Structuralism is an approach that grew to become one of the most widely used methods of analyzing language, culture, philosophy of mathematics, and society in the second half of the 20th century. 'Structuralism', however, does not refer to a clearly defined 'school' of authors, although the work of Ferdinand de Saussure is generally considered a starting point. Structuralism is best seen as a general approach with many different variations. As with any cultural movement, the influences and developments are complex. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Ferdinand de Saussure (November 26, 1857 - February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist. ... A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. ...

Put in general terms, structuralism seeks to explore the inter-relationships (the "structures") through which meaning is produced within a culture. A secondary use of structuralism has recently been seen in the philosophy of mathematics. According to structural theory, meaning within a culture is produced and reproduced through various practices, phenomena and activities which serve as systems of signification. A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture. For example, an early and prominent practitioner of structuralism, anthropologist and ethnographer Claude Lévi-Strauss, analyzed cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship, and food preparation (see also structural anthropology). Cultural anthropology, also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, is one of four commonly recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. ... Ethnography (from the Greek ethnos = nation and graphe = writing) refers to the qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on months or years of fieldwork. ... Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth centurys greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture Biography Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at...

When used to examine literature, a structuralist critic will examine the underlying relation of elements (the 'structure') in, say, a story, rather than focusing on its content. A basic example are the similarities between West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Even though the two plays occur in different times and places, a structuralist would argue that they are the same story because they have a similar structure - in both cases, a girl and a boy fall in love (or, as we might say, are +LOVE) despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other, a conflict that is resolved by their death. Consider now the story of two friendly families (+LOVE) that make an arranged marriage between their children despite the fact that they hate each other (-LOVE), and that the children resolve this conflict by committing suicide to escape the marriage. A structuralist would argue this second story is an 'inversion' of the first, because the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed. In sum, a structuralist would thus argue that the 'meaning' of a story lies in uncovering this structure rather than, say, discovering the intention of the author who wrote it. West Side Story is a musical written by Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music), and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), and was originally produced, choreographed, and directed by Jerome Robbins. ... Romeo and Juliet is a famous play by William Shakespeare concerning the fate of two young star-crossed lovers. ...

Saussure's Course

Ferdinand de Saussure is generally seen as the originator of structuralism, specifically in his 1916 book Course in General Linguistics. Although Saussure was, like his contemporaries, interested in historical linguistics, in the Course he developed a more general theory of semiology. This approach focused on examining how the elements of language related to each other in the present ('synchronically' rather than 'diachronically'). He thus focused not on the use of language (parole, or talk) but the underlying system of language (langue) of which any particular utterance was an expression. Finally, he argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a 'signifier' (the sound pattern of a word, either in mental projection - as when we silently recite lines from a poem to ourselves - or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act) and a 'signified' (the concept or meaning of the word). This was quite different from previous approaches to language which focused on the relationship between words and the things in the world they designated. By focusing on the internal constitution of signs rather than focusing on their relationship to objects in the world, Saussure made the anatomy and structure of language something that could be analyzed and studied. Ferdinand de Saussure (November 26, 1857 - February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist. ... 1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) Events January-February January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Semiotics (also spelled Semeiotics) is the study of signs and sign systems. ...

Structuralism in linguistics

Saussure's Course influenced many linguists in the period between WWI and WWII. In America, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Scandinavia. In France Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste would continue Saussure's program. Most importantly, however, members of the Prague School of linguistics such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly influential. Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ... German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ... Leonard Bloomfield (1887 - 1949) was an American linguist. ... Antoine Meillet (born Paul-Jules-Antoine Meillet, 11 November 1866 - 21 Septembre 1936) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th Century. ... Emile Benveniste (1902 - 1976) was a French linguist best known for his work on Indo-European languages and his work expanding the linguistic paradigm established by Ferdinand de Saussure. ... The Prague Linguistic Circle (Pražský lingvistický kroužek), or Prague School, developed methods of structuralist literary analysis during the years 1928-1939. ... Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896 - July 18, 1982) was a Russian thinker who became one of the most influential linguists of the 20th century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. ... Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (Moscow, April 15, 1890 - Vienna, June 25, 1938) was a Russian linguist whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. ...

The clearest and most important example of Prague School structuralism lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compile a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague School sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analyzed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the words 'pat' and 'bat' are different because the /p/ and /b/ sounds contrast. The difference between them is that the vocal chords vibrate while saying a /b/ while they do not when saying a /p/. Thus in English there is a contrast between voiced and non-voiced consonants. Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope - it makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating between /r/ and /l/ in English is due to the fact that these two sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. While this approach is now standard in linguistics, it was revolutionary at the time. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different forms. Phonemics is the branch of linguistics which deals with the study of the phonemes of a language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), or phonemics, is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). ...

