Social institutions: family, religion, education and economy

Sociology · Culture, socialisation and groups. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

A social institution is an established pattern of norms and roles built around a basic need of society. The five main ones are family, religion, education, economy and polity (the state).

The family is the most basic. Questions test its forms (who lives together), the rules of marriage (how many spouses, whom one may marry, where the couple lives) and its functions. Industrial and urban life has moved many societies from extended towards nuclear families and has passed some family functions to schools and the state.

For the other institutions, know the function each performs and the classic view of each: Durkheim and Marx on religion, Durkheim on education, Weber on the state and authority.

Rules to remember

Nuclear family: parents and unmarried children. Extended or joint family: three or more generations or married brothers in one household.
Family of orientation: the one you are born into. Family of procreation: the one you form by marriage.
Monogamy: one spouse. Polygamy: more than one; polygyny = one man, several wives; polyandry = one woman, several husbands.
Endogamy: marriage inside the group. Exogamy: marriage outside it. Residence: patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal.
G. P. Murdock's four family functions: sexual, reproductive, economic, educational (socialisation).
Religion: Durkheim, sacred versus profane, religion binds society together; Marx, 'the opium of the people'.
Weber: the state claims a monopoly of legitimate force; authority is traditional, charismatic or rational-legal.

Common mistake

Polygamy and polygyny are not the same word. Polygamy is the general term for plural marriage; polygyny (several wives) and polyandry (several husbands) are its two forms.

Worked example

In a community a man must marry a woman of his own biradari, and the bride then moves into the house of her husband's parents. Which rule of marriage and which rule of residence are these?

Marriage is required inside one's own group, so the rule is endogamy, not exogamy.
The couple lives with or near the husband's family.
Residence with the husband's family is patrilocal; neolocal would mean a new, separate home.

Answer: Endogamy and patrilocal residence.

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