Basic Social Institutions

1. The concept, features, structure, and types of social institutions.
2. The functions of social institutions and the changes occurring within them.
3. Education as a social institution.
4. Marriage and family as a social institution.
5. Problems of family development in contemporary society.
1. The concept, features, structure, and types of social institutions
Society is not merely a collection of classes and ethnic and demographic groups, but also functions as a system of social institutions. Adapting to its environment, society, over the course of history, produces tools suited to solving various problems and satisfying its most important needs. These tools are what we call social institutions.
In general terms, a social institution can be defined as a historically formed, stable form of organizing people's joint activity, aimed at satisfying the basic needs of society.
In other words, a social institution is a relatively stable pattern of behaviour of individuals and organizations in a particular sphere of activity. The term «social institutions» was first introduced by H. Spencer. He understood by it «specialized organs» that arise in society as a result of the natural evolution and increasing complexity of the internal structure of the «social body». That is, society consists of various social institutions that perform functions vital to it.
The term «social institution» is used in a great variety of senses. It is applied to the family, the state, law, the economy, property, education, religion, and so on.
From the external (formal) side, a social institution appears as a body of persons and institutions, equipped with certain material resources and carrying out a specific social function.
From the internal (substantive) side, it is a certain set of norms, values, and purposefully oriented standards of behaviour for specific persons in specific situations. Thus, the judiciary as a social institution externally represents a body of persons (judges, prosecutors, lawyers, notaries, and others), institutions (courts, procuracies, correctional institutions, etc.), as well as material resources (buildings, equipment, finances, and others). On its substantive side, the social institution of justice represents a set of standardized patterns of behaviour of authorized persons that ensure the performance of this social function. These standards of behaviour are embodied in the social roles characteristic of the justice system (the role of judge, prosecutor, lawyer, etc.).
The structure of a social institution includes:
1. A set of social positions and roles.
2. Social norms and sanctions regulating the functioning of a given social area.
3. A group of persons professionally engaged in a given area.
4. A body of organizations and institutions functioning in a given sphere.
5. Resources and material means.
The basic characteristics of social institutions that distinguish them from other social formations:
1. Objectivity, independence from the consciousness, wishes, and preferences of individual people.
2. Historicity, that is, stability across space and time.
3. The specificity of institutional behavior, which realizes the interdependence of individuals within an integral system of interactions.
4. The binding nature of the norms and requirements of a social institution for most participants in interaction within the given sphere, i.e., their coercive force.
5. Collectivity - their activity concerns the interaction of a large number of people; they are not of personal origin but arise only within society.
Types of social institutions
According to their degree of formality, social institutions are divided into:
1. Formal (for example, the state, the school, the prison, the store) - interaction between subjects within the framework of this institution is carried out on the basis of formally stipulated rules, laws, and regulations.
2. Informal (for example, friendship) - formal regulation of social roles, functions, methods and means of activity, and sanctions for non-normative behavior are absent. They are based on the norms of morality, traditions, and religion - provided that the religion is not the state and dominant one.
Depending on the needs of society that are satisfied by social institutions, H. Spencer identified three types of social institutions:
1. Social institutions responsible for the continuation of the human race (marriage, family).
2. Productive and distributive social institutions (industry, the market, etc.).
3. Regulatory social institutions (education, politics, the army, the state, religion, the police).
A more modern and commonly used classification divides social institutions into:
• economic - these are all the institutions engaged in the production, exchange and distribution of goods and services, the regulation of monetary circulation, the organization and division of labor, etc., that is, they realize the need to obtain the means of subsistence: food, clothing, housing. These include the following: property, money, the market, the firm, the bank, the store, etc.;
• political - institutions connected with the establishment, maintenance and exercise of power, laws, rules and standards, that is, they realize the need for security and social order. These are the state, political parties, the army, the police, trade unions, etc.;
• • social in the narrow sense of the word, regulating people's interactions in the family and everyday sphere (family, marriage, education, health care, communications, services, transport, public catering);
• cultural - regulate relations connected with the production, preservation and dissemination of spiritual values (religion, science, artistic institutions, book publishing, etc.).
By duration of existence, social institutions can conditionally be divided into:
1) modern - arose relatively recently, and we can approximately name the date of their emergence (trade unions, the bank, the institution of the presidency, the kindergarten, etc.)
2) historical - arose very long ago; it is impossible to name the date of their emergence (property, marriage, the state, etc.).
By importance for the existence of society, social institutions can conditionally be divided into:
1. Fundamental, top-priority institutions for the existence of society. Their form changes, but they exist in all cultures (property, family, language, etc.)
2. Secondary, auxiliary institutions - they may or may not be present in society depending on its level of development (the bank, fashion, the trade union, the assembly of nobility, etc.).
Depending on their complexity and size, social institutions can conditionally be divided into:
1. Complex - themselves consist of smaller social institutions. (For example, culture, public catering, health care. If we consider the institution of education, it consists of universities, technical colleges, vocational schools, general schools, which in turn are divided into even smaller subtypes of educational establishments). The most complex social institution is the state.
2. Simple - those social institutions that cannot be divided into smaller ones (for example, the canteen, the store).
According to their recognition by «official society», social institutions can be:
1. legal - permitted and approved by public opinion, morality, and state bodies (for example, the school, friendship, the queue, the circus, the library)
2. illegal - lie outside the scope of official statistics, but the whole of society knows about them, and in the view of the majority they are a hindrance to it (corruption, the shadow economy, gangs, etc.).
It is necessary to remember the conventional and relative nature of these classifications.
Each social institution performs certain functions and shares common features with other institutions: normative prescriptions and patterns of behavior, cultural symbols, utilitarian features, and ideology.

