Social institution

Introduction:
It is a group of social positions, connected by social relations,
performing a social role. It is social structure and social mechanism of
social order and cooperation that govern the behaviour of its
members.

“An institution in a society that works to socialize the group of people

in it.”

Characteristics of an Institution:
Palispis (1998) :

Institutions are purposive. Relatively permanent in content.

Institutions are structured. Institutions are a unified structure.

Institutions are necessarily value-laden.

Functions of an Institution:
1. Institutions simply social behaviour for the individual person.

2. Provide ready-made forms of social relations and social roles for

individual.

3. Act as agencies of coordination and stability for the total culture.

4. Control Behaviour
Major Social Institutions:
1. Family

2. Education

3. Religion

4. Economy

5. Government and Politics

6. Health and Medicine

7. Mass Communication

Family:
The smallest social institution with the unique function or producing
and rearing the young. It is the basic unit of Philippine society and the
educational system where the child begins to learn his ABC.

The basic agent of socialization because it is here where the individual

develops values, behaviors, and ways of life through interaction with
members of the family.(Vega,2004)

According to Oxford Dictionaries:

“A group consisting of two parents and their children living together
as a unit.”

“A group of people related by blood or marriage.”

Characteristics of Filipino Family:

The family is closely knit and has strong family ties.

The Filipino family is usually extended one and therefore, big.

In the Filipino family, kinship ties are extended to include the
“compadre” or sponsors.

Functions of the family:

Reproduction of the race and rearing of the young.

Cultural transmission or enculturation.

Socialization of the child.

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.

Kinds of family:
According to Structure:
1. Conjugal or Nuclear Family- the primary or elementary family
consisting of husband, wife and children.

2. Consanguine or Extended Family- consist of married couple,

their parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

According to term of Marriage:

1. Polyandry: One woman is married to two or more men at the
same time.

2. Polygamy: One man is married to two or more women at the

same time.
3. Cenogamy: Two or more men mate with two or more women in
group marriage.

According to Descent:
1. Patrilocal: When the newly married couple lives with the parents
of the husband.

2. Matrilocal: When the newly married couple lives with the parents
of the wife.

According to Authority:
1. Patriarchal: When the father is considered the head and plays a
dominant role.

2. Matriarchal: When the mother or female is the head and makes

the major decisions.

3. Equalitarian: When both father and mother share in making

decisions and are equal in authority.

Education:
It is form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, and habits of a
group of people are transferred from one generation to the next
through teaching, training or research.

According to Socrates:
“Education means the bring out of the ideas of universal validity
which are latent in the mind of every man.”
According to Horace Mann:
“Education must bring the practice as nearly as possible to theory.”

What are the functions of Schools?

Mcnergney and Herbert (2001):
Described the school as first and foremost a social institution, that is,
an established organization having an identifiable structure and a set
of functions meant to preserve and extend social order.

School is the place for the contemplation of reality, and our task as a
teacher, in simplest terms, is to show this reality to our students, who
are naturally eager about them.

Intellectual Purpose:
To teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing and
mathematics; to transmit specific knowledge.

Political Purposes:
To inculcate allegiance to the existing political order (Patriotism).

To prepare the citizens who will participate in the political order.

To assimilate diverse cultural groups into political order.

To teach children the basic laws of politics.

Social Purpose:
To socialize the children into the various roles, behavior, and values of
the society.
Economic Purpose:
To prepare students for their later occupational roles, and to select,
train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor.

Manifest functions of Schools:

1. Social Control 2. Socialization Placement

3. Transmitting Culture 4. Promoting Social & Political Integration

5. Agent of Change

Latent functions of Schools:

1. Restricting some activities. 2. Creation of generation gap.

3. Matchmaking and production of social networks.

Religion:
It is a system of beliefs and rituals that serves to bind people together
through shared worship, thereby creating a social group.

A set of beliefs and practices that pertain to a sacred or supernatural

realm that guides human behavior and gives meaning to life among a
community of believers.

