ANDRÉ BURGUIERE

History and Structure

André Burguiere, at the time secrétaire de rédaction ofthe Annales,

began his introduction to a special issue of the journal devoted to
“History and Structure” by parodying Jean Giraudoux: “The war
between history and structuralism ivill not ta^e place. ” It ivas a reas-
suring diagnosis, perhaps because it carne late, in 1971. It ivas in the
mid-iQÓos that the structuralist movement posed its most aggressive
challenge to the historical point of view. By the early 1970S, there
were already signs that the challenge ivas on the tvane. Historians
chose that moment to ta^e bac\ the initiative. In the case of the
Annales, they did so, once again, by occupying the terrain of social
Science to point out the deep similarities that existed, in their view,
betiveen the project initiated by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvreforty
years earlier and the recent claims of social scientists anxious to de­
clare their independence from history. Indeed, the historians went ¿o
far as to proclaim “rights of patemity to the structural approach.
This intellectually as well as strategically ¿mportant special issue of
the joumal ivas devoted to rediscovering this alleged common herí
¿age, as tvell as to a purely empirical definition ofa program ofinter
disciplinary comparison.

he war between history and structuralism will not ^c.

this special issue of the Annales y
this special issue of the Annales^ wewe have no intention o
aa rhetorical duel that was
rhetorical duel that was fashionable for a time
i prefer to profit from this period of relative ca m.

André Burguiere, “Histoire et structure,” ^^ 3~4 097^

 TU E líTtlUCT^ HALl^'f MOMhül iMfb

ícal debate temporarily lies fallow, fescarc b can - >'/^t

The tíme has come for a preliminar/ atscssríM
Hucncc on histórica! research,
The confrontaron that v>me wúhed to arra/
the JatcM human Science# transformad V/huif^ r
debate, Whih historian* saw no need for

realignments going on all around tnem, At this h

constitutcd a school: it mcrely rcflc/Jcd the </,b/^
of research, some airead/ well rstablished (
and general linguístics, for exampie), other# more re
tural anthropology and semíology), temporarilv o/ >

If the rejection of history seerned to crystallize t 1

and afford it a certain cohesiveness, it was bec ^

needed first of all to break the hístoricíst rnold ii

original!y cast—by “historicísm” I mean a consta >
.X’

analysis from study of the phenomenon to stud

explanación), as well as a tendeney for various a **■

back and forth among themselves through end

reasoning (explanación in terms of external caí
Yet a return to history is already beginning. Ethnokg .
m&y interested in restoring to so-called primitive societies
dimensión that is compressed in mvths and institutions- *
as Michel Foucault has pointed out in L’Archéolwe du
chaeology ofKnoiMge), nowadays attaches great sE *-•

of rupture and transition—accidents of a son—thai

T”P - ^ ?f the history of Science; while histon h ^^

‘^ tó k ^"^ to movements over T

which changes slowly. By contras*, what remams ot the

^ammtO’ “* ^«^ «ntribution, is .ts refusai
a Te ‘YregatC «i dementary units (faets. e
éitheí^0 “í? PhLenom«a and begin with details
to 1 Ot^ one to
to the general y.elds nothing of significance. move from
enS^^ ^ that
are nlr willS ^kL"^ ?“**«• Observable phenome
system. In comparativa mJ¿j !!!*?"“ fra£menls °' “ '
structuralist avant la latiré foun^h ^ "^P*0’ Geor
sively on how myths Sved f^ ^ “ ^ *“ “H
European mvtholoU th' í T 006 anothcr In ^ Í
ccrtam social , 'dennheation of svmbohc i w^

certam social funct.ons (such as the warnor fanction • ,-nrf

 HE HISt0R1ANS respond
diffusionist hypothesis, which, since it involved a homogeneous ethnn
altura! entity, found ready acceptance while providing no exp ana ^n
for the presence or persistence of the symbolic repre xPlan«H°n
tion. by contrast, the fact that the warrior function 'Scntutions in qucs.
in Indo-Eu copean
myths always appeared in conjunction with (or impl
the religious and agricultural functions revealed the di
urable importance
pC a cultural model based on a tripartite organizat
ion of society. The
persistence of this model should be seen not as an ideológica!
conse
quence floating on the surface of history but as the projection of a system
of thought essential to the functioningof Indo-european societies

