Social Institutions

Social institutions

• refer to organized sets of elements such as beliefs, rules, practices, and relationships that exist to attain social order.

Social Institutions

• It also refers to well-established and structured relationships between groups of people that are considered fundamental components of a society's culture.

institutional approach

• tells us that social institutions are ordered sets of rules, norms, beliefs, or values that organize human behavior.

relational approach

• focuses on social relations rather than rules, norms, beliefs, or values.

Family, economy, education, health, religion, and other nonstate institutions

Primary examples of social institutions

Family

• considered a vital social institution

Aristotle

• considered the family as having arisen from a man's desire to leave something of himself behind.

Family

• considered as the foundation of the nation, as stated in the 1987 Constitution

Family

• It is a vital institution for the continued survival of humanity because it nurtures offsprings from childhood into adulthood.

Family

• a group of people who are related by birth, marriage, and a shared residence.

Nuclear Families

Extended families

Reconstituted families

Several kinds of families

Nuclear Families

• are families that are composed of parents and children.

Extended families

• are those that are composed of the nuclear family and other relatives such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Reconstituted families

• are composed of the spouses and their children from a previous marriage.

kinship

• which is a social structure defined by relations among individuals linked by blood or marriage ties.

Kinship

• It has been found to have a significant influence in defining the social status of individuals in many societies.

Matrilineal, Patrilineal, Bilineal

Kinship ties based on descent

Matrilineal kinship

• means that one's descent is based on the female line.

Patrilineal kinship

• means that one's descent is based on the male line

Bilineal kinship

• refers to a descent system based on both the male and female lines.

Marriage

• formally recognized union of a man and a woman. It is also culture-specific

Monogamous and Polygamous

Marriages can be either …

monogamous

• which means that a spouse cannot have more than one spouse.

polygamous

• which means that a person can have more than one spouse.

polygyny

• a husband could take many wives.

polyandry

• where a wife can have many husbands.

economy

• is an institution that addresses questions regarding limited resources of society

liberal economists

• the answers to the important questions regarding the resources of the society should be determined by the market.

market

• according to Adam Smith, is a self-regulating mechanism.

• The laws and other processes of this will determine the number of goods that will be made available to the members of society.

Free competition

• which is vital to a market economy, will limit the greed of self-interested individuals

bourgeoisie or the social class

• largely controls the means of production would have an overwhelming control over the free-market economy.

• They benefit from the free market system.

bourgeoisie

• is made up of those who are involved in the financial sector like bankers, industrialists, and owners of corporations.

Marx and Friedrich Engels

• argued that the market and the state should be under the control of the proletariat or the laborers.

Private property

• which is concentrated on the bourgeoisie, should be abolished and must be under the direction of the state to promote equal distribution of economic resources according to the needs of the people and regardless of social class

communism

• According to Marx, It is the solution to the alienation of man in a free market system and is an alternative to a free market system controlled by bankers and industrialists.

John Maynard Keynes

• English economist, argued that while the economy should be left with the so-called "invisible hand of the market," there would be instances when the government must be ready to intervene to prevent market failures.

Market failures

• refer to cases when the market becomes inefficient due to imperfect competition, imperfect information, imperfect mobility, and the like. In such cases, the government should be allowed to intervene in the economy to resolve such issues.

Educational institutions and health institutions

Two institutions that uphold basic human rights

Educational institutions

• ensure that individuals are functionally literate

Health institutions

• ensure that individuals have access to health services to promote universal public health

Educational and health services

• could be provided by either the state or by private entities.

Alternative Learcins System (ALS)

• which is a ladderized, non-formal education program specifically catering to dropouts, out-of-school youth, and senior citizens.

Health institutions

• are primarily established to ensure public health and to provide universal health services.

Western health systems and traditional or alternative health systems

There are different kinds of health systems

Western health systems

• are based on science and the skills of health workers are standardized and learned from health sciences schools. Patients are treated based on standardized diagnostic practices.

traditional or alternative health systems

• These health systems have been in existence even before the introduction of western health systems.

traditional healers

• Illnesses that are not recognized by western health systems are usually referred to _______________.

• This is therefore indicative that some illnesses are also culture-specific.

Binat

• refers to the recurrence of the symptoms of a disease due to the incomplete healing of a patient. It is usually recommended that patients take time to heal because one could not force healing. This is quite problematic for a society that demands quick and instant healing.

Pasma

• refers to trembling hands or fingers. Allegedly, it is caused by the subjection of the body to warm and cold conditions. It would not be good for the body which was just subjected to heat to be immediately subjected to the cold conditions. The body is supposed to cool down gradually to avoid this.

traditional health systems

• make use of more natural methods of healing and natural medicines as well. It is said that these health systems are less intrusive compared to the Western health systems.

Traditional health systems

• are also said to employ a holistic perspective in their methods. The effectiveness of this could be verified through the use of science.

Religion

• is an institution that involves a set of beliefs and practices of a particular social group.

Church

• be organized into a group that has universal membership

Sect

• be organized into an exclusive group

church

• may be supported by the larger society and it also supports the beliefs of the larger society.

Sect

• usually challenges the norms of the larger society.

Monotheism and Polytheism

Religions can be further classified into …

Monotheism

• refers to religions that believe in only one god

polytheistic

• believe in many gods.

Animism

• is not considered a religion but rather a belief system that holds that hoth animate and inanimate things have a spiritual essence. It is different from monotheistic and polytheistic religions that limit spirituality to human beings and transcendental beings

Marx

• According to him, religion reinforces social control and is the "opiate of the masses." Its role is to justify the sufferings experienced by the proletariats or members of the lower social classes, particularly the wage-earners. It is part of society's superstructure and a product of society's economic realities.

Max Weber

• believed that religion is a factor for economic development. In the case of predominantly Protestant Christian societies, for instance, he argued that their emphasis on the values of frugality and hard work may translate into a more developed economy.

Frugality and hard work

• could contribute to the accumulation of capital which is important toward industrialization. Weber's thesis shows how beliefs affect human behavior and how human behavior could affect society.

August Comte

• proposed that the dominance of religion is part of the theological phase of the development of society

secularization theory

• predicts the decrease in the influence of religion and organized churches in social affairs.

theocracies

• States with governments that are under the power of religious leaders are called ________