Re: Structuralism - ECLA-style and Levi-Strauss/Saussure style

Frank,

Thank you for your reply.

>more correct would be doctrine that structure shapes, generates,
defines, determines function.

I agree partly. (If structure generates function, i.e function doesn't
affect structure, there is no dynamics in the system, thus making it
"all", i.e positional movements between core, semi-periphery and
periphery, just a deterministic unfolding of inherent structures,
something which isn't supported by the last 5000 years of history, I
think.)

>I would say that THAT is where the use came from in re ECLA/CEPAL - an
answer to the 
>micro-econ analysis and policy recommendations that says structure
matters.

Ok! For me, at this point, the code-word is "micro-econ" here - thanks!

>That is, the exact opposite of the Friedman Chicaho-school! - where3
have you been?
>Ilearnee economic theory in Friedman's class, and it said nothing like
structuralism
>ecla or otherwise.

Of course it is the exact opposite - where did I say it wasn't?! But as
I didn't attend the Friedman lectures in the Chicago school (the "where
have [I] been?" should rather be "when have [I] been?"), I haven't got a
clue whether the term 'structural' could be backtracked to the modernist
thoughts of that time, perhaps in any way explicitly attached to ECLA:s
(and Keynes, for that matter) reaction to the strict neo-classicism of
the Chicago school of 1920-1950.

>I think the ECLAS did not regard ''interna'' strucrure as sepoarate
from >''external"strucrue.

Ok. I got the feeling that they somehow did, based on the facts that
they thought that the peripheral position could be changed by
national/internal action (ISI, industrial programming and fostering,
inviting foreign capital etc), that the peripheral position was just the
egg from the faulty chicken (flawed internal production structures), and
that the view on external historical structures as "the chicken" came
first with your 1967/1969 writing.

>I think yo are terribly wrong about WS when you say
>> focus on the structure of social systems instead of the internal
>> attributes of the elements constituing such systems
>thats utter non-sense.  first of all the main thesis oif WS  both
Wallewrsteins and mine >has been that there is ONE SINGLE WORLD SYStEM

Yes, I am familiar with the singularity view taken by you, Wallerstein
among others. Personally, I am more a proponent of using it in with
hyphen and in the pluralis (inspired by Chase-Dunn/Hall's "Rise and
demise") and with a more 'perceptional' definition of "world" here, as
this whole systemic approach is indeed very usable on non-global
geographical and conceptual scales as well.

>the strucfure and the ' elements'are not separate/able entitites. thee
is no abstract
>structure in/ of a void. the point is their RELATION. and how  the
structure of the
>whole system shapes the attrributes of the elements - i dunno what the
difference is
>between the elements and their attributes, strim,es me as more utter
non-sense.

I don't get this, I must admit! If we choose to define the parts
(actors/elements) of the world system (or hyphenated depending on
conceptual taste) as national-state economies, each with their specific
(internal) 'attributes' (such as gdp, unemployment rates, institutional
arrangements, production structures etc etc etc), then we also have a
set of relations between these 'elements' which, you and I believe ("the
structure of the whole system shapes the attrributes of the elements"),
affect the 'attributes' of each respective elements. But these
attributes (such as gdp, gini-coeffs etc) are surely quite different to
the elements - the elements are national states! (We might have a
difference in terminology here - I am influenced by social network
analysis and Bertalanffy system theory here. For me, I see the structure
of a system and the relations between actors in a system as the same
thing).

Of course there is no structure in a void. But analytically, there is
indeed a point in separating structure from elements - I do believe we
can draw more conclusions if we focus on the relations/structures, as
you say, instead of focusing on internal aspects, i.e looking more for
exogenous than endogenous causes for underdevelopment.

>apologies for the uncalled for personalism

No offense taken.

Yours,
Carl
-----
Carl Nordlund, BA, PhD student
carl.nordlund(at)humecol.lu.se
Human Ecology Division, Lund university
www.humecol.lu.se




-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Andre Gunder Frank [mailto:franka@fiu.edu] 
Skickat: den 19 juli 2003 22:43
Till: Carl Nordlund
Kopia: wsn@csf.colorado.edu; franka@fiu.edu; Jeffrey Sommers
Ämne: Re: Structuralism - ECLA-style and Levi-Strauss/Saussure style


gunder frank replies in rush.
I just lookd in my CONCISE OXFORD DICTORNAY P 1143, 1976 ED. If i were
to look in the real one, or if you were to look on the web, we would
find countless other uses of the word structure/al/ism. the COE already
gives too many to name here from conSTRUCTion, concstruc, iin
engeneerin, lingustics, psychology, ordinary language, formula. for
structutalism t says doctrine that structure rather than function is
important -I actually i think that is a MISunderstanding, more correct
would be doctrine that structure shapes, generates, defines, determines
function.

