social institution

…structure on the behaviour of institutions and their members. In other words, Durkheim believed that individual human behaviour is shaped by external forces. Similarly, American anthropologist George P. Murdock, in his book Social Structure (1949), examined kinship systems in preliterate societies and used social structure as a taxonomic device for…

Humans therefore depend on social institutions and organizations to inform their decisions and actions. Given the important role organizations play in influencing human action, it is sociology’s task to discover how organizations affect the behaviour of persons, how they are established, how organizations interact with one another, how they…

Social institutions are the frames within which humans spend every living moment. This survey explores the institutional contexts in which dietary laws and food customs are cast in different societies. It also attempts to show that customs surrounding food are among the principal means by…

…that emphasizes the role of institutions.

, an institution or a technology) can be shown to be path-dependent by identifying three essential elements. First, it must be demonstrated that, at the creation of the institution or technology under study, a contingency or series of contingencies occurred that led to the selection of one…

Searle’s interest in social institutions, like his interest in the mind, was also an outgrowth of his study of language. Speech acts, after all, are linguistic entities embedded in social settings. Searle was thus naturally drawn to questions concerning the constitution…

…functional classifications are rural settlements, institutional settlements established for a specific purpose, and urban settlements.

The social institution in or through which social change is to be brought about provides one basis for categorizing social movements as political, religious, economic, educational, and the like. It may be argued that all movements tend to be either political or religious in character, depending…

…families to its employment by institutions and associations of various kinds, an outgrowth of the concept that an assembly or body of people can be personified as an individual, much as a limited company or corporation is viewed as a legal “person.” Medieval times provided numerous examples of arms borne…

In modern times in some countries the granting of arms to private persons has ceased, although grants of corporate arms are frequent. Historically it was an easy passage from the arms of individuals to those of corporate bodies. That is particularly evident in…