Social Institutions
As you learned earlier in the course, the social structure of a society has several essential components. Among those are groups, statuses, roles, norms, and social institutions. Groups, statuses, roles and norms were covered in previous lessons. In this unit, we will explore social institutions.
At the macro-level of all societies, certain basic activities routinely occur, such as children are born and socialized, goods and services are produced and distributed, order is preserved, and a sense of purpose is maintained.
Social institutions are the means by which these basic needs are met.
Social institution is a set of organized beliefs and rules that establishes how a society will attempt to meet its basic social needs.
In the past, these needs have centered around five basic social institutions:
1. The family
2. Religion
3. Education
4. The economy
5. The government or politics
Today, other social institutions have emerged such as, but not limited to, mass media, voluntary associations, sports, science and medicine, and the military.
You might be wondering, what is the difference between a group and a social institution? A group is composed of specific, identifiable people; an institution is a standardized way of doing something. The concept of "family" helps to distinguish between the two. When we talk about "your family" or "my family," we are referring to a specific family.
When we refer to the family as a social institution, we are talking about the ideologies and standardized patterns of behavior that organize family life. For example, the family as a social institution contains certain statuses organized into well-defined relationships, such as husband–wife, parent–child, and brother–sister.
Specific families do not always conform to these ideologies and behavior patterns. For example, while a traditional family in the United States might consist of two parents and their children, many families differ from this pattern, yet still are considered to be families in our culture. The social institution of family will be discussed in further detail in the next lesson.
