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
> 
> 




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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
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Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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