2. Functions of social institutions and the changes occurring within them.

Every social institution performs its own specific functions in society. But there is a range of functions common to all social institutions. These include:
1. The function of fixing and reproducing social relations in a given sphere. Social institutions transmit experience, values, and cultural norms from generation to generation.
2. The function of integrating and uniting society - consists in uniting the aspirations, actions, and relations of individuals, and overall ensures the social stability of society.
3. The function of regulation and social control - consists in regulating the actions of individuals within the institution on the basis of norms, rules of behaviour, and sanctions, ensuring the performance of desired actions and the prohibition of undesirable behaviour.
4. The communicative function, or the inclusion of people in activity - aimed at ensuring the ties, communication, and interaction of people on the basis of a certain organization of their joint life activity.
5. Specialization and unification of types of activity - each social institution offers its own algorithm, standard, and order for organizing the joint actions of people in satisfying their needs, while other alternative forms of organization are not permitted (for example, the modern school offers standards of behaviour, a curriculum, mechanisms of control and assessment, etc., different from those that existed in our country 100 years ago. Society's recognition of only monogamous marriages does not extend the rights and obligations of spouses to polygamous unions).
6. The structuring of society and the expansion of social space with the emergence of new social institutions.
In carrying out their functions, social institutions encourage the actions of the individuals who belong to them and induce agreement with corresponding standards of behavior, while suppressing deviations from the requirements of these standards, that is, they control and regulate the behavior of individuals. On the other hand, social institutions satisfy various needs of society and regulate the use of the resources available to society.
In the activity of any specific social institution, functions are divided into manifest ones, if they are officially declared, expected, and recognized by everyone, and latent ones, if they are hidden from view, neither declared nor expected.
The manifest functions of a social institution are those functions for the performance of which the given social institution was created, that is, functions corresponding to its goals. They are formed and declared in codes and fixed in the system of statuses and roles. Thus, the manifest function of the social institution of the family is the reproduction of offspring, their upbringing, and their introduction into social life.
The latent (hidden) functions of a social institution are the positive, unforeseen-at-the-time-of-occurrence results of the activity of the social institution.
Latent functions differ from dysfunctions in that they do not cause harm. Thus, the manifest function of higher education is the training of future professionals, while its latent function is the formation of an environment for social interaction; a manifest dysfunction is the fact that the content of education and teaching methods do not correspond to the modern information explosion and to the requirements for professional knowledge, which are changing rapidly.
A dysfunction of a social institution is a phenomenon of mismatch between the activity of the social institution and the existing needs of the social system.
Externally, dysfunction is expressed in a shortage of appropriately trained personnel and material resources, and in organizational disorder. From a substantive point of view, dysfunction is expressed in a lack of clarity in the institution's goals, in uncertainty of its functions, and in the decline of its social prestige and authority.
As society changes, social institutions must change as well.
The causes of such changes can be internal and external. Internal causes include the increasing complexity of social reality due to the emergence of new technologies and resources, the emergence of new requirements for the organization of production and consumption (environmental, sanitary), and the expansion of the cultural demands and social needs of society's members. External causes include the influence of other, typically more developed, social systems from which institutional models are borrowed (certainly not directly and immediately, but reworked and adapted to the cultural specifics of the system). Any institutional change begins with conflict, contradiction, and dissatisfaction with the functioning of previously existing institutional models.
The main variants of institutional change are:
1. Improvement and increasing complexity of the structure of existing social institutions. An example of this is the growing complexity of the structure of education as a social institution, the appearance in its structure of new elements (technical colleges, specialized schools, preparatory courses), new methods of assessment, and new forms of instruction (correspondence, distance learning).
2. A new redirection of the activity of previously existing institutions. Examples: the transfer of the productive function, which under conditions of agrarian society was performed by the family, to institutions that function in the sphere of hired labour; the performance, under Soviet conditions, by psychiatric hospitals of the function of isolating and punishing dissenters and dissidents.