According to Hick:
“Religion constitutes our varied human response to transcendent
reality.”
According to Jalal-Ul-Din Rumi:
“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.”

Characteristics of Religion:

1. Belief in a deity 2. A doctrine of salvation

3. A code of conduct 4. Religious rituals

Functions of Religion:
1. Serves as a means of social control.

2. Exerts a great influence upon personality development.

3. Allays fear of unknown.

4. Explains events or situations which are beyond comprehension of

man.

5. Gives man comfort, strength and hope in times of crises and

despair.

6. It preserves and transmits knowledge, skills, spiritual, and cultural

values and practices.

7. It serves as an instrument of change.

8. Promotes closeness, love, cooperation, friendliness and

helpfulness.

9. Alleviates sufferings from major calamities.

10. It provides hope for a blissful life.

 Four Elements of Religion:

1. Sacred and Profane.

2. legitimation of norms

3. Rituals

4. Religious Community

Economy:
It is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production,
distribution, and consumption of wealth. It is art of making most of
life. In the 19th century, economics was the hobby of gentlemen of
leisure and the vocation of a few academics; economists wrote about
the economy policy.

According to Alfred Marshall:

“A study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that
part of individual and social action which is most closely connected
with the attainment, and the use of the material requisites of
wellbeing.”

According to Richard Lipsey:

“Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources to satisfy
unlimited human wants.”

Microeconomics:
It is concerned with the specific economic units of parts that make an
economic system and the relationship between those parts.
Emphasis is placed on understanding the behavior of individual firms,
industries, households and ways in which such entities interact.

(Spencer, 1980; Javier, 2002)

Macroeconomics:
It is concerned with the economy as a whole, or large segments of it.

It focuses on such problems as the role of unemployment, the

changing level of prices, the nation’s total output of goods and
services, and the way in which government rises and spends money.

Functions of Economic Institutions:

Functionalist Theory:
Functions of economic institutions include: production and
distribution of goods, assignments of individuals to different social
roles such as occupations.

1. Establishing and protecting property rights.

2. Facilitating transactions and permitting economic cooperation and

organization.

3. Organizes the production and distribution.

4. Consumptions of society’s goods and services.

5. Power and authority.

6. Provision of funds.

7. Income generation and employment.

Politics and Government:
Model:

Politics Power MicroPolitics MacroPolitics

Government Illegitimate Power Legitimate Power

Authority

Politics
Essentially, politics is associated with the government, kings, queens,
coups, dictatorship, voting, etc. But the term actually has a much
broader meaning.

It is social institution that distributes power, sets a society’s goals

and make decision. The exercise of power and attempts to maintain
or to change power relations.

Max Weber claims that every society is based on power.

“Power is the ability to achieve desired ends and despite resistance
from others. Power is the ability to carry out one’s will, even over the
resistance of others.

Power struggles-workers with their bosses, power struggle with

family members, (all these attempts to gain or keep power) these also
consider as political actions.
Therefore, in our everyday life, we practice power. Additionally, the
elements of power according to symbolic interactionist could be
categorized into two.

Micropolitics:
To refer to the exercise of power in everyday life.

Macropolitics:
Refers to the exercise of power or a large group.

Example:
The government; whether dictatorship or democracies, they are the
examples of macropolitics.

Power:
The use of power is the business of government.

Government is a formal organization that directs the political life of a

society.

How does government try to make itself seem legitimate in the eyes
of the people?

Through “Authority” as mentioned by Weber.

Legitimate power known as authority i.e. power

people accept as right.
 Illegitimate Power known as coercion i.e. power
that people do not accept as just.

Authority:
It is the power that people perceive as legitimate rather than
coercive. This relation of power-authority is legitimate.

How does government transform raw power into most stable

authority?

Types of Authority:

1. Traditional Authority
2. Rational Legal Authority
3. Charismatic Authority
Traditional Authority:

The power legitimized by respect for long established cultural

patterns.

