Discuss Giddens’s notions of structure and social system and compare/contrast it to the work of structuralism. Specifically discuss the work of functional structuralism versus that of de Saussure.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Giddens combines his perspective on consciousness with a reworking of key structural-functionalist ideas. During social encounters, individuals routinely and continuously monitor their own activity, the behavior of others with whom they are interacting, and the setting in which the interaction is taking place. During social encounters individuals routinely maintain a taken-for-granted practical (that is, nondiscursive) understanding or rationalization of the interaction. The motivation of action refers to the wants and desires—often unconsciousness—that impel us to act. In other words, our intentional actions are often motivated by unconscious wants of which we are unaware, while these same actions often have the unintended consequence of reproducing the social institutions in which they are embedded. As such, the unintended consequences “loop back” to create the unacknowledged conditions of action. Drawing on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of linguistic structuralism (see Chapter 8), Giddens argues that structures are properties that exist only in the moment of their use by actors. They have no existence outside of the time and space in which they draw on during social encounters, save as “know how” or “memory traces” on the part of actors. Yet, structures are reproduced at the very moment individuals draw on them to make sense of, and act in, the social world—thus the duality of structure. Recalling de Saussure’s distinction between speech (parole) and language (langue), the duality of structure illustrates how “just as each speech act implies and draws upon the whole structure of language, so each social action implies and draws upon the structure it instantiates” (Craib 1992:42). Giddens’s understanding of structure is a significant departure from conventional sociological uses of the term, particularly those uses that are aligned with functionalist modes of analysis. Functionalist approaches view social structures as external forces that determine or constrain individual action. From this viewpoint, functionalists emphasize how the patterned actions of individuals have the unintended consequence or “latent function” of preserving the stability of the existing social order. What is of importance here is not understanding the motives and reasons individuals themselves may possess for carrying out certain behaviors, but rather, uncovering “society’s reasons” for requiring such behavior on the part of its members (Giddens 1979:210–215).