Social Institution
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
What is a Social Institution?
• A group of social positions
• Connected by social relations
• Performing a social role
- a major sphere of social life organized to meet some human need
Characteristics
• Purposive
• Relatively permanent in their content
• Structured
• A unified structure
• Necessarily value-laden
An institution is a relatively permanent structure of social patterns, roles, and relations that people enact in certain sanctioned and unified ways for the purpose of satisfying basic social needs.
Functions
• Simplify social behaviors for the individual person
• Provide ready-made forms of social relations and social roles for the individual
• Act as agencies of coordination and stability for the total culture
• Tend to control behavior
Functionalists:
• Social institutions exist because they meet universal needs.
• The major task of society is its survival:
– Replacing members
– Socializing new members
– Producing/distributing goods and services
– Preserving order
– Providing sense of purpose
Conflict theorists:
• View social institutions as the primary means by which the elite maintains its privileged position
• Through the preservation of order society, legitimizes and perpetuates social inequalities
Major social institutions
1. FAMILY
• Function: producing and rearing the young
• Basic unit: society and educational system
Characteristics
- closely knit, strong family ties, strong loyalty, extended: big, kinship ties: “compadre”, higher regard: women
Functions
• Reproduction of the race and rearing of the young
• Cultural transmission or enculturation
• Providing affection and a sense of security
• Providing the environment for personality development and the growth of self-concept in relation to others
• Providing social status
Family patterns
a. Structure
* conjugal or nuclear family – primary family consisting of husband, wife, and children
* consanguine or extended family – consists of married couple, children, and
What is a Social Institution?
• A group of social positions
• Connected by social relations
• Performing a social role
- a major sphere of social life organized to meet some human need
Characteristics
• Purposive
• Relatively permanent in their content
• Structured
• A unified structure
• Necessarily value-laden
An institution is a relatively permanent structure of social patterns, roles, and relations that people enact in certain sanctioned and unified ways for the purpose of satisfying basic social needs.
Functions
• Simplify social behaviors for the individual person
• Provide ready-made forms of social relations and social roles for the individual
• Act as agencies of coordination and stability for the total culture
• Tend to control behavior
Functionalists:
• Social institutions exist because they meet universal needs.
• The major task of society is its survival:
– Replacing members
– Socializing new members
– Producing/distributing goods and services
– Preserving order
– Providing sense of purpose
Conflict theorists:
• View social institutions as the primary means by which the elite maintains its privileged position
• Through the preservation of order society, legitimizes and perpetuates social inequalities
Major social institutions
1. FAMILY
• Function: producing and rearing the young
• Basic unit: society and educational system
Characteristics
- closely knit, strong family ties, strong loyalty, extended: big, kinship ties: “compadre”, higher regard: women
Functions
• Reproduction of the race and rearing of the young
• Cultural transmission or enculturation
• Providing affection and a sense of security
• Providing the environment for personality development and the growth of self-concept in relation to others
• Providing social status
Family patterns
a. Structure
* conjugal or nuclear family – primary family consisting of husband, wife, and children
* consanguine or extended family – consists of married couple, children, and