Introduction To Sociology

Class: BWP-BSTOUR-3RD
Social Institutions
Social Institutions
• In sociology, social institutions, such as economy
and government, are the 'bike parts' and the
overall society is the 'bicycle.'
• Social institutions are established sets of norms
and subsystems that support each society's
survival.
WHAT IS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION?
• Social institution is a group of social positions,
connected by social relations, performing a social role.
• Any institution in a society that works to socialize the
groups of people in it.
• Ex. universities, governments, families
• And any people or groups that you have social
interactions with.
• It is a major sphere of social life organized to meet
some human need.
CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS OF AN
INSTITUTION
• Palispis (1996) pointed out the following
characteristics and functions.
• Institutions are purposive. Each of them has the
satisfaction of social needs as its own goal or objective.
• Relatively permanent in their content. The pattern
roles and relations that people enact in a particular
culture become traditional enduring. Although
institutions are subject to change, the change is
relatively slow.
CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS OF AN
INSTITUTION
• Institutions are structured. The components tend to
band together, reinforce one another. This is because
social roles and social relations are in themselves
structured combinations of behavior patterns.
• Institutions are a unified structure. They function as a
unit.
• Institutions are necessarily value-laden. Their repeated
uniformities, patters and trends become codes of
conduct. Most of these codes subconsciously exert social
pressures. However, others are in form of rules and laws.
FUNCTIONS:
• Institutions simplify social behavior for the individual person. The
social institutions provide every child with all the needed social and
cultural mechanisms through which he can grow socially.
• Institutions provide ready-made forms of social relations and
social roles for the individual. The principal roles are not invented
by the individuals, they are provided by the institutions.
• Institutions also act as agencies of coordination and stability for
total culture. The ways of thinking and behaving that are
institutionalized “make sense” to people.
• Institutions tend to control behavior. They contain the systematic
expectations of the society.
MAJOR SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
• Social Institutions can take many forms,
depending on a social context.
• It may be a family, business, educational, or
political institution.
5 MAJOR SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
• The Family
• Education
• Religion
• Economic Institutions
• Government as a Social Institution
The Family
• The smallest social institution with the unique
function or producing and rearing the young.
• It is the basic unit of 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.
Characteristic of Family
• The family is usually an extended one and
therefore, big.
• In spite of the family planning programs and
population efforts promoted all over the country,
many Family have more children than would be
justified by those who are concerned with
population growth.
• The family is closely knit and has strong family
ties.
• In the Asian family, a great difference exists in
the roles of man and woman. A woman’s
position in the home and society are much lower
than that of man.
• A much higher regard is attributed to the
woman, especially with the changing roles and
functions of the family.
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.
Types
• The Family may be classified in different ways.
According to structure, there are two types.
Conjural or nuclear family.
• This is the primary or elementary family
consisting of husband, wife and children.
Consanguine or extended family
• It consists of married couple, their parents,
siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and
cousins.
Education
Definition
• A system consisting of the roles and norms that
ensure the transmission of knowledge, values,
and patterns of behavior from one generation to
the next.
• Schooling is formal education, which involves
instruction by specially trained teachers who
follow officially recognized policies.
A Change in Education
• In some preindustrial societies, education is largely informal
and occurs mainly within the family.
• The basic purpose of education is the transmission of
knowledge. While before education was a family
responsibility, along with the community and the church,
industrial changed it dramatically.
• Schools become necessary when cultural complexity created
a need for specialized knowledge and skill which could not
be easily acquired in the family, church or community.
• The complexity of modern life has not diminished the
teaching function of the family, but it has added the need for
many types of instruction which require specialized
educational agencies like school, college or university.
What are the Functions of Schools?
• The primary function is to move young people in the
mainstream of society.
• The school is the place for the contemplation of reality, and
our task as teachers, in the simplest terms, is to show this
reality to our students, who are naturally eager about them.
• At home we teach reality to children in a profoundly personal,
informal, and unstructured way.
• There are also teachers who facilitate learning, who teach
children and youth certain types of acceptable behavior, and
sees to it that children develop aspects: physically,
emotionally, socially and academically.
• The intellectual purposes of schooling include the
following:
to teach basic cognitive skills such as reading
writing, and mathematics; to transmit specific
knowledge.
Political
to inculcate allegiance to the existing political
order (patriotism). To teach children the basic
laws of society.
 Social
• Socialize children into the various roles,
behaviors, and values of the society.
• The key ingredient in the stability of any society.
Economic
• To prepare students for their later occupational
roles and select, train, and allocate individuals
into the division of labor.
RELIGION
What is RELIGION?
•Is a system of beliefs and rituals that serves
to bind people together through shared
worship, thereby creating a social group.
•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.
Characteristics of Religion

• Belief in a deity.
• A doctrine of salvation.
• A code of conduct.
• Religious rituals.
Functions of Religion
Calderon (1998)
• Serves as a means of social control.
• Exerts a great influence upon personality
development.
• Allays fear of unknown.
• Explains events or situations which are beyond
comprehension of man.
• Gives man comfort, strength and hope in times of
crisis and despair.
Functions of Religion
• It preserves and transmit knowledge, skills, spiritual,
and cultural values and practices.
• It serves as an instrument of change.
• Promotes closeness, love, cooperation, friend line
and helpfulness.
• Alleviates sufferings from major calamities.
• It provides hope for a blissful life
Three Elements of Religion
Legitimation of norms.
Rituals.
Religious community
Economic Institutions
Microeconomics
• Concerned with the specific economic units of
parts that makes 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
• 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 ways in which government raises and spends
money.
GOVERNMENT as a SOCIAL INSTITUTION
Government
• Is the institution which solves conflicts that are public in
nature and involve more than a few people.
• The SC defines government as the institution by which an
independent society makes and carries out those rules of
action which are necessary to enable men to live in a social
state, or which are imposed upon the people for that society
by those who possess the power or authority of prescribing
them.
• Three Branches of Government
Executive
Legislative
Judicial
Influence of tourism on social institutions
• Every society has created standardized,
patterned ways of fulfilling its fundamental
needs in the form of institutions.
• Human beings fashion social institutions in
accordance with their society's dominant norms
and values.
• At the same time, well-defined institutional
patterns mould and channel individual
behaviour and awareness.
Influence of tourism on social institutions
• Social institutions, however, are not monolithic; tensions,
defects, and countervailing pressures within them mirror
conflicts and controversies within society at large.
• The present part discusses the role these socially constructed
norms and behaviours play in the tourism system and how
institutions are influenced by the tourism system.
• The influence of the transnational tourism industry on social
institutions and their interdependence with a particular
emphasis on the economy, family, and the polity.
• The changing economics of the international tourism
industry, along with its complex and contradictory effects,
have changed the industry's identity.
Influence of tourism on social institutions
• Tourism's international influence has been and can still be
exploited by both democratic and non-democratic regimes
to their own political advantages.
• Tourism has been used as a means of 'selling martial law' to
attract investment capital or internationally prestigious
conferences, to promote peace and brotherhood, and to
legitimize the objectives of a government.
• The tourism industry may further become an agent of
desirable social change by having a positive impact on the
established sex division of labour and on family institutions
with a decline in family control over the individual, as has
been exercised through marital arrangements and the like.