Sociology | Class 11 | Understanding Social Institutions

Introduction

We each have a status and a role, but we do not get to choose them freely. They are not roles that an actor might simply pick up and put down. Social institutions limit, punish and reward people. An institution might be the government, or it might be the family. This chapter explains what social institutions are and how sociology and anthropology study them.

It also gives a quick review of the basic social institutions: family, marriage, kinship, politics, economy, religion and education.

These notes are part of our Class 11 Sociology notes, so keep them handy while you revise the full unit.

What is an Institution?

An institution, in the broadest sense, is something that operates according to rules that are set, or at least accepted, by law or custom. Its regular and continuous working cannot be understood unless those rules are followed. In short, individuals are constrained by institutions.

An institution can also be seen as a means to an aim. Yet people have often treated the family, the church, the state and even education as ends in themselves.

We have already seen that there are competing and divergent interpretations of ideas within sociology. We have met the functionalist and the conflict perspectives, and seen how they explain the same thing, such as stratification or social control, in very different ways.

A functionalist perspective sees social institutions as a complex network of social norms, beliefs, values and role relationships that arise in response to the needs of society. Societies therefore have both informal and formal institutions. Family and religion are examples of informal social institutions, while law and formal education are examples of formal social institutions.

According to the conflict perspective, all individuals are not treated equally in society. Every social institution, whether family, religious, political, economic, legal or educational, tends to serve the dominant sections of society, regardless of class, caste, tribe or gender. The dominant section not only controls political and economic institutions but also ensures that the ideas of the ruling class become the ideas of society as a whole.

Family

A family is a group of people who are related by blood, and whose adult members are responsible for caring for children. Kinship ties are the relationships formed between individuals, either by marriage or through the lines of descent that connect blood relatives.

Over many decades, sociology and social anthropology have carried out field research across cultures to show how the institutions of family, marriage and kinship matter in all communities, yet vary greatly in their character.

According to functionalists, the family performs crucial tasks that meet society's basic needs and help maintain social order. In this view, modern industrial societies are said to work best when women care for the home and men earn the family's living.

Functionalists regard the nuclear family as the unit best suited to the needs of industrial society. In this type of family, one adult can work outside the home while the other cares for the house and the children. In practice this division of duties has meant the husband taking the instrumental role of breadwinner, while the woman takes the affective, emotional role within the home.

Variation in Family Forms

The shift from nuclear to joint families, and back again, has long been a much debated topic in India. Several studies have shown how many different family forms can be found in different societies.

• In terms of the residence rule, some societies are matrilocal and others are patrilocal. In the first case the newly married couple lives with the woman's parents, while in the second case the couple lives with the man's parents.
• A patriarchal family structure is one in which men hold control and dominance, while a matriarchal family structure is one in which women play a significant part in family decision making.

Families are connected to other social spheres, and families change

In our daily lives we often see the family as unique and separate from other spheres, such as the economic or the political. However, the family, the household, its structure and its norms are closely tied to the rest of society.

Family and kinship are therefore open to change and transformation as a result of larger economic processes. But the direction of that change need not be the same across different countries and regions.

Is the family gendered?

Because families often believe that a male child will support the parents in their old age, while a female child will leave after marriage, they may invest more in a male child.

Despite the biological fact that a female baby has a better chance of survival than a male baby, the rate of infant mortality among female children in the lower age groups in India has been higher than that of male children.

Marriage

Marriage is a socially recognised and sanctioned relationship between two people. When two people marry, they become related to each other, and the marriage also brings together a wider group of people. Through marriage, the partner's parents, brothers, sisters and other blood relatives become one's relatives. The family a person is born into is called the family of orientation, and the family a person creates through marriage is called the family of procreation. Kin related by blood are called consanguineal kin, while kin related by marriage are called affines.

Marriage partners are brought together in a variety of ways that show a remarkable range of styles and customs.

Marriage Forms

Marriage can take many different forms. These forms can be told apart by the number of partners and by the rules that decide who may marry whom.

In terms of the number of partners who may legally enter into marriage, there are two types: monogamy and polygamy.

Monogamy limits a person to only one spouse at a time. Many societies allow people to marry again, usually after the death of the first spouse or after divorce, but they may not have more than one spouse at the same time. This is called serial monogamy.

Polygamy is marriage to more than one partner at the same time. It can take the form of polygyny, one husband with two or more wives, or polyandry, one wife with two or more husbands. When economic conditions are hard, polyandry may be one of a society's responses, because a single man may not be able to support a wife and children on his own, and severe poverty may push a group to limit its numbers.

The Matter of Arranging Marriages: Rules and Prescriptions

In some communities, parents and relatives make the decision about who a person will marry. In others, individuals are relatively free to choose their own partners.

Endogamy and Exogamy Rules

Endogamy and exogamy are ways of classifying marriage according to the rules that decide who is an eligible or ineligible partner.

Endogamy requires a person to marry within a culturally defined group to which he or she already belongs, such as a caste.

