Social Institutions

Understanding the Term

 Social institution refers to a group of social positions,
connected by social relations, performing a social role
 It can also be defined in a narrower sense as any
institution in a society that works to socialize the groups
or people in it
 Common examples include education, governments,
families, economic systems, religions, and any people or
groups that you have social interaction with
 Studying Social Institutions
 Functionalist View
 One way to understand social institutions is to see how they
fulfill essential functions
 Five major tasks or functional prerequisites that a society must
accomplish if it is to survive
 Replacing personal-immigrations, sexual reproduction, acquisition of
slaves etc
 Teaching new recruits-formally through schools or informally
interaction of family and peer groups
 Production and distribution of goods and service- must follow a set
of rule for allocation and distribution of goods and services
 Preserving order- protect themselves from outside attacks
 Providing and maintaining a sense of purpose – either religious or
patriotism
 Five Major Functions
Functionalist Perspective Related Social Institutions

Replacing Personal Family

Government (immigration)

Teaching new recruits Family (basic skills)

Economy (occupational)

Education (schools)

Mass media

Religion (sacred teachings)

Production and distribution of goods and Family(food preparation)

service Economy

Government (regulations)

Preserving order Family (child birth)

Government
Religion (morals)
Providing and maintaining a sense of purpose Government (patriotism)
Religion
 Conflict View
 The present organization of social order is not an
accident
 Most institutions help maintain the status quo of the
powerful elites in the society
 From a functionalist perspective social change leads to
instability
 But according to a conflict view, why should we preserve
the existing structure if they are unfair and
discriminatory?
 Interactionist View
 Social institutions affect our everyday behavior
 Our social behavior is conditioned by the roles and
statuses that we accept, the groups to which we belong
and the institutions within that we function
 The Family- A Global View
 What is family?
 Nuclear Family
 Extended family
 Monogamy
 Polygamy
 Polyandry
 Kinship patterns- to whom we are related?
 Its culturally learnt
 Bilateral decent
 Patrilineal
 Matrilineal
 Religion as a Social Institution
 For close to 2000 years Christianity has provided a moral and
spiritual framework for western development
 The church usually surpassed monarchs and government in the
political power and the wealth they accumulated
 The priesthood maintained a monopoly over the skills of literacy ,
scholarship and learning
 With the advent of industrialization the churches and religious
bodies lost much of its secular power
 Government took over many of the tasks previously managed by
the church
 Scientific thought and technology increasingly challenged religion
 Secularization describes the process whereby religion looses its
influence over various spears of social life
Marx, Weber and Durkheim on Religion

