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
Structuralism is a powerful theoretical framework that dominated French thought in the 1960s. Deriving from the insights of the Swiss Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and receiving its most comprehensive expression in the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the structuralist paradigm also operates in the political philosophy of Louis Althusser, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, the “narratology”
As a body of work structuralism assumes that social life and meaning are organized by a set of deep structures that frame understanding and perceptions of reality. Social meaning is the product of systematic conceptual structures through which we apprehend reality. Structuralism traces its existence to the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who
Structuralism is a tradition in the history of ideas that rose to special prominence during the twentieth century within the humanities and social sciences. A shared assumption of structuralist approaches to communication, culture, and society is that interactions, discourses, and social groupings are best understood as relatively self-contained systems or structures. Their formation and transformation