Exogamy is the opposite of endogamy: it requires a person to marry outside his or her own group.

Endogamy and exogamy refer to kinship units such as the clan and the caste, and to racial, ethnic or religious groups. Village exogamy is practised in several parts of northern India, which meant that daughters were married into households in distant villages.

Because of the physical distance and the unequal position of women under the patrilineal system, married daughters did not see their parents very often. Leaving one's birthplace was therefore a painful moment, and this feeling is reflected in many folk songs.

Work and Economic Life

Work, whether paid or unpaid, can be defined as carrying out tasks that use mental and physical effort, with the aim of producing goods and services that meet human needs.

Much of the work done in the informal economy, for example, is not recorded in official employment figures. The term informal economy refers to activity that takes place outside regular employment. It sometimes involves cash paid for services, but very often it involves the direct exchange of goods or services.

Modern Work Forms and the Division of Labour

Most people in pre-modern societies worked in the fields or looked after livestock. In a country like India, a large share of the population is still rural and works in agriculture or in other rural based occupations.

A very complex division of labour is one of the most striking features of the economic systems of modern nations. Work has been split into a huge number of separate occupations in which people can specialise. In traditional societies, non-agricultural work usually required knowledge of a craft.

Before industrialisation, most work was done at home by all members of the household. Advances in industrial technology, such as electricity and coal-powered machines, helped to separate work from home. The factories of capitalist entrepreneurs became the focus of industrial growth.

People who looked for work in factories were trained to perform a specialised task and were paid for it. One of the most striking features of modern society is a huge increase in economic interdependence.

With few exceptions, most people in modern societies do not produce the food they eat, the houses they live in, or the goods they use.

Transformation of Work

Mass production needs mass markets. The moving assembly line was one of the most important inventions. Modern industrial production also required costly machinery and the constant supervision of workers through monitoring or surveillance.

Over the last few decades there has been a shift towards what is often called flexible production and the decentralisation of work.

It is argued that, in this age of globalisation, growing competition between firms and between countries pushes firms to organise their output so that they can respond quickly to changing market conditions.

Politics

Political institutions are concerned with how power is distributed in society. Power is the ability of people or groups to carry out their wishes even against the opposition of others. It suggests that those who hold power do so at the expense of others. Power is not held by a person or a group in isolation. It is always held in relation to others.

The principal has the authority to enforce school discipline. The president of a political party has the authority to expel a member. Authority is power that is accepted as legitimate, that is, as just and reasonable. It becomes institutionalised because it rests on legitimacy. People often obey those in authority because they believe their control is fair and reasonable.

The Concept of the State

A state exists when a political apparatus of government, such as a parliament or congress along with civil service officials, rules over a given territory.

According to the functionalist view, the state represents the interests of all sections of society. According to the conflict view, the state represents the dominant sections of society.

Modern states are not the same as traditional states. They are defined by sovereignty, citizenship and, very often, ideas of nationalism. Sovereignty means a state's undisputed political rule over a given territory.

The sovereign state was not always one in which citizenship carried rights of political participation. These rights were usually won through struggles that either reduced the power of kings or overthrew them.

Citizenship: civil, political and social rights

Citizenship is made up of civil, political and social rights.

• Civil rights include the freedom to live where one wishes, freedom of speech and religion, the right to own property, and the right to equal justice under the law.
• Political rights include the right to vote in elections and to stand for public office.
• Social rights are the third type. These concern every person's right to a certain level of economic well-being and security. They include rights to health care, to unemployment support and to a minimum wage.

Nationalism is a set of symbols and beliefs that give people a sense of belonging to a single political community. Individuals feel pride and belonging when they identify as British, Indian, Indonesian or French.

Sociology has always been interested in the study of power in general, not only in the formal machinery of government. Its focus is not only on clearly political bodies, such as legislatures, town councils and political parties, but also on bodies with non-political aims, such as schools, banks and religious institutions. It looks at how power is distributed among political parties, classes, castes and religions.

Religion

The sociological study of religion is different from the religious or theological study of religion in several ways. One, it carries out empirical studies of how religions work in society and how they interact with other institutions. Two, it uses a comparative approach. Three, it studies religious ideas, practices and institutions alongside other parts of society and culture.

Because it uses a scientific method, the sociologist does not take a judgemental view of religious matters. The comparative method is important because it places all societies on a level footing, which helps research to stay free of bias and prejudice. From the sociological point of view, religious life can only be understood by linking it to domestic, economic and political life.

Religion involves a wide range of rituals. Praying, chanting, singing, eating certain foods or avoiding them, and fasting on certain days are all examples of ritual acts. Because rituals are directed towards religious symbols, they are usually seen as separate from everyday routines. Lighting a candle or a diya to honour the divine means something very different from simply lighting a room.

Religion is concerned with the sacred. Think of what followers of different religions do before entering a sacred space: covering or uncovering the head, removing shoes, or wearing particular clothes. What they share is a sense of awe, recognition and respect for sacred places or occasions.

