Structuralist approach to development pdf

Structuralism in its inchoate form can be found in the theories of the early twentieth century Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure Course in General Linguistics , , who moved away from the then prevalent historical and philological study of language diachronic to the study of the structures, patterns and functions of language at a particular time synchronic.

According to him, language is not a naming process by which things get associated with a word or name. The painting This is Not a Pipe by the Belgian Surrealist artist Rene Magritte explicates the treachery of signs and can be considered a founding stone of Structuralism. Saussurean theory establishes that human being or reality is not central; it is language that constitutes the world. Saussure gives primacy to speech, as it guarantees subjectivity and presence, whereas writing, he asserted, denotes absence, of the speaker as well as the signified.

Derrida critiqued this as phonocentrism that unduly privileges presence over absence, which led him to question the validity of all centres. Structuralist critics analyse literature on the explicit model of structuralist linguistics.

In their analysis they use the linguistic theory of Saussure as well as the semiotic theory developed by Saussure and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.

According to the semiotic theory , language must be studied in itself, and Saussure suggests that the study of language must be situated within the larger province of Semiology, the science of signs. All signs are cultural constructs that have taken on their meaning through repeated, learned, collective use. The distinctions of symbolic, iconic and indexical signs, introduced by the literary theorist Charles Sande Peirce is also a significant idea in Semiology. Structuralism was anticipated by the Myth Criticism of Northrop Frye , Richard Chase , Leslie Fiedler , Daniel Hoffman , Philip Wheelwright and others which drew upon anthropological and physiological bases of myths, rituals and folk tales to restore spiritual content to the alienated fragmented world ruled by scientism, empiricism and technology.

Myth criticism sees literature as a system based or recurrent patterns. The French social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss applied the structuralist outlook to cultural phenomena like mythology, kinship relations and food preparation. He applied the principles of langue and parole in his search for the fundamental mental structures of the human mind. Myths seem fantastic and arbitrary yet myths from different cultures are similar.

Hence he concluded there must be universal laws that govern myths and all human thought. He breaks myths into smallest meaningful units called mythemes. Levi-Strauss showed how opposing ideas would fight and also be resolved in the rules of marriage, in mythology, and in ritual. In interpreting the Oedipus myth he placed the individual story of Oedipus within the context of the whole cycle of tales connected with the city of Thebes.

He then identifies repeated motifs and contrasts, which he used as the basis of his interpretation. Concrete details from the story are seen in the context of a larger structure and the larger structure is then seen as an overall network of basic dyadic pairs which have obvious symbolic, thematic and archetypal resonance.

This is the typical structuralist process of moving from the particular to the general placing the individual work within a wider structural content. A very complex binary opposition introduced by Levi-Strauss is that of bricoleur savage mind and an engineer true craft man with a scientific mind.

According to him, mythology functions more like a bricoleur, whereas modern western science works more like an engineer the status of modem science is ambivalent in his writings. When a faucet breaks, the bricoleur stops the leak using a cloth, which is not actually meant for it.

On the other hand the engineer foresees the eventuality and he would have either a spare faucet or all the spanners and bolts necessary to repair the tap. Roland Barthes , the other major figure in the early phase of structuralism later he turned to Post Structuralism , applied the structuralist analysis and semiology to broad cultural phenomena. Forgot password.

Complete Book Download pages Table of Contents pages List of Figures pages List of Tables pages Preface pages Economic Structure, Policy, and Growth pages Growth and Policy Space in Historical Terms pages Open Economies and Patterns of Trade pages Financial Structures pages Macroeconomic Policy Choices pages Growth and Sectoral Policy pages Stylized Facts and Policy Alternatives pages References pages Dosse, This overview is required to compare how a common approach led Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes to the similar conclusion about the potential for persons to escape ideology.

Bottomore, As considered by structuralists broadly , a structure refers to the generative dynamic which produces the observable features of daily life. However the qualification that Piaget inserts is as structures generate rules, so those same structures will come to change functions and values.

These forces, the structuralists proposed, were universal. Levi-Strauss, i In considering both Levi-Strauss and Jakobson, the term structuralism applies to a range of inquiries and the method and approach through by which one comes to examine the social universe.

Dosse, 43; also see De George, De George, In this sense it is less a conventional systematic philosophy per se, and more an epistemology. This system was well regarded not for the demonstration to establish the arbitrary nature of the sign.

Such a proposition had convinced a wide number of linguists by the close of the 19th century. Dosse, Moreover these differences were without direct oppositions if any opposition at all. Consequently in this model, values stem from relational elements.

Lastly Saussure in considering that context and experience were less important implied that value systems did not have to be determined by historicity; instead something static lay beneath the surface appearance. Hence the laws of change in value systems were not held in local particularities or local meanings, but rather followed a code of sorts. This in effect meant that the meaning of language emerged from conventional elements and not over-determined by a specific element.

In this way, Saussure argued for a consideration of foundations — implicit or explicit, conscious or unconscious — through by which the world comes to be constituted. The following sections elaborate on this dynamic. She argues that the book had little impact in its field during from to To support this proposition Gadet examined the history of publication of the Course in General Linguistics: only five editions were published between and , along with another five editions between and Gadet, Fr.

Within this expansion, the media sector grew as well, fostering in an era of increased circulation of and access to mass media. Caron, ch. With the publication of Mythologies Barthes attempted to do just that. Through a formalized study of myth in everyday life Barthes argued that myths distort people from grasping the real meaning behind a text. Consequently people were incorporated into believing and perpetuating partial beliefs. Barthes, in Eagleton, , Building upon Saussure and Hjelmslev whom Barthes does not cite Dosse, 73 , he adopts the signifier and signified model of language and argues that the signifier can take on a particular value and denotations.

In other words, these features of the signifier are open to flux and in turn have functional implications. Barthes implies that such revaluing can be used to deliberately mislead people. According to Barthes again borrowing concepts from Hjelmslev , myth functions in both the realm of metalanguage and of language-object. These functions somewhat correspond to connotation and denotation.

This distinction makes the sign of language into the signifier of myth. In different words Barthes presents the signifier in language as meaning, whereas in myth it is a form. Barthes, in Eagleton, In myth the original meaning becomes distorted as the new form develops.

In doing so, the new form retains the original concept the signified but replaces it with new content. This process in turn alters the various possible connotations and denotations, and hence the information that the signifier signals.

Hence the choice of which signs to convey demonstrates the values of a society. However, as presented above, the signifier can emerge out of three avenues 3 For brevity the technical relationship between metalanguage and the language-object against connotation and denotation cannot be dealt with in this paper. The author is aware that he is making a gross simplification in collapsing the one set of concepts into the other.