Abstract

Structuralism as a research method always starts by assuming the existence of a system of relationships that underlies sociocultural phenomena and that makes possible the significance of these: Thus, it was transformed during a large part of the 20th century into a qualitative tool to describe diverse problems in the field of human sciences. However, it is also known that the assumption of the method in question, by the eidetic depth that it reaches, has a philosophical talent that is not negligible. In this way, we must ask ourselves about the consequences that the philosophical root of structuralism has for its methodological application, especially if we consider that proposals within philosophy, for the most part, offer an abstract basis of reality that is very difficult to identify empirically. Thus, the presented research seeks to expose how the structuralist method, despite of having a great descriptive power, inevitably ends in an inconclusive analysis, since its hypothesis about the existence of a fundamental structure that explains its phenomena, being a philosophical principle, never ends up being corroborated.