SUMMARY

In this section, you learned about how institutions socialize members of society and help to guide the actions of people.

The first and most important socializing agency a person encounters in life is the family. We speak of the family as if all families are the same, but this is not the case. One size does not fit all. If you ask someone who is in their family, they will be able to describe their family and its members, but if you ask ten different people, you may hear a variety of family configurations. The people in our families are the first ones who socialize us into our culture.

After that, we have other socializing agencies and institutions known as peer groups, schools, religion, the places we work, our government, the economy, even  medicine,  and sports.

The family serves many purposes, but sociologists consider it the most important because it teaches children how to navigate their culture. Our families come in all shapes and sizes and may or may not include marriage. Some people divorce and remarry, adding to the variation of families. Where we once viewed the family as the safe haven from the world, sometimes the challenges we face in family life may make us glad to go to work!

Religion is a way to organize our values and beliefs, forming our world view, often helping us to understand the difference between right and wrong, and sometimes becoming a vehicle of social change.

Education is another institution that helps to socialize people to the cultural norms of their society. What we learn may be about content (history, or math) and also about the hidden curriculum (how to be a good citizen). Education may be formal (in a school) or informal (like learning how to cook or how to fish, or even how to tie your shoes) and it may be mandated as it is in our country where children must attend for at least ten years of their lives. The quality of education is varied within our own country as well as between countries.

Government is an overarching social institution which, through its power and authority, governs the affairs of citizens. Forms of government may include a variety of forms, some voluntary and some involuntary.

We talk a lot about “the economy” today and throughout history and this has been a very important institution of society because it details how we get what we need to live. Humans have transitioned through many structural shifts, many of us moving ourselves along the continuum from hunter-gather societies to our current post-industrialization. In present-day, there are an array of economies, just as there are varieties of governments.

The social institution of medicine is based on the socially constructed understandings of what is (and is not) illness and wellness. This institution deals with how various cultures interpret the concept of health. Just as other institutions are shaped by status, medicine impacts our lives differently, within our own society and between countries.

Although we may choose to study these institutions separately, they intersect with one another, creating various life chances for people in our own culture and around the world.