What exactly is a structure?

[Stain]

This might be really basic so I apologize for my confusion beforehand. I just realized that I use "structural" as interchangeable and synonymous as institutional. So is it just an abstract and generalized way of thinking about institutions or is it something much different?

[Carlos-Marcos]

I'd say that the UK voting system has a major structural problem, for example, you can only vote for a party that has a candidate standing in your area, so if you want to vote for Communist Party, then you can only do so if you happen to reside in a very limited area of the country (only 8 places I believe) - to me, that is a 'structural' issue

[BIXX]

I think the dictionary definition that google gave me (so maybe it isn't a very good dictionary) is a pretty good one.

the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex.

[ckaihatsu]

Don't get me started -- in dealing with ideas and *concepts* it's possible to find a common-denominator among all of them, enabling one to situate concepts in *meaningful relations* to each other....

I've been creating schematic-type diagrams for a few years now, to model how various aspects of social reality interrelate in empirically real ways. One spatial-conceptual axis that is common to most of them is that of *magnitude* (macro-micro), which is depicted vertically.

For example:


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://s6.postimg.org/nmlxvtqlt/1_History_Macro_Micro_Precision.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/zbpxjshkd/full/)


More here:


Political (educational) diagrams, for revolutionaries

tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-diagrams-revleft