3. The emergence of new social institutions and the cessation of old ones.
The emergence, formation, and development of a social institution is called institutionalization. This is the process of ordering, formalizing, and standardizing social ties, replacing spontaneous and experimental behaviour with expected behaviour - behaviour that is anticipated, modelled, and regulated.
The process of institutionalization consists of several successive stages:
1) the emergence of a need whose satisfaction requires joint organized action;
2) the formation of common goals;
3) the appearance of social norms and rules in the course of spontaneous social interaction, which takes place by trial and error;
4) the appearance of procedures associated with the norms and rules;
5) the institutionalization of the norms, rules, and procedures, i.e. their adoption and practical application;
6) the establishment of a system of sanctions to maintain the norms and rules, with differentiation in their application in individual cases;
7) the creation of a system of statuses and roles covering all members of the institution without exception.
Thus, education becomes a social institution when a distinct social community engaged in professional activity of teaching and upbringing appears, mass schooling develops, along with special norms regulating the process of transmitting social experience, and social control over this activity by specialized bodies.
The formation of a social institution can occur spontaneously or consciously.
Changes in a social institution can lead to its disorganization, destruction, and disappearance. This process is called deinstitutionalization. Its consequences can be positive or negative. Thus, for example, such social institutions as the Inquisition, slavery, and the institution of duelling have become things of the past. As a rule, social institutions do not simply vanish without a trace; more modern forms of organizing people's joint actions appear in their place, which better and more effectively satisfy social needs under new conditions. Courts came to replace duels, factories and plants came to replace craft guilds, and so on. Deinstitutionalization manifests itself, first and foremost, in a growing number of dysfunctions.

3. Education as a social institution

The concept of "education" has many meanings. It can be viewed both as a process and as a result of the acquisition of systematized knowledge, skills, and abilities and the development of personality. Today there are seven different approaches to defining education. Thus, education is a specific social institution, an educational process, a type of activity, a result, a value, a branch of the economy, and also a specific field of knowledge.
The education system is a social institution that, through specific methods, carries out the process of socializing people, above all the younger generation (preparing them for and drawing them into the life of society through instruction and upbringing).
The education system also includes various types:
By degree of universality, general and specialized education are distinguished.
By type of relationship to the state — secular and religious educational institutions.
By accessibility — mass and elite education.
By level of formality — formal and informal education.
Secular education in Ukraine has a complex structure of the European type and includes preschool education, general secondary education, out-of-school education, vocational and technical education, higher education, postgraduate education, doctoral candidacy (aspirantura), doctoral studies, and self-education. In addition, the following educational levels are established: primary general education, secondary specialized education, complete general secondary education, vocational and technical education, basic higher education, and higher education, while educational-qualification levels have their own gradation: skilled worker, junior specialist, bachelor's, specialist's, master's.
In its modern form, education arose in Ancient Greece. There, private family education, carried out by slaves, was dominant. Public schools functioned for the poorer strata of the free population. Elite schools (citharist schools) cultivated artistic taste and the ability to sing and play musical instruments. Physical development and military skills were formed in palaestras and developed further in gymnasiums. It was in Ancient Greece that the main types of schools originated: the gymnasium, the lyceum (the place where Aristotle set out his system), and the academy (Plato).
In Ancient Rome, schooling pursued the goal of solving applied, utilitarian tasks, and was aimed at training warriors and statesmen; strict discipline prevailed there. Morals, law, history, rhetoric, literature, art, and medicine were studied.
In the Middle Ages, religious education took shape. Three types of educational institutions functioned: parish schools, cathedral schools, and secular schools.
In the 12th–13th centuries, universities arose in Europe, and colleges attached to them for people from the poorer strata. Typical faculties: arts, law, theology, and medicine.
Education became widespread over the last two to three centuries. As a social institution, education took shape in the 19th century, when the mass school appeared. In the 20th century, the function of education has been constantly growing, and the formal level of the population's education has been rising. In developed countries, the vast majority of young people finish secondary school (the United States — 86% of young people, Japan — 94%). The return on education is growing. The growth of national income due to investment in education reaches 40-50%. The share of government spending on education is increasing.
The main social functions of education include the following:

