Institution System

What is Institution? an organized system of social....norms to achieve....main kinds of institutions, .....

The concept of institution is one of the most important in the entire field of sociology. Institutions lie at the center of sociological attention. They constitute the main building blocks of society. The importance of understanding the concept of institution in order to understand society is, at the same time, recognized by all the sociologists, in fact, Durkheim has gone to the extent of defining sociology as the science of social institutions. 

As Sumner and Keller have rightly said that, “Folkways are to society what cells are to the biological organism; institutions are its bones and tissues”. The number of institutions and the degree of their specialization varies from society to society. High civilizations and modern large-scale industrial societies are characterized by the intensive specialization of institutions organized around delimited problems of social life, and by the extensive internal elaboration of sub-systems within the larger institutions.

An institution is a system of norms to achieve some goal or activity that people feel is important or, more formally, an organized cluster of folkways and mores centered around a major human activity. Institutions are structured processes through which people carry on their activities. Institutions do not have members rather they have followers, for example religion is a system of beliefs and practices and in association to it is church. The institution is always the organized system of ideas and behavior. Each institutions includes a cluster of institutional traits (codes of behavior, attitudes, values, symbols, rituals, ideologies).

An institution is an organized system of social relationships which embodies certain common values and procedures and meets certain basic needs of the society. In this definition, “common values” refers to shared ideas and goals, the “common procedures” are the standardized behavior patterns followed, and the “system of relationships” is the network of roles and statuses through which people carry out this behavior. Thus, the family includes a set of common values (about love, children, family life), a set of common procedures (child care, family routines), and a network of roles and statuses (husband, wife, grandparents, baby, teenaged child, fiancé) which form the system of social relationships through which family life is carried out.

We can consider five important basic institutions in complex societies that are the familial, religious, government, economic and educational institutions. According to Inkeles, there are four main kinds of institutions, which are further divided into several different parts/subsystems. Thus he describes the four kinds of institutions in detail as,

•  First, are the political institutions, concerned with the exercise of power and which have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Institutions involving relations with other societies, including war, are also considered to fall into the political category.
• Second, there are the economic institutions, concerned with the production and distribution of goods and services.
•  Expressive-integrative institutions, including those dealing with the arts, drama, and recreation, represent a third set. This group also includes institutions which deal with ideas, and with the transmission of received values. We may, therefore, include scientific, religious, philosophical, and educational organizations within this category.
•  Kinship institutions, the fourth main category, are principally focused around the problem of regulating sex and providing a stable and secure framework for the care and rearing of the young.

Social Institutions

Society is so complex and interrelated that it is impossible to foresee all consequences of an action, thus institutions have two functions, manifest functions and latent functions. Here “manifest functions” are the professed objectives of the institution and “latent functions” are unintended and may be unrecognized, or if recognized, regarded as by-products.

Institutions are often classified into Primary institutions and secondary institutions. The most basic institutions which are found even in primitive societies like religion family marriage property some kind of political system are primary in character. As societies grew in size and complexity institutions became progressive and more differentiated. Accordingly, a large number of institutions are evolved to cater to the secondary needs of people. They may be called secondary institutions. Example education, examination, law, legislation, constitution, parliamentary procedure, business, etc. thus Sumner makes the distinction between crescive and enacted institutions. According to Sumner, those evolved or developed naturally, unconsciously and even spontaneously are crescive, while enacted are those institutions that are consciously and purposefully and in a planned way established. The crescive ones are more akin to primary institutions whereas the enacted ones resemble secondary institutions.

Thus we can conclude that an institution has the following important characteristics:

1. An institution is social in nature;
2. It has universality in all societies;
3. Institutions are standardized norms;
4. Institutions acts as means of satisfying needs;
5. Institutions are the controlling mechanisms of society;
6. Institutions are relatively permanent in society;
7. Institutions are abstract in nature;
8. Each institution has oral and written traditions;
9. Institutions has synthesizing symbols; and
10. Each institution is interrelated to one another in the society.

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To know more you can visit these significant topics:
The Development of Literacy and Schooling, Commensality, Indian State, State, Indian Society, Religion, Marriage, kinship System, Types of Marriage, Family, Community, Indology, Social Movement, Bride Wealth (Price), Nation State

Reference:

• Horton and Hunt, Sociology;
• Alex Inkeles, What is Sociology? ;
• C.N.Shankar Rao, Sociology;
• Various. 

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