If structural analysis consists in uncovering permanent features, in re-

vealing, in the words of Jean Piaget, “a system of transformado™ gov-
erned by certain systematic laws,”2 then historiaos must recognize that
they have long been familiar with the approach, even at the risk of seem-
ing to be asserting yet again certain rights ofpriority. For them, structure
was at first a deliberately vague methodological notion, useful for under-
standing imperceptible changes and for bringing into history phenom-
ena that had seemed to stand outside of time. This early structuralism
overlaps with the history of the Annales. I would be reluctant even to
mention it, for by now it has become the common property and tool of
all historians, if some structuralists, and not the least of them, in their
criticisms of historians had not repeatedly neglected the Annalistes' con-
tribution. For instance, Louis Althusser wrote that "Hegel merely recon-
ceptualized, in terms of his own theoretical problematic, the number-
one problem of historical practice, the problem that Voltaire evoked
when he distinguished, for example, the century of Louis XV from that
of Louis XIV. This is still the major problem of modern historiogra-
pny. 3 If by this Althusser means periodization as a means of classifica-
on, it has and will continué to have in history the same heuristic valué
? at the classification of species has in the natural Sciences. However, if
c means a sort of dissection of historical reality in all its “thickness”
a mere sequence of isolated scenes, each of which, with its complex
itecture of social ills, commercial exchanges, wars, and works of art,
t0 ke symbolized by a king or pope, what historian nowadays
A /^^ ^is as a descripción of his practice?
p 2 "^t historian would resign himself to the división of labor pro-
Organ S°me ^mC a!° ^ Claude Lévi-Strauss, when he stated that history
tion t ZCS ltS ^ata "i*1 rdation to conscious expressions, ethnology in reía-
porat°d nC°nscious cxPrcss*ons» of sociaí hfe.”4 All that history has incor-
tOry of °VCr ^ Past half century, from geographical history to the his-
data f ^^^ froro the quantitative history of priccs, demographic
’ °od consumption, and climate to the history of social relations and
 THE STRUCTURALIST MOMENT fMlD-i96Os
I *34 * ___ ______ ___ ________________ __ ____ M11)
institutions, it has done by Crossing the boundary between^^ I
unconscious data. When it returns to the most conscious of ", > aM I
expression, to works of hterature and art, it still must look of I
o
Work’s stated meaning and base its analys.s on the organ,^ "% ■ tí
unconscious, or at any rate of the implic.t which Lucicn Febvr % I
l’outillage mental. It sometimes seems as if htstory s mission Werc ^ ■ ti
as a scapegoat for the human Sciences. Its place? That which I a

of the event.”6 It was good for all the indigestible refuse of social rea y I
for all that could not be reduced or formalized, as if it rnust for.,y ■
remain the empire of the accidental. "r I