Structuralism in anthropology

See the main article at structural anthropology

Structural anthropology was first developed by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in the 1950s. Lévi-Strauss applied Saussure's distinction between langue and parole in his search for the fundamental mental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in us unconsciously. Another concept was borrowed from the Prague school of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Levi-Strauss included this in his conceptualisation of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women. In addition to these more linguistically-focused writings, Levi-Strauss was influenced in advances in information theory and mathematics. A third influence came from Marcel Mauss, who had written on gift exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups (a position known as 'alliance theory') as opposed to the 'descent' based theory described by Edward Evan-Evanspritchard and Meyer Fortes. Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth centurys greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture Biography Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at... Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896 - July 18, 1982) was a Russian thinker who became one of the most influential linguists of the 20th century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. ... Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) was a French sociologist best known for his role in elaborating on and securing the legacy of his uncle, Emile Durkheim and the Annee Sociologique. ...

Lévi-Strauss writing proved to be immensely popular in the 1960s and 1970s. In Britain authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism with structural anthropology in France. In America, authors such as Marshall Sahlins and James Boon build on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society. Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s due to a number of reasons. D'Andrade (1995) suggests that structuralism in anthropology was eventually abandoned because it made unverifyable assumptions about the universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political economy and colonialism should be more at the forefront of anthropolgy. More generally, criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has referred to as 'practice theory'. Sir Edmund Ronald Leach( November 7, 1910– January 6, 1989) was a British anthropologist. ... Born in Cambrai, France in 1934, Maurice Godelier is one of the most influential names in French structural anthropology. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Marshall Sahlins (born 1930) is a prominent American anthropologist. ... Eric Wolf (1923-1999) was an anthropologist best known for his studies of Latin America and his advocacy of Marxist perspectives within anthropology. ... Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ... World map of colonialism circa 1945. ... Pierre Bourdieu Pierre-Félix Bourdieu (August 1, 1930-January 23, 2002) was a French sociologist. ...

Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics

Structuralism in mathematics is the study of what structures say a mathematical object is, and how the ontology of these structures should be understood. This is a growing philosophy within mathematics that is not without its share of critics.

In 1965, Paul Benacerraf wrote a paper entitled: "What Numbers Could Not Be." This paper is a seminal paper on mathematical structuralism in an odd sort of way: it started the movement by the response it generated. Benacerraf addressed a notion in mathematics to treat mathematical statements at face value, in which case we are committed to a world of an abstract, eternal realm of mathematical objects. Bernacerraf's dilemma is how do we come to know these objects if we do not stand in causal relation to them. These objects are considered causally inert to the world. Another problem raised by Bernacerraf is the multiple set theories that exist by which reduction of elementary number theory to sets is possible. Deciding which set theory is true has not been feasible. Benacerraf concluded in 1965 that numbers are not objects.

The answer to Benacerraf's negative claims is how structuralism became a viable philosophical program within mathematics. The structuralist responds to these negative claims that the essence of mathematical objects is relations that the objects bear with the structure. Structures are exemplified in abstract systems in terms of the relations that hold true for that system.

Structuralism after the War

After WWII, and particularly in the 1960s, Structuralism surged to prominence in France and it was structuralism's initial popularity in this country which led it to spread across the globe. German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ...

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism such as that practiced by Jean-Paul Sartre was the dominant mood. Structuralism rejected existentialism's notion of radical human freedom and focused instead on the way that human behavior is determined by cultural, social, and psychological structures. The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume Elementary Structures of Kinship. Lévi-Strauss had known Jakobson during their time together in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism as well as the American anthropological tradition. In Elementary Structures he examined kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different social organizations were in fact different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In the late 1950s he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of essays outlining his program for structuralism. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that views the individual, the self, the individuals experience, and the uniqueness therein as the basis for understanding the nature of human existence. ... Jean Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905–April 15, 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, dramatist, novelist and critic. ... Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth centurys greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture Biography Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at... German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ... Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος = human) consists of the study of humankind (see genus Homo). ... Kinship is a biological and/or familial relationship between two organisms. ...

