The structuralism is current social sciences which takes as a starting point the model Linguistique and apprehends social reality like a formal whole of relations.

Origin

The term of structuralism finds its origin in the Cours of general linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1916), which proposes to apprehend any language as a system in which each element is definable only by the relations of equivalence or opposition that it maintains with the others, this whole of relations forming the structure.

Definitions first

Definition of the structure

A structure is “an entity of internal dependences” (Hjelmslev). The structure is opposed thus to the atom (with the linguistic direction), which does not enter any relation between dependence and another atom.

The term appears in the Travaux of the linguistic Circle of Prague , I, Prague, 1929: Romance Jakobson, S. Karcevsky and NR. Troubetzkoy recommends there for linguistics “ a method suitable to make it possible to discover the laws of structure of the linguistic systems and evolution of those ”.

Definition of structuralism

According to Benveniste being based on work of Saussure and the Circle of Prague to which it largely refers, structuralism is the assumption according to which one can study a language as a structure.

This assumption is justified by the fact that the system of the language is “relative” and “oppositive” (Saussure). Each element exists only by its relation and its opposition to other elements.

For example, and ( end and you ) are two different French words because is opposed to. But in Spanish, this opposition does not exist, and being a single Phonème. It is seen since “ the sensory contents such phonological elements is less essential than their reciprocal relation within the system ”.

Founders of structuralism in linguistics

Later extensions of the definition of structuralism

Structuralism, at the linguistic origin assumption, gave its name to several currents of thoughts in disciplines which have nothing to do with linguistics. Today the term is very widespread and its definition varies from one discipline to another.

Generally, the structure has a logical but implicit organization, an objective base in on this side conscience and thought. Indeed, any structuralism rests on a double statute of the structures, at the same time unreal (like abstract organization forms) and real (like concrete realization). Consequently, structuralism aims at highlighting these unconscious structures by comprehension and the explanation of their significant achievements.

Out of linguistics, the structuralist principal authors and thinkers are:

  • Claude Lévi-Strauss in anthropology;

  • Jean-Pierre Vernant in history of the religions;
  • Brentano at the beginning of the XXe century in phenomenologic structuralism and gestaltist (followed by Stumpf, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Husserl, Wertheimer…) ;
  • Rene Thom in structuralism catastrophist;
  • Louis Althusser, a Marxist philosopher who takes again the problem of the interpretation of the Marxisme;
  • the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

The post-structuralist principal authors and thinkers are: Michel Foucault, a philosopher who renews the epistemology, the philosopher Jacques Derrida and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

Theory

For the structuralist ones, the social processes result from fundamental structures which are generally unconscious. Thus, the social organization generates some practical and certain beliefs specific to the individuals who depend on it.

This theory rests on the Linguistique, Ferdinand de Saussure having shown that all Langue constitutes a system in which the signs combine and evolve/move in a way which is essential on those which handle it.

Taking as a starting point this method, structuralism seeks to explain a phenomenon starting from the place which it occupies in a system, following of the laws of association and dissociation (presumedly immutable): If the unconscious activity of the spirit consists in imposing forms on contents, and if these forms are basically the same ones for all the spirits, old and modern, primitive and civilized, like the study of the function symbolic system, it is necessary and it is enough to reach the unconscious structure, under unclaimed at each institution and each habit, to obtain a principle of valid interpretation for other institutions and other habits.

Criticisms

After having enjoyed a position institutionnellement dominant and almost a unanimity in the French academic world, the structural anthropology crumbles gently since end of the year 80 and, with it, the ethnology and anthropology Frenchwomen, cut of their heritage maussien (see Marcel Mauss) as well as important developments which these disciplines elsewhere and in particular in England and in the United States knew since the middle of the Eighties.

According to its criticisms, structuralism would be since the beginning concealed with the most elementary rules of the scientific practice by setting up its starting assumptions (the generalization of the linguistic model saussurien to the whole of the fields of the social existence, the unconscious structural one, its universality) in dogmas which later structuralist research would not question any more.

More seriously still, the structuralist theory of Lévi-Strauss, according to Robert Jaulin, would be sullied with an elementary ethnocentrism because it would reproduce the prophetic design of the monotheism: it would not be any more one single God who would govern the destiny of humanity but well rather a " Unconscious Structural" , always the same one behind diversity connects but, essentially, illusory cultures. Those, as well as the human people and groups, would be only puppets, and their myths and their systems of relationship, encrypted gloses of the Immutable Verb of the Structures of Unconscious whose only structuralist illumination would hold the keys.

For Jean Piaget, structuralism " is well a method and not a doctrine" and " the permanent danger which threatens structuralism (...) is the realism of the structure to which one leads as soon as that one forgets his fasteners with the operations of which it is issue". Because for him " there does not exist structure without a construction, or abstracted or génétique" , which is besides the point of view of constructivist.

Opening

Structuralism is one of the sources of the Systémique, a science appeared in the years 1950 which considers these objects of studies according to an comprehensive approach (or holist). It is historically oldest of these component direct , among which one can quote the Cybernétique or the Théorie of the general system.

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