Encounters with structure

A discussion of poststructuralism may be helped by reflecting on the trajectory of ideas and practices that produced it. Structuralism as an intellectual movement has had a bad press and doubtless some of that is deserved. But structuralism was more diverse and creative, and structural analysis as a procedure in social science is more important, than many now acknowledge. In this paper the author takes as data his own experience as a social scientist, and explores one trajectory through structuralism and beyond.