practically employed in everyday communication. He further theorized that a "sign" comprises two integral components: a "signified" (signifié), an abstract concept or idea, and a "signifier" (signifiant), the perceptible sound or visual image.
- Given that diverse languages utilize distinct lexical items to reference identical objects or concepts, no inherent rationale dictates the selection of a particular signifier to convey a specific concept or idea. Consequently, this relationship is deemed "arbitrary."
- The semantic value of signs is derived from their interrelationships and contrasts with other signs. As articulated by Saussure, "in language, there are only differences 'without positive terms.'"
Lévi-Strauss
Structuralism fundamentally repudiated notions of human autonomy and volition, instead emphasizing the determination of human experience and behavior by underlying structures. A seminal contribution in this domain was Lévi-Strauss's 1949 publication, The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Lévi-Strauss's association with Roman Jakobson at the New School in New York during World War II significantly influenced his thought, drawing from both Jakobson's structuralist theories and the American anthropological tradition.
Within Elementary Structures, Lévi-Strauss conducted a structural analysis of kinship systems, illustrating how seemingly disparate social organizations represented various permutations of a limited set of fundamental kinship structures. Subsequently, in late 1958, he released Structural Anthropology, an anthology of essays delineating his comprehensive agenda for structuralism.
Lacan and Piaget
Jacques Lacan, a French (post)structuralist, integrated Freudian concepts with Saussurean linguistics to apply structuralism to psychoanalysis. Concurrently, Jean Piaget employed structuralist principles in his psychological research, albeit with a distinct approach. Piaget, who preferred the designation "constructivist," viewed structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine," asserting that "there exists no structure without a construction, abstract or genetic."
The "Third Order"
Advocates of structuralism contend that a particular cultural domain can be comprehended through a language-modeled structure, which is distinct from both the organizational principles of reality and those of ideas or imagination—termed the "third order." For instance, in Lacan's psychoanalytic framework, "the Symbolic" structural order is differentiated from both "the Real" and "the Imaginary." Analogously, within Althusser's Marxist theory, the structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct from the actual agents participating in its relations and from the ideological constructs through which these relations are perceived.
Althusser
While the French theorist Louis Althusser is frequently linked to structural social analysis, a field instrumental in the development of "structural Marxism," Althusser himself disputed this categorization in the Italian foreword to the second edition of Reading Capital. In this preface, Althusser articulated the following:
Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology…, despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism'…, the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions…our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'.… We believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the 'structuralist' ideology.
Assiter
Subsequently, feminist theorist Alison Assiter identified four core tenets shared across the diverse manifestations of structuralism:
- A structure dictates the placement of every constituent element within a comprehensive whole;
- Every system inherently possesses a structure;
- Structural laws primarily address principles of co-existence rather than dynamics of change; and
- Structures constitute the fundamental "realities" underlying the superficial manifestations or apparent meanings.
In Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure's seminal work, Course in General Linguistics, primarily investigates the foundational system of language (langue) rather than its practical application (parole, or 'speech'). This methodology scrutinizes the synchronous interrelationships among linguistic elements, emphasizing their present state over their historical evolution. Saussure posited that linguistic signs comprise two distinct components:
- A signifiant ('signifier'), which constitutes the acoustic image or "sound pattern" of a word. This can manifest as a mental representation, such as silently recalling text or poetry, or as a concrete physical articulation within a speech act or any textual form.
- A signifié ('signified'), representing the conceptual content or meaning associated with the word.
This perspective diverged significantly from earlier linguistic paradigms, which predominantly examined the direct correspondence between words and their referents in the external world.
While not extensively elaborated by Saussure himself, other fundamental concepts within structural linguistics are evident in the notion of structural "idealism." A structural idealism refers to a set of linguistic elements (e.g., lexemes, morphemes, or constructions) that are interchangeable within a specific position in a particular syntagm or linguistic context, such as a sentence. The distinct functional contribution of each member within this paradigm is termed 'value' (French: valeur).
The Prague School of Linguistics
In France, Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste advanced Saussure's linguistic framework, while prominent figures of the Prague School of linguistics, including Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy, undertook significant research. The most salient and crucial manifestation of Prague School structuralism is found in phonemics. Instead of merely cataloging the sounds present in a language, the Prague School investigated their interrelationships. Their findings indicated that a language's sound inventory could be systematically analyzed through a series of oppositions.
Consequently, in English, the phonemes /p/ and /b/ are recognized as distinct due to the existence of minimal pairs, where their opposition alone differentiates two separate words (e.g., 'pat' and 'bat'). This analysis of sounds via contrastive features also facilitates comparative linguistic studies; for example, it elucidates why Japanese speakers often struggle to distinguish between /r/ and /l/ in English and other languages, as these sounds lack phonemic contrast in Japanese. Phonology subsequently served as the foundational paradigm for structuralist approaches across various academic disciplines.
Drawing inspiration from the Prague School's theoretical framework, André Martinet in France, J. R. Firth in the United Kingdom, and Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark each formulated their distinct interpretations of structural and functional linguistics.
