Social Institutions: Examples and Structure

The notion of a social institution implies a certain historically formed form of organization of human life together, which arises as a consequence of the need to satisfy the needs of society. Institutions are aimed at the implementation of various communicative functions and are characterized by their ability to determine people's behavior through established Rules (public opinion), taboos (prohibitions), and so on. Actually, this term in different contexts can act in four basic meanings:

• Group of persons personifying the institution;
• An organization designed to perform certain functions;
• Certain social roles, through which the meaning of relations in society is given;
• Set of institutions;
• Concentrated in one sphere of life of a group of people.

The structure of social institutions contains the following elements:

1. Public statuses and their corresponding behaviors (prescribed for execution).
2. Substantiation of the hierarchy. It can have the character of a description Divine origin, ideological construction, a historically developed state of affairs.
3. Means and methods of retransmission of social experience. That is, the transfer of the system of values from generation to generation.
4. Tabooedness of society. This category is a system of strict prohibitions on certain actions that are not accepted in the context of a particular people. Violation of taboos (literally obscene behavior) entails repression by society: from private condemnation to physical coercion or punishment.
5. Social positions. This is directly the institutions themselves.

Modern sociologists, as a rule, distinguish four main specific spheres of social activity. It is in them that relations and institutions are formed.

Economic social institutions: examples and essence

They include all the processes and relations arising in the sphere of economic production (production itself, as well as distribution, consumption, exchange of material goods). Examples of economic institutions can serve as private property, market mechanism and so on.

Social social institutions: examples and essence

Here we have in mind directly relations within society between different age, gender, national and other character
Groups. This also includes categories related to public regulations and taboos. For example, family, upbringing, friendship, social movements and so on.

Political social institutions: examples and essence

Actually, this is all that covers the corresponding sphere of life. That is, relations in the state system are civil society. The institutions represented here are the legal and judicial systems, the government and parliament, civil rights and political parties, the army and legal institutions.

Spiritual social institutions: examples and essence

This is the patrimony of culture and the immaterial needs of man: science, education, religion, art and so on.