Social Institutions
Meaning:
Institutions
• Refers to an established order comprising of ruler and standardized
behaviour pattern.
• The term ‘institution’ is widely acknowledged to be used in a variety of
ways, and often ambiguously.
• Institution is widely used to describe - social practices that are regularly
and continuously repeated, are sanctioned and maintained by social norms.
Features:
• Institutions are an abstract • Institutions are also interdependent.
concept of organized habits and The family institution supports the
standardized ways of doing things. other institutions and is in turn
• We cannot see institutions. What supported by them.
we can see are our family, school, • The condition of the economy in our
band, hospital, temple. society determines whether we can
• But this would be nothing but obtain a good job and establish a
empty symbols without individuals. family.
The behaviour of individuals is the • The concept of institution is an
institution. important one in the social sciences.
• Therefore, an institution gives form • Unfortunately, however, it has been
to individual behaviour. used in different ways and its
meaning has become ambiguous.
Points to be remembered
• Besides helping individuals to satisfy their basic • Institutions are not independent, but are
needs, institutions provide unity to the society. related to each other in a cultural system.
• Institution enables society to keep functioning, • Most of the institutions in the system tend to
provide order and maintain stability. support one another.
• The institutions may stimulate certain individuals to • Thus, institutions act as harmonising agencies
react against it and formulate new patterns of in the total cultural configuration.
behaviour. • For example - courtship supports marriage
• Some individuals feel the disharmony between the which in turn supports the family, all three
various institutions. institutions are mutually interdependent.
• He/she must devise some ways whereby his/her • Workable way of doing things, repeated
urges may be more fully satisfied. over and over tend to become rigid.
• Hence, the institution functions in such cases to • This is why mere habits become institutions.
stimulate the individual to "break new roads to
freedom".
• Thus, institution provides the stimulus which starts a
revolt against the established order.
• Institutions tend to maintain stability and status quo.
• But as the new ways of doing things appear and become workable, they challenge stability and
impel institutions towards change.
• Functions of the institutions also change, as they are not static.
• They change through time.
• Industrialisation, Urbanisation and expanding area of state activity have squeezed the functions of
the primary institutions in certain respects, while the secondary institutions are on the expansion.
Meaning of Descent:
▪
Kinship Types
Based on social relationship Based on descent (Lineage)
▪ Unilineal
▪ Patrilineal
Affinal Consanguineous
▪ Matrilineal
kinship kinship (blood
▪ Bilateral
(marital ties)
▪ Collateral
ties)
▪ Clan/Sib
▪ Phatry
▪ Moieties
George Peter Murdock has identified three basic rules of descent
• Patrilineal Descent - In this rule of descent the child is affiliated solely with the
consanguine kin group of the father and mother's kin group are discarded.
• Matrilineal Descent - In this rule of descent the child is affiliated solely with the
consanguine kin group of the mother and father's kin group are discarded.
• Double Descent / Bilateral Descent - In this rule some of the members of the father's
kin group and mother's kin group are excluded, and the child is affiliated to select a group of
relatives from both sides.
Bilateral descent