• • socio-economic functions, connected with the formation and development of society's intellectual, scientific-technical, and personnel potential;
• • socio-political - the fulfilment of which makes it possible to ensure society's security in the broadest sense of the term, social control, social mobility, sustainable development of society, its internationalization and inclusion in general civilizational processes;
• • culture-creating - the development of the spiritual life of society, in which higher education performs a decisive function, since it not only directly influences the formation of the individual, but also instils in them a sense of social responsibility, making it possible to preserve, develop, and pass on spiritual heritage.
• • socializing - drawing the individual into the social norms and values of society.
• • integrative - by drawing people toward shared values and teaching certain norms, education stimulates common action and unites people.
• • social mobility - education serves as a channel of social mobility, although unequal access to education still persists in the modern world.
• • selective - there is selection into elite educational institutions, and their subsequent advancement.
• • humanistic - the all-round development of the student's personality.

There are also latent functions of education, which include the "babysitting" function (education temporarily relieves parents of the need to look after their children), the function of forming an environment for communication, and higher education in our society performs the function of a kind of "storage locker".
Thus, education is a multifaceted social phenomenon that can be viewed both as a process and as a result of the acquisition of systematized knowledge, abilities, and skills, and of personal development. Modern education ensures the functioning of society as an informational one, continues throughout a person's entire life, and has a complex structure that gives the modern individual the opportunity to pursue an educational strategy of their own choosing.

4. Marriage and family as a social institution

Marriage is a historically established form of relations between a man and a woman that has been legalized and regulated by society, defining their mutual rights and obligations in the sexual, economic, and household spheres.
Prior to the emergence of the institution of marriage, promiscuity existed - the absence of clear prohibitions on sexual relations, that is, a state in which any man in a given society could be the sexual partner of any woman in that society. Today marriage is characterized by a fairly strict regulation of relations between a woman and a man. It is the basis for the formation of most families.
Let us consider the various types of marriage. It should be noted that the names often used in classifications of marriage are frequently based on the ancient Greek word "gamos", which translates as marriage.
By the number of marriage partners, a distinction is made between:
1. Group marriage - several individuals of one sex marry several individuals of the other sex.
2. Polygamy - one individual marries several individuals of the other sex.
Polygamy comes in two forms:
a) polyandry (from the ancient Greek «andros», meaning man) - when one woman is married to several men;
b) polygyny (from the ancient Greek «gyne», meaning woman) - when one man is married to several women.
3. Monogamy - or a paired marriage (one man and one woman). By the socio-demographic and ethnic characteristics of men and women, marriages are:
1. Homogamous - the husband and wife are of roughly the same age, education, and occupation, and belong to the same ethnic group.
2. Heterogamous - the husband and wife differ significantly in these characteristics.
By legal registration:
1. Legal marriage (that is, registered).
2. Free marriage (or unregistered marriage).
By the form of marriage registration, marriages are:
1. Civil (that is, registered at a civil registry office).
2. Church.
The family, as a rule, is a more complex system of relations than marriage, since it may unite not only spouses but also their children and other relatives as well.
The family is a union of people based on blood kinship, marriage, or adoption, linked by a shared way of life and mutual responsibility for raising children.
Depending on the structure of kinship ties, a family may be:
1. Nuclear (simple) - consisting of spouses and the children dependent on them. Such a family comprises two generations.
2. Extended - consisting of several nuclear families, or of a nuclear family together with other relatives.
3. Incomplete - lacking one of the parents. The absence of one of the parents may be caused by various reasons: death, absence of marriage, or divorce.
The most widespread family in contemporary Western countries is the nuclear family. In it there are no more than 3 role positions (father - husband, mother - wife, son - brother or daughter - sister). Every person can simultaneously be a member of several nuclear families, but these families do not form an extended family, because they do not live «under one roof».
By the number of children, families are distinguished as:
1. Childless.
2. Few-children (1-2 children).
3. Many-children (3 or more children).
Today in the cities of Ukraine more than half of families have only one child.
By the criterion of the distribution of power, a distinction is made between:
1) patriarchal families, where the father is the «head of the family state»;
2) matriarchal families, where the highest authority and influence belongs to the mother;
3) egalitarian, or partner-based, families - these are ones in which there are no clearly defined family rights, and a situational distribution of power between father and mother prevails.
Depending on the age of the spouses, a distinction is made between:
1. A youth family - when the spouses are under 30 years of age. The main problems of such a family are adaptation to new responsibilities and daily life, the emergence of roles connected with parenthood, and problems with employment and economic support.
2. A family of middle marital age. The main problems of such a family are monotony, the routine nature of performing household duties, boredom, the stereotyped nature of relations, and the feeling that the most interesting and significant things in life have already happened and now life is «passing by».
3. The elderly married couple. Problems arise related to the spouse's health, the need for a caring attitude toward one another, and the adoption of new family roles.
The family, like other social institutions, performs certain functions. Researchers believe that these functions reflect the historical nature of the link between the family and society, and the dynamics of family change at different historical stages. The modern family has lost many of the functions that used to cement it in the past: the productive, protective, educational and other functions. However, some functions remain resistant to change, and in this sense can be called traditional. These include the following functions:
1. Reproductive - the family ensures the reproduction and continuation of the human race, and the physical and spiritual renewal of society. Thanks to this function, the biological reproduction of the population, that is, the birth of children, is ensured.
2. Educational - it consists in the transmission by the adult members of the family to the children of social experience, ensuring their entry into the system of social relations.3. Household-economic - the provision by family members of household services to one another, and the organization of the family's life and daily routine.
4. Economic - the economic support of minors and disabled members of society, the obtaining of material resources by some family members from others (in the case of disability, in exchange for services, etc.), including feeding the family, acquiring and maintaining household property, clothing and footwear, and forming and spending the family budget.
5. Socializing - satisfying the needs for fatherhood and motherhood, contact with children, their upbringing, and self-realization through children. Family and social upbringing are interconnected, complement one another and can, within certain limits, even substitute for one another, but on the whole they are not equivalent, and under no circumstances can they become so. Family upbringing is more emotional in nature than any other form of upbringing, for its «conduit» is parental love for children, which evokes reciprocal feelings of children toward their parents.
6. The sphere of primary social control - the moral regulation of the behaviour of family members in various spheres of life, as well as the regulation of responsibilities and obligations in the relations between spouses, parents and children, and representatives of the older and middle generations.
7. Recreational - from the Latin recreatio - restoration. Connected with rest, the organization of leisure, and care for the health and well-being of family members.
8. Spiritual communication - the development of the personalities of all family members, the spiritual mutual enrichment of one another.
9. Social-status - conferring a certain social status on all family members, the reproduction of the social structure.
10. Psychotherapeutic (emotional) - allows all family members to satisfy needs for sympathy, respect, recognition, emotional support, and psychological protection.