Structuralism in Anthropology
Within the structuralist theoretical framework of anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is understood to be generated and perpetuated within a given culture via diverse practices, phenomena, and activities that function as systems of signification.
A structuralist methodology might investigate a wide array of activities, such as food preparation and serving rituals, religious ceremonies, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other entertainment forms, to uncover the underlying structures responsible for the generation and perpetuation of meaning within a culture. For instance, during the 1950s, Lévi-Strauss conducted analyses of various cultural phenomena, encompassing mythology, kinship systems (specifically alliance theory and the incest taboo), and culinary practices. Complementing these investigations, he authored more linguistically oriented works, wherein he employed Saussure's differentiation between langue and parole to explore the fundamental structures of the human intellect. He contended that the structures constituting society's "deep grammar" emanate from the mind and function subconsciously within individuals. Lévi-Strauss derived conceptual inspiration from mathematics.
Structural anthropology also incorporated a concept originating from the Prague School of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and his colleagues analyzed sounds according to the presence or absence of specific features (e.g., voiceless versus voiced). Lévi-Strauss integrated this principle into his framework for the universal structures of the mind, positing that these structures function through binary oppositions, exemplified by pairs such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable versus tabooed women.
Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), known for his work on gift-exchange systems, constituted a third significant influence. Drawing upon Mauss's theories, Lévi-Strauss, for example, advanced an alliance theory, positing that kinship structures derive from the inter-group exchange of women, a perspective contrasting with the 'descent'-based theory articulated by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. Lévi-Strauss's scholarship gained widespread prominence during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly after he succeeded Mauss in his chair at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, ultimately popularizing the term "structuralism."
Structuralism significantly influenced British scholars like Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach. In France, Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray integrated Marxist principles with structural anthropology, while in the United States, Marshall Sahlins and James Boon developed their analyses of human society by building upon structuralist frameworks. However, structural anthropology experienced a decline in prominence during the early 1980s due to several factors. D'Andrade posited that this decline stemmed from its reliance on unverifiable assumptions regarding universal structures of the human mind. Furthermore, scholars such as Eric Wolf advocated for prioritizing political economy and colonialism within anthropological discourse. More broadly, Pierre Bourdieu's critiques of structuralism fostered an increased focus on the dynamic interplay between human agency, practice, and the transformation of cultural and social structures, a theoretical trajectory Sherry Ortner termed 'practice theory'.
Douglas E. Foley's 2010 work, Learning Capitalist Culture, exemplifies this approach, wherein he integrated structural and Marxist theories into his ethnographic research with high school students in Texas. Foley examined how students achieved a common objective through social solidarity, observing "Mexicanos" and "Anglo-Americans" uniting on a football team to overcome rival schools. Nevertheless, he consistently employed a Marxist perspective, articulating his ambition to "wow peers with a new cultural marxist theory of schooling."
Despite identifying significant shortcomings in Lévi-Strauss's interpretation of structuralism, some anthropological theorists maintained a commitment to a fundamental structural underpinning for human culture. For example, the Biogenetic Structuralism group contended that a structural foundation for culture is indispensable, given the universal inheritance of shared brain structures among humans. They advanced the concept of neuroanthropology, aiming to establish a more comprehensive scientific explanation for cultural commonalities and divergences through the integration of cultural anthropology and neuroscience—an initiative also supported by scholars like Victor Turner.
In Literary Criticism and Theory
Within literary theory, structuralist criticism analyzes literary texts by situating them within broader structural frameworks. These frameworks can encompass specific genres, diverse intertextual relationships (e.g., metaphorical patterns), universal narrative models, or systems of recurring motifs and patterns.
The discipline of structuralist semiotics posits that every text inherently possesses an underlying structure, which accounts for the greater ease with which experienced readers interpret texts compared to novices. This perspective suggests that all written works adhere to a set of governing principles, or a "grammar of literature," acquired through educational processes and awaiting scholarly elucidation.
A significant challenge for a structuralist interpretation lies in its potential for extreme reductionism, a concern articulated by scholar Catherine Belsey as "the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference." For instance, a student might conclude that the creators of West Side Story introduced nothing genuinely novel, perceiving its structure as identical to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In both narratives, a boy and a girl fall in love (symbolically represented as "Boy + Girl") despite their affiliation with mutually antagonistic groups ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces"), with conflict ultimately resolved through their demise. Structuralist analyses primarily investigate how the inherent narrative tensions within a single text are resolved by its underlying structures. When a structuralist approach examines multiple texts, it necessitates a mechanism by which these texts cohere into a unified system. The adaptability of structuralism is such that a literary critic could similarly analyze a story about two friendly families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") arranging a marriage between their children, even if the children despise each other ("Boy - Girl") and subsequently commit suicide to escape the arranged union; this is justified by viewing the second story's structure as an 'inversion' of the first, where the relationships between love and the involved parties' values are reversed.