• Following Emile Durkheim, sociologists of religion try to understand this sacred domain that every community separates from the profane. In most cases the sacred includes a supernatural element.
• The sacredness of a tree or a temple is often linked to the belief that it is holy precisely because of some supernatural force behind it.
• It is important to remember, however, that some traditions, such as early Buddhism and Confucianism, had no idea of the supernatural, yet still gave proper respect to things and people they considered sacred.

The sociological study of religion lets us ask how religion interacts with other social institutions. Religion and power have always been closely linked. For example, there have been religious movements for social reform throughout history, such as many anti-caste movements and movements against gender inequality. Religion is more than an individual's private belief. It also has a public side.

Classical sociologists believed that as countries modernised, the influence of religion over many areas of life would shrink. This process is described by the idea of secularisation.

• Max Weber (1864 to 1920) showed, in his major work, how sociology views religion in relation to social and economic behaviour.
• According to Weber, Calvinism, a branch of Protestant Christianity, had a strong influence on the rise of capitalism as a system of economic organisation. Calvinists believed that the world was created for God's glory, so any work done in this world had to be done for His honour, which turned even ordinary tasks into acts of worship.
• More importantly, Calvinists believed in predestination, the idea that whether a person went to heaven or hell was already decided. Because there was no way of knowing their fate, people looked for signs of God's favour in their own work and success.
• As a result, if a person was steady and successful in their work, it was read as a sign of God's approval. The money earned was not to be spent on worldly pleasures. Instead, the Calvinist aim was to live simply, so saving and investing became almost a religious duty.
• In this way, Weber showed that religion, and Calvinism in particular, can shape economic development.

Religion cannot be studied in isolation. Religious institutions are always shaped by social conditions. Religion is an important part of society that is closely tied to its other parts, and the sociologist's task is to work out how these links operate. In traditional societies religion is usually central to social life, and religious symbols and rituals are often woven into a society's material and artistic culture.

Education

Education is a lifelong process that involves both formal and informal learning.

Many of us see school as a stepping stone to higher education and, in the end, to work. For some, it may mean learning important social skills. What all of these have in common is a felt need for knowledge.

In complex societies we see a growing economic division of labour, a separation of work and family, a demand for specialised study and skills, and the rise of states, nations and a complex set of symbols and ideas. In such a setting, education has to be formal and explicit.

Unlike simple societies, modern complex societies rest on abstract, universal values. This is what sets them apart from a simple community built around particular values such as family, kin, clan, caste or religion. Modern schools are meant to promote uniformity, shared aspirations and universal principles.

According to Emile Durkheim, no society can survive without a common base, that is, a certain number of ideas, attitudes and ways of behaving that education must instil in all children, whatever social group they belong to. Education should prepare the child for a particular career, while also helping the child to take in society's essential values.

The functionalist sociologist therefore speaks of general social needs and social standards. For functionalists, education preserves and renews the social structure, while also passing on and developing culture. It is also seen as a way of proving one's ability, and so as a way of selecting people for different levels of status based on what they can do.

For sociologists who see society as unequally stratified, education is a major tool of stratification. Some argue that education intensifies the existing gap between the elite and the masses. Children who attend privileged schools learn to be confident, while those who do not may feel the opposite.

Why it still matters today

Social institutions are not just old textbook words. They are still being shaped and argued over right now, and two live examples make that clear.

Take work. The chapter describes a shift towards flexible production and the decentralisation of work. In India that shift has a name today: the gig economy. When you order food on an app or book a cab, a gig worker completes the job. A NITI Aayog study, India's Booming Gig and Platform Economy, estimated about 7.7 million gig workers in India in 2020 to 2021, and projected this figure to rise to about 23.5 million by 2029 to 2030. That is the very transformation of work the chapter talks about, happening around you, and it raises the same questions sociologists ask about job security, social rights and who carries the risk.

Or take marriage. The chapter defines marriage as a relationship that is socially recognised and sanctioned. This is exactly what was tested when, on 17 October 2023, the Supreme Court of India delivered its verdict in Supriyo versus Union of India. The Court declined to give legal recognition to same-sex marriage and held that there is no fundamental right to marry, leaving any such change to Parliament. Whatever your own view, the case shows that marriage is not only a private bond between two people. It is an institution defined and sanctioned by law and custom, just as the notes say.

If you want to see how these institutions connect to economics, politics and culture, explore the subject on the Learnacy Hub, and browse more chapters in our study notes library.

Sources

1. NITI Aayog, India's Booming Gig and Platform Economy (2022): niti.gov.in policy brief.
2. Government of India release, gig and platform workers projected to reach 23.5 million by 2029 to 2030: newsonair.gov.in.
3. Supreme Court of India, Supriyo versus Union of India, judgment dated 17 October 2023: sci.gov.in judgment.
4. Supriyo v. Union of India, summary: en.wikipedia.org.