What history are these critics talking about? The history that grows wnh I
the passage of time? The history that historians write or some metaphyv I
ical dimensión of the human condition whereby man exercises his free. I
dom and creates his meaning in the element of time? The ambiguities I
of the vocabulary, it must be granted, are perpetuated by historians I
themselves, as if they hoped thereby to preserve the ambivalence of their I
knowledge. In this respect, the debate with structuralism and with struc- I
tural anthropology in particular deserves credit for forcing history to ■
choose between the Science and the ideology of change. By claiming to I
be concerned with societies without history, ethnology challenged the
beliefs of historians for whom a society becomes intelligible only as it
fulfills its destiny over time. But “historyless” is hardly an accurate de-
scription of societies that are neither static ñor without memory. Today,
of course, ethnologists, especially Africanists, are casting a critical eye on
ahistorical conceptions of primitive society. Every society bears the ur
den ofhistory, and the histories ofsome ofthe societies studied by et no
ogists have been very eventful indeed, full of migrations, wars, econon^
transformations, and social tensions. Only our inability (or re^uctanc^v
discover their histories forces us to adopt an ethnocentric point0
from which some societies seem static and determined never to o
the way they function, to reproduce themselves endlessly. ^unk
These histories remain undiscoverable not because they
into oblivion (the impressive wealth of myths and oral literature
that it has not) but because history’s conceptual framework has1 íelll
ablc to accommodate them. What is at issue here is the
of chronological divisions that our educational system from e e $^ ^ .^
school to the university religiously perpetuales and th^by inr ej inn’
an almost transcendental valué. How are exotic societies to be n e
t e ubiquitous scheme of four major historical epochs that av ^j,
a fundamental fixture of our intellectual development—AntiQu visión
e Ages, Ancien Régime, modern times? (Indeed, the last gre oütsi^e
is marked by the French Revolution, which is scarcely relevan
 HE HISTORIANS respond

i France.) HoW is their history to be squared with tkf---------------- L

of reality that are the cause of evolution and rr I C°nstant Pesores
techniques, social groups, nations, institutions beU?f. °?~pr^uctive
geyond this inadequate system of references Jk 7’ ^ „ on?
non is the histonan’s claim to define every sociétv k ‘* ed ,nto ^“es-
and pace of development with those of Europe Thí c°mPanng its level
gencrosity as much as by dogmatism, grew out of t¿ .T^’ 'nSp'red b?
ress with which historical Science was closely associat^0 Ogy ^ prog‘
As various studies in historical lexicology have shown'"^ ^l7 ^
century hesitated between a fixed and a dynamic con "k ^c^^
between history as portrait and history as narrative reco T °f hlst°7’
sequence of events. Evolutionism, in which histor^S^
found its roo s, was a militant philosophy that expected history to furni h
experimental proof of progress. It was also quite simply a rasponse o
new economic conditions. Extending theory beyond all reasonable lim
its, it projected the valúes of industrial Europe, its cult of change and
innovation, onto other epochs and civilizations. It transformed the
growth process that propelled Europe into a phase of high-temperature
development, the age of accumulation that made Europe distinct into
the unique time of history. As if Europe, while equipping itself with the
means to achieve objective knowledge of the past (through erudition
5
critical scrutiny of the sources, and other requirements of historical
method), sought above all to justify its destiny after the fact.
Can a particular experience, an accidental or at least recent accelera-
tion of change through industrial revolution, be turned into the universal
standard against which all history is measured? Indeed, such a concep-
tion of history, a veritable Procrustean bed into which a wide variety of
civilizations have been forced, provides too many justifications and too
few explanations. It is being challenged today by students of other cul-
tures as well as those of our own historical bailiwick.
If, in this effort to achieve a new outlook, historians can claim certain
nghts of paternity to the structural approach, much of the credit must
go to Marxism. Although Marxism may nowadays appear to be the most
ully developed of various unilinear theories of history, it taught histori-
ans to define a society or period in ternas not of a series of events but of
an operational system, namely, the mode of production. It undertook to
ecipher in a systematic way the results of a historical method that was
ontent sinaply to verify the authenticity of its sources, and in so doing
scovered behind what societies admitted about thenaselves (the lan-
°^ ^c superstructura, that is) their unavowed logic.
• arxism s legacy was therefore perfectly anabiguous. Every tendency
th 1StOr'ca' Science today has been influenced by Marxism even when
"er« ¡s no explicit reference to it. Yet, thus far, no important historical
°r* has been totally Marxist in inspiration. Although Lévi-Strauss ac-
 THE STRUCTURALIST MOMENT (lUlD-i^^
Mlh
knowledges a direct relation between the Marxist meth
turalist approach,7 some Marxist historians charge that |
derestimates the strivings toward human liberation
course of social development, strivings that they accu^ ^aífa
diluting in a dispiriting tincture of historical pluralism/tru
In fact, in affirming the need for historical pluralism i |
Lévi-Strauss was responding to the same need that im^0^
historians of the 1930S to emphasize the importance of va^11
cycles. The static history of “coid” or traditional societies is^ ¡Ufa
ily immutable or repetitive, he argued, but their “line of d^
.1
means nothing to us” because it falls outside our frame of f ,0Pn>
is something different from cumulative history, the history of1
ical progress, industrial production, and also (provided one is
the defining indices) intellectual progress. ar awx»

