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A superstructure is an extension of an existing structure or baseline. This term is applied to both physical structures (e.g buildings, bridges and ships) or to conceptual structures (social science). The word itself is a combination of super (Latin for above, in addition) and structure (also from Latin meaning to build, to heap up).

In engineering, superstructure refers to parts of a construction that project above a baseline: in building works, above the foundations, in shipbuilding, above the main deck.

The RORO ferry Pride of Burgundy. This is a good example of a ship with superstructure. The structure that houses the promenade decks stretches across the full breadth of the vessel.

As stated above, superstructure is material which projects above the main deck. However, the term superstructure should be used carefully, as this only applies to structure which stretches for the full breadth of the vessel; otherwise the structure is known as a deck house. Superstructure can have many implications on ships, as it can greatly alter its structural rigidity and a vessel’s displacement, which can be detrimental to a ship’s performance if considered incorrectly. The superstructure on a vessel also affects the amount of freeboard that a vessel requires. Very broadly, the more superstructure a ship has (as a fraction of length), the less freeboard is needed.

This short section requires expansion.

In mathematics, the superstructure over a set S is used in one of the approaches to non-standard analysis. The notion is also used in the construction of a universal set.

This short section requires expansion.

In social sciences, superstructure is the set of socio-psychological feedback loops that maintain a coherent and meaningful structure in a given society, or part thereof. It can include the culture, institutions, power structures, roles, and rituals of the society. It is that which, through conditioned behaviors (both interpersonal and situational), enforces a set of constraints and guidelines on human activity in a stable and effective fashion, such that it engenders a society's characteristic organization, and it is that characteristic organization itself.

By most sociological schema, superstructure does not refer to the specific materials of an organization, such as a school or a store, but rather to the set of psychological or semantic configurations whereby that structure is rationalized and reproduced in human experience. That is, it is the "invisible force" behind or within the structure, or perhaps, it is the anthropocentric "reason" for the structure.

According to one sociological perspective, superstructure may be revealed by examining the direct interpersonal engagements that take place within canonical (typical) settings or situations, through the hermeneutic of sociobiology.

Main article: Base and superstructure (Marxism)

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Within Marxist social theory, superstructure is the particular form through which human subjectivity engages with the material substance of society. The form is to an extent objective and to an extent subjective. The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be a dialectical one, not a distinction between actual entities "in the world".

Marx himself introduces the concept in the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The relevant passage is reproduced here:

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production."^[1]

According to Richard Middleton (1990), in Antonio Gramsci's conception or theory superstructural elements (cultural elements), what Middleton calls instances of practice, related to (and not predetermined by) economic elements through a process of articulation.

• ship
• freeboard
• infrastructure
• sociology
• structuralism and post-structuralism
• Michel Foucault
• Franz Jakubowski
• Gerald Cohen

• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.