In this post we will discuss social institutions to continue develop the understating of social framework. Social institutions are a group of people with common interests

Social Institutions

joe Inter-Cultural Skills

What are Social Institutions?

In this post we will discuss social institutions to continue develop the understating of social framework.   Social institutions are a group of people with common interests and established norms, who are organized to fulfil a societal need and have the resources to provide it. In some way each of these social institutions effects each domain of our lives and the relationships we have in in each of the domains effects the relationship we have with each of these institutions.

  • Family: Our social framework starts with our families, but how they affect us from that point forward is anybody’s guess.  A family is a socially defined set of relationships between at least two people related by birth, marriage, adoption, or, in some definitions, long-standing ties of intimacy.
  • Economy: Economy is the set of arrangements by which societies produce, distribute, and consume goods, services, and other resources.
  • Spiritual Faith/ Belief System: This social institution is often referred to as religion.  But the absence of religion also falls into this category as does the wide of array of spirituality that isn’t commonly viewed as a religion.  This is a system of beliefs and practices pertaining to the supernatural and to norms about the right way to live that is shared by a group of believers. Sociologists treat religion as a social rather than supernatural phenomenon.
  • Education: Education is formal process in which knowledge, skills, and values are systematically transmitted from one individual or group to another.
  • Science: Science is an institution of reasonable skepticism where its members ask questions and get answers.  In an of itself, Science is a group of people who perform a task of developing new methods of solving problems for other groups.
  • Medicine: Medicine as a social institution may be a subset of science but is worthy of mention by itself.  How this group interacts with and influences other group significantly shapes the culture around it.
  • Media: Media may the most dominant social institution in the United States.  This institution incorporates several groups that produce all forms of media; print, news, television, outdoor, social, and blogs.  This group feeds the need for information and has the ability to shape what information other groups receive.
  • Law and Order: Is the means by which a society regulates itself.  Whether the institutions provided by an organized police force or a social justice system all societies use some form of law and order.
  • Military: An institution that exists for the defense of a society and to protect its interests.
  • Political: Institutions that pertain to the governance of a society, its formal distribution of authority, its use of force, and its relationships to other societies and political units. The state, an important political institution in modern societies, is the apparatus of governance over a particular territory.