5. Problems of family development in modern society

The main factor influencing the current state of the family and family relations is society's transition from the agrarian stage of development to the industrial and post-industrial stages. This transition causes the following changes:

• • the development of two life centers - work and home;
• • the growth of women's economic independence and their active involvement in employment;
• • a decline in the prestige and influence of religion;
• • the sexual revolution;
• • the democratization of marriage and family legislation;
• • the invention of reliable means of contraception.

Agrarian society is characterized by the traditional family model, while industrial and post-industrial society are characterized by the modern one.
Overall, the following are considered the main trends in family development over the last few decades:
1. An absolute and relative increase in the number of divorces.
2. An increase in the number of children born out of wedlock and raised in single-parent families.
3. A decrease in the average duration of marriage.
4. The postponement of the age of entering into marriage.
5. An increase in the number of people living in free unions.
6. A decrease in family size and a decline in the birth rate.
7. An increase in the number of single people who do not marry.
New (alternative) forms of family and marriage:
1. A marriage contract concluded for a fixed term.
2. Group marriage.
3. Polygyny.
4. Serial monogamy.
5. Commuter marriage.
6. Same-sex marriages.
7. Communal living.
Thus, a social institution is a concept used to describe practices that are regularly repeated in society over a long period of time, are sanctioned and sustained by means of social norms, and hold important significance in the structure of society. Every social institution has a specific purpose of activity and, in accordance with it, performs certain functions, giving members of society the opportunity to satisfy the corresponding social needs. As society becomes more complex, so do its basic institutions. In primitive societies there existed only a few main social institutions - the economy, the family, religion. But contemporary society is characterized by the proliferation and increasing complexity of the system of social institutions. After all, new problems are constantly arising that give rise to new needs and demand new solutions. New branches of science and of the economy emerge, and the system of governing society becomes more complicated. For example, in Ukrainian society today the institutions of multi-party politics and local self-government are actively developing, and discussions are being held on introducing such a political institution as an upper chamber of parliament, and so on. However, the basic social institutions in sociology usually include the political, economic, educational, religious, and family institutions.