In Europe’s eventful past, historians have recently identified

of equilibrium during which change has been more or less minirn^ ^
VP
a relatively lengthy period. The great cycle of European agrarian h' ° t

that runs from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century is one of th/
By the middle of the eighteenth century, some regions had just returne ’
to the levels of population density and economic output they ha¿
achieved on the eve of the Great Plague, yet despite this broad equilib
rium they experienced all the contradictions and tensions of a “hot” his
tory: social tensions whose peaks coincided with demographic “troughf
and poor harvests together with an absolute decrease in food consump-
tion (marked by the virtual disappearance of meat from the average
market basket) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same
time, however, cities were growing and commercial capitalism was
grafting early forms of accumulation onto a basically growthless agrar
ian society.
Cyclic theories also had the merit of making crises a part ofthesys'
tem s logic. For a long time, historians viewed the periodic catastrop
that afflicted Ancien Régime society, with their cortege of rebellín -
epidemic, as nothing more than accidental disturbances of a back^
economy, due in part to civil unrest, in part perhaps to the birth
of a new social order. But then Ernest Labrousse revealed the
nomic implications of subsistence crises, Jean Meuvret and
bert showed how they served to regúlate the Ancien Reginas
graphic system, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie demonstrad ,
cióse association with climatic cycles, that other implacable r^ ^
agricultural societies bereft of technological progress, s0
recognize cyclical crises as one of the linchpins of Ancien petitbe
The disparity that exists within any given period between
change, regression, and progress leads to the identificad00 s¡^
distinct rhythms within historical time, indeed to a contras
 HE HISTORIAS respond

Fernand Braudels celebrated anide is oft •

II ¡ongue ^ and the temps court (shor’t ( " •nvokVil ’HWrrp du
historian to look upon historical development is ’ ’ “bhin b dn
hut of intersecting probabilities. In rural I ...‘ ?"“*’’ ""' "' "• •» Hit y
^erished b, deb, and ................
*'
‘•nd condrtuned i
Ladurie has found signs of cultural growth (litera
(
"■mtory. L
ing matter) as early as the sixteenth century
y dryrk
¡mportant consequences for ensuing rcligL_; IH With
lou» confliiis. I
image of a dice game nicely captures the f >1t i

“What can be won on one throw can always be loit on ¡h^ ° ,’r"M"‘*‘
only occasionally that history is cumulative, that th< " "' Xl’ ""l " "
makea iackpot.”11 ■ winntngi .«Id up । ( i

As a result, historians, once again following

mthc wakeof economi*t.
formulated the concept of a model which
. , . can be used ti 4f)< I
interrelate these vanous temporalities. Models come in many vanene.
Homogeneous models are used to study the possibility and pac ’
I
nomic growth. Simulated models are used to test the rationí
efficiency of certain histórica! choices in the spirit of the alternare
hypotheses studied by so-called new economic historians in the United
States. And complex models combine quantitative data with behavtoral
symptoms, as historical demographers have done in studvine the au.trr.
seventeenth century.
Models, which increase the likelihood of success in comparative lm
tory, can also be coupled with the structural approach that ethnographcrs
now use to study myth and ritual: Rather than compare civilización!
or forms of development point by point, fixing on the most promínent
features, one tries to measure similarity statistically by looking ai seis of
features susceptible of creating comparable histórica! conditions.
In a first phase, exemplified by the work of Fernand Brande!, histon
ans used the concept of structure to study the longue durée, to identify
an almost immobile history, a history of slow changes and transforma
tions often involving crushing setbacks and endlessly repeated eyeles.”1
At this level, history uses mainly quantitative data, which naturally cali
or structural analysis. Formalization, for which the notions of eyele and
^odel are useful, is for this purpose not merely a possible style but
ecessary step for making sense of complex, íapparently incoherent
Phenomena.