 Marx, Weber and Durkheim together comprise the

historical core of the sociological tradition
 While they each come from very different perspectives
and offer profound contributions to the field, they each
have tried to address problems associated with the
advent of modernity
 Marx and Religion
 Karl Marx attempted to examine religion from an objective ,
scientific perspective
 According to Marx, religion is an expression of material realities and
economic injustice
 Religion is like other social institutions in that it is dependent upon
the material and economic realities in a given society. It has no
independent history; instead it is the creature of productive forces
 As Marx wrote, “The religious world is but the reflex of the real
world.”
 Marx’s opinion is that religion is an illusion that provides reasons
and excuses to keep society functioning just as it is
 Marx Criticism of Religion
 religion is a delusion and a worship of appearances that
avoids recognizing underlying reality
 religion negates all that is dignified in a human being by
rendering them servile and more amenable to accepting
the status quo
 Religion is meant to create illusory fantasies for the
poor. Economic realities prevent them from finding true
happiness in this life, so religion tells them this is OK
because they will find true happiness in the next life.
 Durkheim and Religion
 Durkheim’s work , the elementary forms of religious life is one of
the most influential study in the sociology of religion
 Also like Marx, Durkheim sees religion as a reflection of society and
not a depiction of an external supernatural reality
 Durkheim defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart
and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single
moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them”
 Ceremony and rituals are essential for binding the members of
group together
 Religion has both manifest functions (give meaning to divine) and
latent functions
 Weber and Religion
 Weber did a massive study of religions work-wide
 In the Sociology of Religion, Weber lays out his thesis
that people pursue their interests, and that religious
leaders and structures help people achieve those goals
 Weber argued that religion was one of the non-exclusive
reasons for the different ways the cultures of the
Occident and the Orient have developed
 Weber maintained that Calvinist (and more widely,
Protestant) religious ideas had had a major impact on
the social innovation and development of the economic
system of Europe and the United States
 Influence of religion
 Religion and social support
 Religion encourages us to view our personal misfortunes as
relatively unimportant in the broader perspective of human
history. E.g. death of a loved one
 Religion and social change
 Protestants favored rational pursuit of economic gain and
worldly activities which had been given positive spiritual and
moral meaning
 Like Durkheim, Weber demonstrated that religion is not solely a
matter of personal belief but rather collective nature of religion
has social consequences for society as a whole
Religion and Social Control-Conflict
Perspective
 Karl Marx thought religion impeded social change by encouraging
oppressed people to focus on other-worldly concerns rather than on
their immediate poverty or exploitation
 religion plays an important role in propping up the existing social
structure
 Religion’s promotion of social stability only helps to perpetuate
patterns of social inequality
 Dominant religion reinforces the interests of those in power
 By inducing “false consciousness” amongst the disadvantages
religion lessens the possibility of collective political action which can
end capitalist oppression and transform society
 Education: Schools as formal
organizations
 schools do not operate autonomously: they are influenced by the
market of potential students
 Max Weber noted five basic characteristics of bureaucracy, all of
which are evident in the vast majority of schools
 Division of labor-specialized experts teach particular level and specific
subject
 Hierarchy of authority- each employee of the school system is
responsible to a higher authority
 Written rules and regulations-teachers and administration should
conform to numerous rules and regulations in performance of their duty
 Impersonality- university has been portrayed as a giant faceless
bureaucracy that cares little for the uniqueness of the individual
 Employment based on technical qualifications-the hiring of teachers and
college professors is based on professional competence and expertise
 Different Views
 Functionalist take a positive view of the
bureaucratization of education in contrast conflict view
argues that the trend towards more centralized
education has harmful consequences for disadvantaged
people
 In view of the conflict approach, low-income and
minority parents will have even less influence over city-
wide educational administrations than they have over
local school officials
 Student Subculturs
 One of the latent function of education relates directly to
student life: schools provide for students social and
recreational needs
 Four types of sub-cultures that comes out of their
analysis:
 The collegiate subculture –focuses on having fun and
socialization
 Academic subculture- identifies with the intellectual concerns of
the faculty
 Vocational subcultures- is primarily concerned with career
prospects
 nonconformists subcultures- hostile to the college environment
 Government: Power and Authority
 Someone or some group makes important decision about how to
allocate resources
 the struggle for power and authority inevitably involves politics-who
gets what, when and how
 Power is the heart of political system
 Max Weber-power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others
 Three basic sorces of power
 Force
 Influence
 Authority
 Traditional authority
 Legal-Rational authority
 Charismatic authority
 Who rules USA?
 Do the people we elect rule the country or is it ruled by
small elite
 Power elite model
 Mills Model
 Domhoff Model
 Pluralist Model
 Economic System
 Both capitalism and socialist economic system conform to certain ideals
such as private or collective onership, however hardly do we find a more
capitalist or a pure socialist economy
 Capitalism
 Means of production is largely in the hands of private owners
 Main incentive for growth is profit
 Laisser-faire economy
 Today's capitalism features extensive government regulation of economic
relations
 It tolerates monopolistic practices
 Socialism
 Reflected in the writings of Karl Marx
 Socialism aims to eliminate economic exploitation
 The means of production and distribution is done collectively and not privately
owned
 A central government representative of the people makes all the imp decisions
 Economic Change
 The face of the workforce
 Deindustrialization
 E-commerce
 Contingency workforce