Structuralism

Structuralism is the name generally given to the movement that stems largely from Saussure’s vision of semiology. Structuralism can perhaps be best described as an approach to the study of sign systems operative in culture, taking account of texts in terms of the system from which they were produced, concerning themselves not with the qualities of isolated examples – but the structures that underlie the individual examples themselves. Whilst Saussure’s work was largely confined to the field of linguistics, this structural approach was appropriated broadly by the human sciences. Claude Levi Strauss quickly applied these ideas to the field of anthropology. Against the dominant approach in which anthopologists had looked at individual tribes or social groups, Levi Strauss was concerned with the structures that underlie all societies.

See Deconstruction, Post-Structuralism