Structuralist literary criticism posits that the "literary banter of a text" originates solely from novel structural arrangements, rather than from the specificities of character development or narrative voice through which that structure is manifested. Literary structuralism frequently draws inspiration from Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, seeking fundamental deep elements within stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are then combined in diverse ways to generate numerous iterations of an archetypal narrative or myth.
A notable resemblance exists between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, both of which are significantly influenced by the anthropological study of myths. While some critics have attempted to apply this theory to individual works, the endeavor to identify unique structures within singular literary pieces contradicts the core tenets of the structuralist program and shares an affinity with New Criticism.
In Economics
Yifu Lin offers a critique of early structural economic systems and theories, highlighting their inherent failures. He observes:
"The structuralism believes that the failure to develop advanced capital-intensive industries spontaneously in a developing country is due to market failures caused by various structural rigidities..." "According to neoliberalism, the main reason for the failure of developing countries to catch up with developed countries was too much state intervention in the market, causing misallocation of resources, rent seeking and so forth."
Instead, these failures are more accurately attributed to the inherent improbability of such rapid development of advanced industries within developing nations.
New Structural Economics (NSE)
New Structural Economics (NSE) represents an economic development strategy formulated by World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin, integrating principles from both neoclassical economics and structural economics.
NSE analyzes two primary components: the base and the superstructure. The base encompasses the combination of productive forces and relations, including but not limited to industry and technology, while the superstructure comprises hard infrastructure and institutional frameworks. This analytical framework explains how the base influences the superstructure, which subsequently determines transaction costs.
Interpretations and General Criticisms
Structuralism currently enjoys less prominence compared to alternative methodologies such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. It has frequently faced criticism for its ahistorical nature and its tendency to prioritize deterministic structural forces over the capacity for human agency. As the political unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the student uprisings of May 1968, began to impact academia, issues of power dynamics and political struggle gained central importance in public discourse.
During the 1980s, deconstruction gained prominence, emphasizing the inherent ambiguity of language over its logical framework. By the close of the century, structuralism was recognized as a historically significant intellectual movement, yet the subsequent movements it inspired, rather than structuralism itself, garnered considerable scholarly focus.
Structuralism has faced significant critique, and even outright dismissal, from numerous social theorists and academics. Paul Ricœur, a French hermeneutic philosopher, notably critiqued Lévi-Strauss in 1969, asserting that he exceeded the valid boundaries of the structuralist methodology, resulting in what Ricœur characterized as "a Kantianism without a transcendental subject."
In 1973, anthropologist Adam Kuper articulated the following perspective:
'Structuralism' acquired an impetus akin to a millennial movement, with some of its proponents perceiving themselves as an exclusive group of enlightened individuals within a world of the unenlightened. Adopting this perspective transcended mere acceptance of a new paradigm; it approached a matter of salvation.
Philip Noel Pettit, in 1975, advocated for the rejection of "the positivist dream which Lévi-Strauss dreamed for semiology," contending that semiology should not be classified among the natural sciences. Similarly, Cornelius Castoriadis, also in 1975, critiqued structuralism for its inability to elucidate symbolic mediation within the social realm. He considered structuralism a variant of the "logicist" perspective, asserting that, contrary to structuralist claims, language and symbolic systems broadly cannot be simplified to logical structures based on binary oppositions.
In 1985, critical theorist Jürgen Habermas charged structuralists, including Foucault, with positivism. Habermas argued that Foucault, despite not being a conventional positivist, paradoxically employed scientific methodologies to critique science itself. Sociologist Anthony Giddens, a prominent critic in 1993, incorporated various structuralist concepts into his theoretical framework but rejected the structuralist assertion that the perpetuation of social systems is merely "a mechanical outcome."
Antihumanism
- Antihumanism
- Émile Durkheim
- Engaged theory
- Genetic structuralism
- Holism
- Isomorphism
- Post-structuralism
- Russian formalism
- Structural functionalism
- Structuralism (philosophy of mathematics)
- Structuralism (philosophy of science)
- Structuralist film theory
- Structuration theory
- Structural change
- Structuralism (psychology)
- Structuralist economics
References
Angermuller, Johannes. 2015. Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France: The Making of an Intellectual Generation. London: Bloomsbury.
- Angermuller, Johannes. 2015. Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France: The Making of an Intellectual Generation. London: Bloomsbury.
- Roudinesco, Élisabeth. 2008. Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida. New York: Columbia University Press.
Primary sources
- Althusser, Louis. Reading Capital.
- Barthes, Roland. S/Z.
- Deleuze, Gilles. 1973. "À quoi reconnaît-on le structuralisme?" Pp. 299–335 in Histoire de la philosophie, Idées, Doctrines. Vol. 8: Le XXe siècle, edited by F. Châtelet. Paris: Hachette.
- de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1916. Course in General Linguistics.
- Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things.
- Jakobson, Roman. Essais de linguistique générale.
- Lacan, Jacques. The Seminars of Jacques Lacan.
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship.
- —— 1958. Structural Anthropology [Anthropologie structurale]
- —— 1964–1971. Mythologiques
- Wilcken, Patrick, ed. Claude Levi-Strauss: The Father of Modern Anthropology.