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

Dear Carl Nordlund:

Probably you will solve part of your querys about ECLAC's 
structuralism (why this name, etc) if you read one of my lecture 
notes
at http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/ecla1.htm

You are welcome to ask me questions, if required


Dr. Robinson Rojas

---------------------------------




On 17 Jul 2003, at 18:02, Carl Nordlund wrote:

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


Dr. Róbinson Rojas
UCL/DPU, University of London (lecturer).
EFSP, South Bank University, (lecturer).
PFPC (director)(http://www.firstpeoplescentury.net).
RRojas Databank (co-editor)(http://www.rrojasdatabank.org)
Puro Chile. The memory of the people (co-director) (http://www.purochile.org)