Characteristics of Traditional Authority:

1. Preindustrial Societies

2. Populations collects people’s memory accept a system.

3. Usually one of hereditary leadership

4. Strong power in political system, absolute power and almost

godlike

5. Source of strength for patriarchy, domination by men

Examples of Traditional Authority:

- Chinese emperors

- Aristocratic rulers in medieval Europe

- Traditional Authority declines as societies industrialize.

- Traditional Authority remains strong only as long as everyone shares

the same belief and the way of life (Hannah Arendt, 1963)

Rational Legal Authority:

Weber defined rational legal authority (Bureaucratic authority): as

power legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations.

Rational legal authority is power legitimized in the operation of lawful

government.

Weber viewed bureaucracy as the type of organization that

dominates in rational thinking and modern societies.

Members of today’s high income societies seek justice through the

operation of a political system that follows formally enacted rules of
law. Rationally enacted rules also guide the use of power in everyday
life.
 Examples of Rational Legal Authority:

(a) The authority of deans, classroom teachers, lecturers rests on the

offices they hold in bureaucratic colleges and universities.

(b) The police officer, police traffic, security guard in uniform

possessed rational legal authority.

Charismatic Authority:

It is power legitimized by extraordinary personal abilities that inspire

devotion and obedience.

Charismatic authority depends less on a person’s ancestry or office

and more on personality.

Characteristics of Charismatic Authority:

(a) Using their personal skills to turn an audience into followers

(b) Make their own rules and challenge the status quo

Examples:

(a) Prophet Muhammad S.A.W

(b) Jesus of Nazareth

(c) India’s liberator, Mahatma Gandhi

(d) US civil rights leader Martin Luther King

Charismatic authority flows from single individual, the leaders death

creates a crisis.
Survival of Charismatic movement, Weber explained
the term” Routinization of Charisma”:

The transformation of charismatic authority into some

combination of traditional and bureaucratic authority.

Health and Medicine:

Introduction:
- The term “Social medicine” was first used in 1848 by a French
doctor, Jules Guerin in the year of the February revolution in France.

-In 19th century, Neumann & Rudolf Virchow initiated social medicine
in Germany.

-In 1911, Alfred Grotjahn, stressed the importance of social factor in

the etiology of disease.

Medical Sociology is the systematic study of how humans manage

issues of health and illness, disease and disorders, and health care for
both the sick and the healthy.

Medical sociologists study the physical, mental and social components

of health and illness.

What is health?
Health is state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and
not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

What is Medicine?
Any substance or substances used in treating the disease or illness.

Medical Sociology: “An advocacy and equity agenda that treats

health as a human right.”

Four Main Areas of Research in Medical Sociology:

(a) Sociological Perspective of health and illness
(b) The study of health care systems and facilities
(c) The social construction/production of health

Sociological Perspective of Health and Illness:

There are four sociological perspectives and they are given below;

-Functionalist Approach

-Conflict Approach

-Interactionist Approach

-Labeling Approach

Functionalist Approach:

A sick individual is not a productive member of society. Therefore this

deviance needs to be policed, which is the role of the medical
profession.
 Conflict Approach:

The dramatic differences in infant mortality rates around the word

reflect, at last in part, unequal distribution of health care resources
based on the wealth or poverty of various communities and nations.

Interactionist Approach:

One of the interactionist perspective’s central ideas is that people actr

as they do because of how they define situation.

Labeling Appraoch:

Labeling theory holds that deviance is not inherent to an act. Labeling

theory is based on the ides that behaviors are deviant only when the
society labels them as deviant.

Health Care Systems and Facilities:

The system refers to the provision of medical services to prevent,

diagnose, and treat the health problems.

The world’s nations differ dramatically in the quality of their health

and health care. People in poor nations suffer from many health
problems, and poor nation has very high rates of infant mortality and
maternal mortality.

Except for the United States, industrial nations have national health
care systems and health care insurance. Their health care models help
their citizen to have relatively good health and affordable levels.
 Problems of health in United States:

When we examine health and health care in the United States, there
is both good and bad news. The good news is considerable. Health has
improved steadily over the last century, thanks in large part to better
public sanitation and the discovery of antibiotics.