Y contrast, the data with which the studies in this volume of the journal
concern themselves are positively bursting with meaning. Wriucn texis,
ymbolic language—different registers of what can be called cultural
. ^f” defined bv
".^y by a common intention, namely, to signify. The histo-
f,an s problem_ in
i this area is that his reflection does not enablc him to
 sillín in wli#<..........
glvc m»« 'mi
Ii #* IH I I lil*
lliranlllg wim ^hy
hviwerii dir dm I lili II v IH ' litMlt III llltho m >1
, tái *
t rythiiig it । nied "M il I 11^
If

iiiíhi । v* i ydimg tu lii "'mil*

a nwlhial ihdl i• ’ pp^
Hiih
Yrt ll itwy Wí‘l " / 7/1

< I n uve. rite muid li alwayn h mpud lo

idtri It intuí dlOSA WiW beai WlUn I
pibv
i (HIIM tu Hsown mhm oí rt’ooitlng Ih Ih -
Hmpmiiion hrgrly hom ”u ihod* d< w lop, d
lh Or H
thc histórica! dimensión lo cultural íoim% iImi
o ,1*
distam r dial se piUalrS tnOI# íormn ¡lililí mu ov/n mo ||
The oiglllirzalion OÍ thi# insue lollows lln paiadoza
4>
sunduml analysis hom thc immdrsi nema lo da Jan ni
^i
iMÍttítioHt, WhoiC #ighlll< an< < in * iiiy.in.it íh
ti mi Imnut 11U
Lovity are ¿liras id whkh oiu lalioiiahly all loo (

diese therrloir pul upgiralei resístame toa similar i'duo

why mOMt oí (hesesindicaargüe ÍOI an open siria limdr.m 11 i* nutrí
with which historia ns work are too impute fot ordmaiy .o ir । urjI ji
sis, bul that impurity n al so what makes l hose man m al. .o o* h I
ií wherever itructure grew impoverisbed, piaxis Va ble da uhh<
Lúe de 1 Icusch’s admirable íormulation ♦
tion oí culture with natura gave way to ¿i ser ond.
To place oneielf in i i histórica! pcrspcctivc ii i no! monu
attention lo a ccrtuin erosión oí mental habiis oí systrms <>í ‘a/^
tion. After a crisis or conírontation oí somr kiiuL tune will m Man*
completely engulf the itructure that onr wanUi o observe fof (he ’
rían, there is a real ¿Angel ' ib Mlkkmg with drad loinr lev
vocabulary, foi
examplr) out oí ¿i preludier m favor oí KHiuiaiav
UKlfb
a p i * rorce# that are in thc proccss oí traiisloiiiHng
A hule ntructuralism takei i
us away írom history; a gr<
turaliMii bringi u, back. The fóli
owing sm vry will have serv
pone if ¡t succceds im drmonstrating both thc
valúe and thc ni
a»k.of«rZ r to h‘«ory- •" thc ene
Xi ^ mcthüd« ” not u ore
Jext to flee thc ioun *
orto exorne ihe¡n,lab¡lityo^ oricul«
rcality bul a tool too J® . J
SÍ°ím?tí<?’work wh¡i
‘he analyu, oí chan« reiuaining as clone as pons
f
auge.

i ranblatkd iiy Ahtu km