A social institution is a complex, integrated set of social norms organized around the preservation of a basic societal value. Obviously, the sociologist does not define institutions in the same way as does the person on the street. Lay persons are likely to use the term "institution" very loosely, for churches, hospitals, jails, and many other things as institutions.
Sociologists often reserve the term "institution" to describe normative systems that operate in five basic areas of life, which may be designated as the primary institutions. (1) In determining Kinship; (2) in providing for the legitimate use of power; (3) in regulating the distribution of goods and services; (4) in transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next; and (5) in regulating our relation to the supernatural. In shorthand form, or as concepts, these five basic institutions are called the family, government, economy, education and religion.
The five primary institutions are found among all human groups. They are not always as highly elaborated or as distinct from one another as into the United States, but, in rudimentary form at last, they exist everywhere. Their universality indicates that they are deeply rooted in human nature and that they are essential in the development and maintenance of orders. Sociologists operating in terms of the functionalist model society have provided the clearest explanation of the functions served by social institutions. Apparently there are certain minimum tasks that must be performed in all human groups. Unless these tasks are performed adequately, the group will cease to exist. An analogy may help to make the point. We might hypothesize that cost accounting department is essential to the operation of a large corporation. A company might procure a superior product and distribute it then at the price which is assigned to it, the company will soon go out of business. Perhaps the only way to avoid this is to have a careful accounting of the cost of each step in the production and distribution process.
Basic Concepts | Marriage, Family and Kinship | Social Stratification | Types of Society | Economy and Society | Industrial and Urban Society | Social Demography | Social Movements | Political Processes | Social Thinkers | Indian Thinkers | Weaker Section and Minorities | Social Change | Research Method And Statistics | Social Mobility | Introduction To Sociology | Political System | Religion | Sociology Questions | Education | Rural Sociology | Social Pathology | Census of India | Women And Society | Tribal Society
© 2006 Sociology Guide
Site Designed, Developed and Maintained by Concern Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
The Advertising Network
Saturday, March 15, 2008
SOCIAL NORMS
Social norms grow out of social value and both serve to differentiate human social behavior from that of other species. The significance of learning in behavior varies from species to species and is closely linked to processes of communication. Only human beings are capable of elaborate symbolic communication and of structuring their behavior in terms of abstract preferences that we have called values. Norms are the means through which values are expressed in behavior.
Norms generally are the rules and regulations that groups live by. Or perhaps because the words, rules and regulations, call to mind some kind of formal listing, we might refer to norms as the standards of behavior of a group. For while some of the appropriate standards of behavior in most societies are written down, many of them are not that formal. Many are learned, informally, in interaction with other people and are passed "that way from generation to generation.
The term "norms" covers an exceedingly wide range of behaviour. So that the whole range of that behaviour may be included. Sociologists have offered the following definition. Social norms are rules developed by a group of people that specify how people must, should, may, should not, and must not behave in various situations.
Some norms are defined by individual and societies as crucial to the society. For example, all members of the group are required to wear clothing and to bury their dead. Such "musts" are often labeled "mores", a term coined by the American sociologist William Graham Sumner.
Many social norms are concerned with "should "; that is, there is some pressure on the individual to conform but there is some leeway permitted also. The 'should behaviors' are what Sumner called "folk-ways"; that is, conventional ways of doing things that are not defined as crucial to the survival of either the individual or the society. The 'should behaviors' in our own society include the prescriptions that people's clothes should be clean, and that death should be recognized with public funerals. A complete list of the should behaviors in a complex society would be virtually without end.
The word "May" in the definition of norms indicates that, in most groups, there is a wide range of behaviors in which the individual is given considerable choice. To continue the illustration, in Western countries girls may select to wear dresses or halters and jeans. Funerals may be held with or without flowers, with the casket open or closed, with or without religious participation, and so on. We have confined our examples to just two areas, but students should be able to construct their own examples from all areas of life.
The remainder of the definition, including the 'should-not' and the 'must-not' behaviours, probably does not require lengthy illustration because such examples are implicit in what has already been said. One should not belch in public, dump garbage in the street, run stop signs, or tell lies. One must not kill another person or have sexual intercourse with one's sister or brother.
Social norms cover almost every conceivable situation, and they vary from standards where almost complete conformity is demanded to those where there is great freedom of choice. Norms also vary in the kinds of sanctions that are attached to violation of the norms. Since norms derive from values, and since complex societies have multiple and conflicting value systems, it follows that norms frequently are in conflict also.