Unfortunately, the bad news is also considerable. Despite all the gains
just mentioned, the US lags behind most other wealthy democracies
in several health indicators, as we have seen, even in wealthiest
nation in the world.

Moreover, 14.5 percent of US households and 49 million Americans

are “food insecure” (lacking sufficient money for adequate food and
nutrition) at least part of the year.

More than 8 percent of all infants are born at low birth weight(under
5.5 pounds) putting them at risk of long-term health problems and
this figure has risen steadily since the late 1980s according to National
center for health statistics, 2011.

Health Disparities:

Social epidemiology refers to the study of how health and illness vary
by sociodemographic characteristics, with such variations called
health disparities.
Mass Communication:
Introduction:
Mass media is a medium and means of communication such as print,
radio, or television. Also defined as large-scale organizations which
use one or more of these technologies to communicate with large
numbers of people.

Dependent upon innovations in the electronics and chemicals

industries.

The new technologies formed part of the wider transformation in

popular culture. The mass media has two important sociological
characteristics.

(i) Very few people can communications to a great number.

(ii) The audience has no effective way of answering back.

Mass organizations are bureaucratic and corporate in nature.

The mass media is an important social institution which provides

social and economic needs of wider social groups.

Functions of Mass Communications:

Mass media can help in change:

Using mass media, people’s attitudes and habits can be changed i.e.
all of us having mistaken or wrong notions about various diseases like
leprosy or HIV/AIDS.
Mass media has made the world smaller and closer:
The speed of media has resulted in bringing people across the world
closer. Let us take an example. When you watch a cricket match
between India and another country in England, live on television, you
feel you are part of the crowd in that stadium.

Mass media promotes distribution of goods:

Mass media are used by the consumer industry to inform people
about their products and services through advertising. Without
advertising, the public will not know about various products.

Impacts of Mass media:

Positive Impacts:
Media provides news and information required by the people.

Media helps a democracy function effectively.

They inform the public and government policies and programs and
how these programs can be useful to them.

Media can act as an agent of change in development.

Media can educate people as an institution.

Media can change in positive social change.

Negative Impacts:
The traditional culture of a country is adversely affected by mass
media.
This affects the primary objectives of media to inform and educate the
people.

Media promotes violence. Studies have proved that violence shown

on television as cinema has negative effects on children.

Mass media promote the desire in people to buy and own products
that are advertised through the media but which may not be essential
for them.

Mass Media as Social Institution:

Institutionalization of mass media has been driven by a series of

intellectual and technological innovations.

Include writing and paper, the printing press, radio, television, and
the computer.

Pakistani people are able to obtain information from a wide variety of

media. These media can be grouped into four categories; print, audio,
visual, and online.

The Institutionalization of Mass Media:

With the development of agriculture, trade became more complex.

Writing made records of trades easier to remember and calculate.

Paper made writing more portable.

The Printing Press:

Hand copying of books was a long, laborious, and costly process.
During the 1450s Gutenburg developed a moveable-type printing
press that made books, and hence the skill of reading, more common.

Types of Media:

(a) Print Media

(b) Electronic Media
Print Media:

The advertisement of news related to the society on newspapers,

books and magazines etc.

It is large platform but declining audience. The percentage of audience

respectively 48% read newspaper daily, 85% read magazine regularly
and 25% read books more than 10 in a year.

Electronic Media:

That type of media which advertise the news related to society on

digital platform as like TV, radio etc.

99% people have radio at home. It attracts the people most. On TV,
we remain connected with news, talk shows, sports, showbiz,
weather reports etc.

Mass Media in Pakistan:

Convergence:
The idea that the media is merging and is no longer separate entities.
Examples: newspaper available online, Internet, radio, e-books.

Consumption:
On average, each American spends nearly 3600 hours using data a
year.

Individual usage rates are affected by age, education and income.