By the early 1960s structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to literature. Jacques Lacan (and, in a different way, Jean Piaget) applied structuralism to the study of psychology, blending Freud and Saussure. Michel Foucault's book The Order of Things examined the history of science to study how structures of epistemology, or epistemes shaped how people imagined knowledge and knowing (though Foucault would later explicitly deny affiliation with the structuralist movement). Louis Althusser combined Marxism and structuralism to create his own brand of social analysis. Other authors in France and abroad have since extended structural analysis to practically every discipline. Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher and semiotician. ... Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher of Jewish descent, considered the first to develop deconstruction after it emerged in the work of Martin Heidegger. ... Jacques Lacan Jacques Lacan (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was an influential French psychoanalyst as well as a structuralist who based many of his theories on the work of Sigmund Freud as well as on Ferdinand de Saussures theories on language. ... Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 - September 16, 1980), a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva from 1929 to 1975, was a francophone Swiss developmental psychologist who is most well known for organizing cognitive development into a series of stages - that is levels of development corresponding to infancy, childhood... Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucaults... Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ... As distinguished from techne, the Greek word episteme (literally: science) is often translated as knowledge. ... Louis Althusser (October 19, 1918 - October 23, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...

The definition of 'structuralism' also shifted as a result of its popularity. As its popularity as a movement waxed and waned, some authors considered themselves 'structuralists' only to later eschew the label. Additionally, the term has slightly different meanings in French and English. In the US, for instance, Derrida is considered the paradigm of post-structuralism while in France he is labeled a structuralist. Finally, some authors wrote in several different styles. Barthes, for instance, wrote some books which are clearly structuralist and others which are clearly not. Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and...

Reactions to structuralism

Today structuralism has been superseded by approaches such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. There are many reasons for this. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favoring deterministic structural forces over the ability of individual people to act. As the political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s (and particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting the academy, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of people's attention. In the 1980s, deconstruction and its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language - rather than its crystalline logical structure - became popular. By the end of the century Structuralism was seen as a historically important school of thought, but it was the movements it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, which commanded attention. Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and... In critical theory and postmodernism, deconstruction is a textual occurrence which exists within Western systems of language and philosophy. ... May 1968 poster: Be young and shut up In May 1968 a general insurrection broke out across France. ... In critical theory and postmodernism, deconstruction is a textual occurrence which exists within Western systems of language and philosophy. ...

See also

• Structuralist film theory
• post-structuralism
• Recursionism
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Michel Foucault
• Jacques Derrida
• Gérard Genette
• Important publications in structuralism
• Tzvetan Todorov
• Prague School Structuralism
• Vladimir Propp
• Roman Jakobson
• Semiotics
• Russian Formalism
• Georges Dumezil
• Roland Barthes

The structuralist film theory emphasizes how films convey meaning through the use of codes and conventions not dissimilar to the way languages are used to construct meaning in communication. ... Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and... Recursionism means a variety of things to different people. ... Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth centurys greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture Biography Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at... Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucaults... Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher of Jewish descent, considered the first to develop deconstruction after it emerged in the work of Martin Heidegger. ... The cover of the paperback edition of Seuils. ... Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy Principles of Psychology William James Principles of Psychology, 1890. ... Tzvetan Todorov (bg: Цветан Тодоров) (born 1939 in Sofia) is a Bulgarian philosopher. ... The Prague Linguistic Circle (Pražský lingvistický kroužek), or Prague School, developed methods of structuralist literary analysis during the years 1928-1939. ... Vladimir Propp (St Petersburg, April 29, 1895 - Leningrad August 22, 1970) was a Russian structuralist scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. ... Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896 - July 18, 1982) was a Russian thinker who became one of the most influential linguists of the 20th century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. ... Semiotics (also spelled Semeiotics) is the study of signs and sign systems. ... Russian Formalism refers to a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars (Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Grigory Vinokur) who revolutionised literary criticism between 1914 and the 1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. ... Georges Dumézil (March 4, 1898 - October 11, 1986) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Indo-European religion and society. ... Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher and semiotician. ...

References

• D'Andrade, R. 1995. The development of cognitive anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Francois Dosse. History of Structuralism (two volumes). University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
• Kuper, A. 1988. The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion. London: Routledge.
• Leach, E. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma. London: Bell.
• Leach, E. 1966. Rethinking Anthropology. Northampton: Dickens.
• Levi-Strauss, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. London: Eyre and Spottis-woode.

External links

• Elements of Structuralism, John lye (http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/struct.html)
• Summary of "Structuralism & Literary Criticism", John Lye (http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/genette.html)
• Das "Anrennen gegen die Grenzen der Sprache" Diskussion mit Roland Barthes, André Breton, Gilles Deleuze & Raymond Federman by Ralph Lichtensteiger (http://www.lichtensteiger.de/methoden.html)
• Roland Barthes by Ralph Lichtensteiger (http://www.lichtensteiger.de/barthes.html)
• Sender/Empfänger by Ralph Lichtensteiger (http://www.lichtensteiger.de/sender.html)
• Schreiben/Writing by Ralph Lichtensteiger (http://www.lichtensteiger.de/schreiben.html)