Taking the illustration of American sex norms, two proscriptive norms prohibit premarital intercourse and extramarital intercourse. But many boys also have been taught that sex is good and that they should seek to "score" with girls whenever possible. Somewhat similarly, girls have been taught that promiscuous intercourse before marriage is bad; but they have also been taught that sex is acceptable within true love relationships. Members of both sexes, then, find themselves faced with conflicting demands for participation in sex and for abstinence from it. They also discover that there are sanctions associated with either course of action.
Normative conflict is also deeply involved in social change. As statistical norms come to differ too blatantly from existing prescriptive norms, new prescriptive norms give sanction to formerly prohibited behaviour and even extend it. Recent changes in the sex norms of teenage and young adult groups provide examples. The change is more apparent in communal living groups where sometimes there is an explicit ideology of sexual freedom and the assumption that sexual activities will be shared with all members of the group. In less dramatic fashion, the change is evident among couples who simply begin to live together without the formality of a marriage ceremony.
Norms generally are the rules and regulations that groups live by. Or perhaps because the words, rules and regulations, call to mind some kind of formal listing, we might refer to norms as the standards of behavior of a group. For while some of the appropriate standards of behavior in most societies are written down, many of them are not that formal. Many are learned, informally, in interaction with other people and are passed "that way from generation to generation.
The term "norms" covers an exceedingly wide range of behaviour. So that the whole range of that behaviour may be included. Sociologists have offered the following definition. Social norms are rules developed by a group of people that specify how people must, should, may, should not, and must not behave in various situations.
Some norms are defined by individual and societies as crucial to the society. For example, all members of the group are required to wear clothing and to bury their dead. Such "musts" are often labeled "mores", a term coined by the American sociologist William Graham Sumner.
Many social norms are concerned with "should "; that is, there is some pressure on the individual to conform but there is some leeway permitted also. The 'should behaviors' are what Sumner called "folk-ways"; that is, conventional ways of doing things that are not defined as crucial to the survival of either the individual or the society. The 'should behaviors' in our own society include the prescriptions that people's clothes should be clean, and that death should be recognized with public funerals. A complete list of the should behaviors in a complex society would be virtually without end.
The word "May" in the definition of norms indicates that, in most groups, there is a wide range of behaviors in which the individual is given considerable choice. To continue the illustration, in Western countries girls may select to wear dresses or halters and jeans. Funerals may be held with or without flowers, with the casket open or closed, with or without religious participation, and so on. We have confined our examples to just two areas, but students should be able to construct their own examples from all areas of life.
The remainder of the definition, including the 'should-not' and the 'must-not' behaviours, probably does not require lengthy illustration because such examples are implicit in what has already been said. One should not belch in public, dump garbage in the street, run stop signs, or tell lies. One must not kill another person or have sexual intercourse with one's sister or brother.
Social norms cover almost every conceivable situation, and they vary from standards where almost complete conformity is demanded to those where there is great freedom of choice. Norms also vary in the kinds of sanctions that are attached to violation of the norms. Since norms derive from values, and since complex societies have multiple and conflicting value systems, it follows that norms frequently are in conflict also.
Taking the illustration of American sex norms, two proscriptive norms prohibit premarital intercourse and extramarital intercourse. But many boys also have been taught that sex is good and that they should seek to "score" with girls whenever possible. Somewhat similarly, girls have been taught that promiscuous intercourse before marriage is bad; but they have also been taught that sex is acceptable within true love relationships. Members of both sexes, then, find themselves faced with conflicting demands for participation in sex and for abstinence from it. They also discover that there are sanctions associated with either course of action.
Normative conflict is also deeply involved in social change. As statistical norms come to differ too blatantly from existing prescriptive norms, new prescriptive norms give sanction to formerly prohibited behaviour and even extend it. Recent changes in the sex norms of teenage and young adult groups provide examples. The change is more apparent in communal living groups where sometimes there is an explicit ideology of sexual freedom and the assumption that sexual activities will be shared with all members of the group. In less dramatic fashion, the change is evident among couples who simply begin to live together without the formality of a marriage ceremony.
