Structuralism

Structuralism emerged in the 1970s as a departure from the theoretical foundations of structural functionalism. It is among a variety of approaches to the study of social structure based on the general premise that there exist underlying structures that form the foundation for a social reality that only appears to be variable and changing. From the constructionist perspective, social structure is viewed as being either intentionally or unintentionally created by social agents. It is also used as a methodological or analytic tool by some social scientists to explain the regularity of social action by placing unpredictable behaviors outside the model. For structuralists, structure is recognized as the underlying force that drives social action, which in itself is viewed as merely a manifestation of a primary but hidden reality that lies beneath the level of consciousness. From this view, structures do not change, only the externalization of these structures in terms of changes in human action. The goal, therefore, of such analysis is to reveal the hidden universal and relatively constant social laws that influence the systems of society at the interaction, group, and institutional levels. This perspective deemphasizes the influence of individual agency, or individuals acting and choosing voluntarily.

[Page 2136]Darwin, Spencer, Durkheim, Marx, and Freud took a structural approach to define their worldview, and planted the seeds for what was to become structuralism. Each of these individuals saw, from his unique perspective, a system of structures that was both greater than the sum of its parts and the cause of behavior rather than its result. Building on these perspectives but taking a linguistic turn,Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), a Swiss linguist who is generally considered the father of structuralism, concluded that all social facts and patterns could ultimately be seen as resulting from the structures of language. Like Freud and Marx, Saussure concluded that it is structures that determine social interaction, not individual agency. Once a language is developed, the words and the thoughts they trigger become one entity, which then forms the social patterns incorporated as part of a particular culture. Language becomes autonomous and self-sustaining, allowing the subject to be undermined or totally ignored.

Formalizing these concepts into a single school of thought, Roman Jakobson wrote in 1929, “Were we to comprise the leading idea of present-day science in its most various manifestations, we could hardly find a more appropriate designation than structuralism. Any set of phenomena examined by contemporary science is treated not as a mechanical agglomeration but as a structural whole, and the basic task is to reveal the inner …laws of this system.” Lévi-Strauss, a French structural anthropologist who knew Jakobson and was influenced by his work, as well as by the American school of anthropology, studied these inner laws not by looking at the observable details of a society, but instead by examining what he felt to be universal structures of the mind that manifested themselves in signs and myths. Where Saussure felt that the primary structures of society were rooted in language itself, Lévi-Strauss looked into a culture's myths, its literary traditions, and its guiding principles.

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