The Dictionary of Human Geography

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receiving loans from theinternational mon-

etary fundor the World Bank, designed to

encourage exports and increase the resources

that governments have available for dealing

with short-term balance-of-payments crises.

Typical structural adjustment programmes

include measures such as reducing govern-

ment spending, cutting or containing wages,

liberalizing imports and reducing restrictions

on foreign investment, devaluing the currency

and privatizing state enterprises (see also

neo-liberalism; privatization). jgl

Suggested readings

Bello (1994); Payer (1974).

structural functionalism A tradition of

social theorymost closely associated with

the American sociologist Talcott Parsons

(1902–79), whose central proposition was that

the structure of any social system cannot be

derived ‘from the actor’s point of view’, but

must instead be explained by the ways in

which the ‘functional imperatives’ necessary

for the survival of any social system are met

(Parsons, 1951: see also functionalism;

system). Parsons insisted that the analysis of

any social system requires the conjunction

of static (‘structure’) and dynamic (‘function’)

components, and constantly accentuated the

need to grasp the dynamics of social systems.

He attributed crucial importance to the inter-

changes between systems and between subsys-

tems, and in his later formulations developed a

more formalcyberneticmodel ofsociety

that drew upon biology as much as it did

classical social theory.

Parsons’ influence on modern social theory

was extraordinary, even though his views were

subjected toa sustained and attimes devastating

critique. For all his interest in dynamics, it

proved difficult to incorporate structural trans-

formation into his model. For all his interest in

generalization, his model of the social system

seemed to be based on the USA as global exem-

plar. Today, Parsons’ influence is perhaps great-

est in Germany, where Luhmann (1981) and

Habermas (1987) have made critical yet cre-

ative appropriations of some of his ideas.

Parsons’ shadow overhuman geographyhas

been much shorter. Systems analysis and sys-

tems theory ingeography had quite other

sources, usually far removed from social theory.

Even so, Parsons loomed large in Duncan’s

(1980) critique of the ‘superorganic’ in Sauer’s

cultural geography and world-systems

analysishas been criticized as ‘Parsonianism

on a world scale’ (Cooper, 1981). dg

Suggested reading

Alexander (1983); Duncan (1980).

structuralism A set of principles and pro-

cedures originally derived from linguistics

and linguistic philosophy that seek to expose

the enduring and underlying structures

inscribed in the cultural practices of human

subjects. There have been various structural-

isms, all of them dominated by ‘French’ (or at

least Francophone) theory, and particularly by

Roland Barthes (1915–80) in literary theory,

Claude Le ́vi-Strauss (1908– ) in anthropology

and Jean Piaget (1896–1980) in psychology.

The ideas of all three were introduced into

Anglophonehuman geographyin the late

twentieth century: Harvey (1973) briefly toyed

with Piaget en route to a more vigorously

materialist analysis of the structures of the

space-economy of capitalism; Gregory

(1978a) drew upon Le ́vi-Strauss in his search

for a mode of ‘structural explanation’ to dis-

place thepositivismon whichspatial science

relied; and Duncan and Duncan (1992) used

Barthes as a way-station in their journey

towards readinglandscapenot as morph-

ologybut astext.

As these descriptions suggest, human geo-

graphy’s engagement with structuralism was

short-lived and functioned as a transition to

other approaches that were explored in much

more depth. In the most general terms, Peet

(1998, p. 112) argues that ‘the move towards

structuralism, never complete in geographical

thought, represented a search for greater

theoretical coherence and rigor’. But it did not,

in itself, provide a satisfying solution to the

problems ofempiricismthat provoked human

geographers to pursue it in the first place. They

turned, instead, towards various forms ofmarx-

ism, including astructural Marxismderived from

the writings of Louis Althusser (1918–90) and

Nicos Poulantzas (1936–79), whose analytics of

power and process left its marks primarily in

economic, political and urban geography;

towards the philosophy of realism,whose

modes of structural explanation were more sen-

sitive to historical and geographical specificity

than any structuralism; and towards various

forms ofpost-structuralism, which promised

a more incisive analysis of desire,discourse

andsubjectivity. dg

Suggested reading

Peet (1998, pp. 112–46).

structuration theory A social theory devel-

oped by the British sociologist Anthony

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STRUCTURATION THEORY