CULTURAL LAG
The role played by material inventions, that is, by technology, in social change probably received most emphasis in the work of William F. Ogburn. It was Ogburn, also, who was chiefly responsible for the idea that the rate of invention within society is a function of the size of the existing culture base. He saw the rate of material invention as increasing with the passage of time.Ogburn believed that material and non-material cultures change in different ways. Change in material culture is believed to have a marked directional or progressive character. This is because there are agreed-upon standards of efficiency that are used to evaluate material inventions. To use air-planes, as an example, we keep working to develop planes that will fly, higher and faster, and carry more payloads on a lower unit cost. Because airplanes can be measured against these standards, inventions in this area appear rapidly and predictably. In the area of non-material culture, on the other hand there often are no such generally accepted standards. Whether one prefers a Hussain, a Picasso, or a Gainsborough, for example, is a matter of taste, and styles of painting fluctuate unevenly. Similarly, in institutions such as government and the economic system there are competing forms of styles, Governments may be dictatorships, oligarchies, republics or democracies.
Economic system includes communist, socialist, feudal, and capitalist ones. As far as can be told, there is no regular progression from one form of government or economic system to another. The obvious directional character of change in material culture is lacking in many areas of non-material culture. In addition to the difference in the directional character of change, Ogburn and others believe that material culture tends to change faster than non-material culture. Certainly one of the imperative aspects of modern American life is the tremendous development of technology. Within this century, life has been transformed by invention of the radio, TV, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, transistors, and computers and so on. While this has been happening in material culture, change in government, economic system, family life, education, and religion seems to have been much slower. This difference in rates of cultural change led Ogburn to formulate the concept of culture lag. Material inventions, he believed bring changes that require adjustments in various areas of non-material culture.Invention of the automobile, for instance, freed young people from direct parental observation, made it possible for them to work at distances from their homes, and, among other things, facilitated crime by making escape easier. Half a century earlier, families still were structured as they were in the era of the family farm when young people were under continuous observation and worked right on the homestead.
Culture lag is defined as the time between the appearance of a new material invention and the making of appropriate adjustments in corresponding area of non-material culture. This time is often long. It was over fifty years, for example, after the typewriter was invented before it was used systematically in offices. Even today, we may have a family system better adapted to a farm economy than to an urban industrial one, and nuclear weapons exist in a diplomatic atmosphere attuned to the nineteenth century. As the discussion implies, the concept of culture lag is associated with the definition of social problems. Scholars envision some balance or adjustment existing between material and non-material cultures. That balance is upset by the appearance of raw material objects. The resulting imbalance is defined as a social problem until non-material culture changes in adjustment to the new technology.
Economic system includes communist, socialist, feudal, and capitalist ones. As far as can be told, there is no regular progression from one form of government or economic system to another. The obvious directional character of change in material culture is lacking in many areas of non-material culture. In addition to the difference in the directional character of change, Ogburn and others believe that material culture tends to change faster than non-material culture. Certainly one of the imperative aspects of modern American life is the tremendous development of technology. Within this century, life has been transformed by invention of the radio, TV, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, transistors, and computers and so on. While this has been happening in material culture, change in government, economic system, family life, education, and religion seems to have been much slower. This difference in rates of cultural change led Ogburn to formulate the concept of culture lag. Material inventions, he believed bring changes that require adjustments in various areas of non-material culture.Invention of the automobile, for instance, freed young people from direct parental observation, made it possible for them to work at distances from their homes, and, among other things, facilitated crime by making escape easier. Half a century earlier, families still were structured as they were in the era of the family farm when young people were under continuous observation and worked right on the homestead.
Culture lag is defined as the time between the appearance of a new material invention and the making of appropriate adjustments in corresponding area of non-material culture. This time is often long. It was over fifty years, for example, after the typewriter was invented before it was used systematically in offices. Even today, we may have a family system better adapted to a farm economy than to an urban industrial one, and nuclear weapons exist in a diplomatic atmosphere attuned to the nineteenth century. As the discussion implies, the concept of culture lag is associated with the definition of social problems. Scholars envision some balance or adjustment existing between material and non-material cultures. That balance is upset by the appearance of raw material objects. The resulting imbalance is defined as a social problem until non-material culture changes in adjustment to the new technology.
Friday, March 14, 2008
R U looking for genuine earning opportunity?
Here it is! Earn real money just for inviting your friends and known ones. Full training provided. Click the following link to know more.
http://www.homepagepublicity.com/earn4free.asp?referer=283197
http://www.homepagepublicity.com/earn4free.asp?referer=283197
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)