The Concept of Structuralism; a Review of Levi Strauss and Saussure's Ideas

Structuralism is one of the complex theoretical and influential trends in the field of social studies. Many important thinkers of sociology like Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and many other theorists have been especially concerned with structuralism and have made great efforts to expound this trend or leave it a side. The aim of this paper is to resolve the ambiguity about this influential and intellectual mainstream and address some of its theoretical principles with reference to a number of eminent classical thinkers, like Saussure, Levi Strauss, Barthes, Louis Pierre Althusser and Jacques Lacan. The basic issue in structuralism is human subject and priority of structure over agency. All advocates of structuralism, including linguistics, anthropology, mythology, and structural Marxism, deny human subject giving originality to structure rather than to agency. But, in terms of methodology, this school of thought is based on certain principles and preliminaries, which if not observed, structuralist results cannot be obtained. The important parts of these principles are studied in the present paper a reference to the views of two of the most important thinkers (Levi Strauss and Saussure) is made.