I would say that THAT is where the use came from in re ECLA/CEPAL - an
answer to the micro-econ analysis and policy recommendations that says
structure matters. That is, the exact opposite of the Friedman
Chicaho-school! - where3 have you been? Ilearnee economic theory in
Friedman's class, and it said nothing like structuralism ecla or
otherwise. All structure. the preface to one of my bokks says that sid
Mintz and I have a 50 year argumetn, he says culture matters, i say
structure matters. I think the ECLAS did not regard ''interna''
strucrure as sepoarate from ''external"strucrue. and of course they are
related. it raises the question whuich is the chcken and whcihn the egg.

ECLA s first answer was it seems that  external > internal.they had
internal policies of ISI industrialization etc. - which had been done de
facto during the depression and war, and i will send you something about
an excellent book that deals with that in the  blakans in the 1930s
doing the same. but they of course shied away from class 'structure"-
which is  where dependence and WS come in as related or derived.

I think yo are terribly wrong about WS when you say

 focus on the structure of social systems instead of the internal
> attributes of the elements constituing such systems

thats utter non-sense.  first of all the main thesis oif WS  both
Wallewrsteins and mine has been that there is ONE SINGLE WORLD SYStEM
secondly the strucfure and the ' elements'are not separate/able
entitites. thee is no abstract structure in/ of a void. the point is
their RELATION. and how  the structure of the whole system shapes the
attrributes of the elements - i dunno what the difference is between the
elements and their attributes, strim,es me as more utter non-sense.

Levy-Strauss. yes and maybe you have a point in that all''strucure'' has
a common strucrural compeonet or form of organization.

You dont mention Radcliffe-Brown and the other Brit [all from the
colonies!] structural  anthropologists whose 'structure' made
imperialism and colonialism disappear out of sight, not to mention all
history whjich 
R-B explicitly dondemmned to the dust-bin of history as of no
explanatory 
importance. Levy-Strauss implication was rather the oppsite, no? . I
confess however that THAT [R-B et  cco] is where i learned my
structuralism, and when i sat in Redfield's class i only critiqued him
for his lack of attentio  to structure, and we had a privte seminar
outside of the formal one where i preac hed strucrure to my class mates
- in anthro, i was escaping the friedmanites.

apologies for the uncalled for personalism

gunder frank.

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003, Carl Nordlund wrote:

> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:02:40 +0200
> From: Carl Nordlund <carl.nordlund@humecol.lu.se>
> To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
> Subject: Structuralism - ECLA-style and Levi-Strauss/Saussure style
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I am currently drafting on a conference paper and although not central

> to the content of the paper, some thoughts have arised which perhaps 
> someone has any reflections on!
> 
> In the history of world system thinking, I find Raul Prebisch and the 
> ECLA group as a natural starting point, folks often referred to as the

> Latin American structuralists. This made me wonder why they are called

> structuralism - for me (after reading some development thinking 
> history books), it seems like they got this label because they looked 
> at internal production structures in a handful of national economies 
> in Latin America. Correct? Or is it because they were the first to 
> address the existance of a global core-periphery structure? Or are 
> they referred to structuralists for some other reasons (based on their

> origin from the Chicago school of economics or similar)?
> 
> Being a former computer engineer student with zilch formal 
> anthropology in my CV, I haven't read any Levi-Strauss at all. But as 
> I understand it, he transformed the thoughts from Saussure's 
> structural linquistics into an ethnographic/anthropological 
> methodology which, in practice, meant a greater emphasis on relational

> structures than properties of individual elements (which in the 
> linguistic tradition had been historical lingustics). But hey, if I'm 
> somewhat correct so far, this does indeed draw a clear parallell 
> between ECLA/Prebischian structuralism and Levi-Strauss/Saussure 
> structuralism: focusing on the relations between actors/elements in a 
> social system instead of just focusing on internal attributes of 
> actors (the latter what the modernist ECLA-counterparts did - Rostow, 
> Hirschmann, Lewis et al - as well as the historical linguistics which 
> Saussure's structuralist viewpoint counter-revolutionized)! But I 
> haven't seen anyone state any parallells or analogies between 
> ECLA-style vs Levi-Strauss-style 'structuralism' - am I missing 
> something completely here?
> 
> Thirdly - as Levi-Strauss is quite heavy on semotics and symbolic 
> mathematics, is he generally considered a formalist among 
> anthropologists? Has there been any (attempts at) counter-revolution 
> against anthropological/ethnographic structuralism? If so, have these 
> counter-trends implied contra-structuralistic thoughts, i.e with a 
> grander focus on elements per se instead of relations between 
> elements?
> 
> Lastly: in light of other strands of (economic) development thinking, 
> I find the defining feature of world-system analysis to be the 
> explicit focus on the structure of social systems instead of the 
> internal attributes of the elements constituing such systems, while 
> the latter, but not the former, I argue, being characteristic of 
> modernist, new trade school thinking and similar mainstream 
> neo-classial development thoughts (so-called orthodox development 
> thinking). Is this rough outline of the main issue in (economic) 
> world-system thinking appropriate?
> 
> Yours,
> Carl
> -----
> Carl Nordlund, BA, PhD student
> carl.nordlund(at)humecol.lu.se
> Human Ecology Division, Lund university
> www.humecol.lu.se
> 
> 




 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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