Introduction
Structuralists’ attempts to build humanitarian knowledge on the strict laws of causality failed: individual elements constantly found themselves outside of any schemes whatsoever. Poststructuralists proposed a radical solution: to consider any structure as inconclusive, constantly in the process of becoming, and instead of clear definitions, turn to discourses that explain reality from different grounds. Gradually, post-structuralism and its supporters began to meet the current requirements of social responsibility in their attitude. The European Central Bank is no exception in this respect. This paper provides an overview of the phenomenon of structuralism and post-structuralism concerning gender diversity in the context of the European Central Bank. The theoretical foundations of ethics in current realities are closely woven into central banks’ operational financial and economic activities, making them responsible, including in the cultural aspect.
Poststructuralism and Structuralism
Poststructuralism, like structuralism, is not a single direction, approach, or theory but a collection of specific strategies with standard features and properties. Post-structuralism is replacing structuralism. The new direction is inspired by criticism of structuralism but at the same time relates itself to it, considering structuralism as its forerunner. The heyday of poststructuralism falls in the 1970s-1980s. The new direction is a product of continental and European philosophy (Han, 2020). If we talk about geographical inclusion, then most intellectuals who identify themselves with the direction of poststructuralism are French.
A binding motif of poststructuralism was that structuralism did not follow its ideas consistently enough. The difficulty of structuralism was its erroneous knowledge of science: structuralists were inspired by the classical ideals of science when science itself had long ceased to be classical (Han, 2020). Serious difficulties were quickly revealed in structuralism, due to which it ceased to be a program director, began to disperse, and now it is a historical and archival value. Today, his strategies are applied, but as the main direction, structuralism has receded into the historical past.
Speaking about these severe difficulties, it quickly became apparent that hopes to explain the entire array of cultural content were not justified time after time; there was always residual material. Structuralists thought that after improving the structural explanation, the residual is neutralized. Poststructuralism believes that all errors are not accidental. These are patterns connected with the fact that structuralism hoped to realize the requirement proposed by structural linguistics: all elements within a structure always correlate with each other in a purely differential way. Post-structuralism reproached structuralism for being inspired by two obsolete ideals of classical science. First, any explanation is a causal and deterministic explanation, and to explain something is to reduce some effect to some cause. The second obsolete ideal is the entity discovery condition. Structuralism represented the structure as an essence, although non-classical science has long said goodbye to the idea of the search for essence and metaphysics and has relied on the succession of phenomena. The researcher describes a phenomenon, and one phenomenon replaces another, but there are no entities within the limit of various phenomena.
Structuralism neglected these two conditions of non-classical science, believing that the structural idea should look like a causal explanation that brings the understanding of cultural content to structure as some entity. The main objection of poststructuralism to structuralism is that no structure retains its structurality; it passes into another structure. Poststructuralism translates these categories into gender diversity; poststructuralism shows the constant possibility of deviation from the majority; there is no single correct structure concerning gender. The very phenomenon of diversity, turnover at the heart of poststructuralism excludes any possibility of dominance and, as a result, discrimination. Given the wide prevalence of such a problem as structural racism, and violence – a change in value foundations has long been brewing in society, contributing to a change in structural orders and foundations.
European Central Bank
Since the Eurozone’s emergence and the establishment of the European Central Bank, a new term, “European Central Bank,” has appeared in foreign scientific, and economic literature, and the world scientific, and economic community. The ECB is the backbone of the European System of Central Banks of the ESCB and the entire Eurosystem and has the status of a legal entity under European Community law. Consequently, being an institution representing several countries and nationalities at once, this institution should also represent the current social interests of every citizen. Central banks are considered institutions of culture as much as economics (Dietsch et al., 2018). Culture, in this case, should be perceived as a degree of freedom in the political activities of banks.
European financial integration is also primarily cultural integration. Founding one big society gives a sense of belonging. The common currency is only a marker, one of the mechanisms facilitating integration. In this regard, the European Central Bank has a relatively high degree of independence compared to other central banks. Being part of a much larger culture, a given institution may be limited in operations in response to, for example, a financial crisis but cannot be limited in culture. The culture of diversity, which is a consequence of post-structuralism and the current global trend in human rights, is also supported by the European Central Bank.
The ECB is fully committed to gender diversity and supports equity, inclusion, and diversity policies. First of all, their activities aim to increase the proportion of women in the workplace and leadership positions in particular (European Central Bank, 2022). In general, the goals are aimed at rethinking the role of women in society and at home within the framework of post-structuralism. The stagnant values ​​dictated by structuralism cover the entire sector of the economy, and the activities of the European Central Bank are also broadly directed. This fact can be explained by the fact that this institution is centered on European values, and the standards maintained here should be an example for all of Europe. Concerning social representation, centralized institutions have a much higher responsibility toward the large society.
Conclusion
Structuralism, in turn, although it does not meet the current standards of social responsibility, has several advantages. Firstly, under the conditions of the value orientations of structuralism, the main operating activity of the European Central Bank has developed, which is being carried out quite successfully. Secondly, structuralism has given many, including economic sciences, an approach that determines the primacy of systematicity, which determines all consequences (Han, 2020). As a result, structuralism was necessary for the operational activity of such institutions rather than for value. Since the European Central Bank must conduct its activities, taking into account each representative of the European Union, the cultural aspect of this activity is essential. Post-structuralism has more prerequisites for these processes to be based on cultural values, including gender diversity.
References
Dietsch, P., Claveau, F., & Fontan, C. (2018). Do central banks serve the people?. John Wiley & Sons.
European Central Bank. (2022). Women@ECB. Web.
Han, S. (2020). Structuralism and post-structuralism 1 (pp. 40-56). Routledge.