Structuralism and the theory of the subject

pp. 9-48

in: Anthony Giddens, Central problems in social theory, Berlin, Springer, 1979

Abstract

"Functionalism" and 'structuralism" have been perhaps the leading broad intellectual traditions in social theory over the past thirty or forty years. Both terms have long since lost any precise meaning, but it is possible none the less to identify a number of core notions which each invokes. Functionalism and structuralism in some part share similar origins, and have important features in common. The lineage of both can be traced back to Durkheim, as refracted in the former instance through the work of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, and in the latter through that of Saussure and Mauss.¹ Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski reacted against speculative, evolutionary anthropology; Saussure against not too dissimilar notions held by his predecessors, the neo-grammarians. Each of these three authors came to place a stress upon synchrony, separating the synchronic from the diachronic. Each came to accentuate the importance of the 'system", social and linguistic, as contrasted with the elements which compose it. But from then on the characteristic emphases diverge. In functionalism, the guiding model of 'system" is usually that of the organism, and functionalist authors have consistently looked to biology as a conceptual bank to be plundered for their own ends.