The main institutions of society. What are they?

The main social institutions of society are rooted standards, motives, principles and ideology of behavior that govern the daily life of people. Each of these institutions performs a certain set of functions: the formation and implementation of regulatory practices, that is, a modular code of practice at the individual and collective levels; The creation and development of ethical norms that define the categories of "black" and "white"; The designation of technologies for the achievement of certain goals - the continuation of the family, the acquisition of wealth, power, etc.

Thus, the main institutions of society set the goals of its development, and also build the ways or trends for their achievement. Accordingly, each institution contains elements of management, social and economic reproduction.

Modern sociology distinguishes several such universal entities: family, property, state, ideology (religion) and education. Let's consider them each separately.

A family

The family is considered the foundation of what we today call "the basic institutions of society". This is due not only to the fact that the family or related clan is the original model of a self-regulating social system. The fact is that on the example of blood-related and tribal relations all other social mechanisms were worked out : group hierarchy, symbolic and economic exchange, upbringing, internal classification and, finally, political domination. Today, the family is a mechanism of dual, biological and social reproduction. Primary education, moral principles, primary ethical assessments and the manner of being in a social environment are all tasks that are solved at the level of marriage.

The state

The state, as the main institution of society, is oriented not only to ensuring the security of its members, but also to obtaining legal, social, spiritual and power guarantees of accumulated economic resources. The modern state actually provides two such guarantees: the inviolability of private property (economy) and life, human rights and freedoms, - individual being in the political sense is also perceived as private property.

Own

The basic institutions of society as an economic system emerged precisely from the traditionalist understanding of the belonging of a thing to a certain owner. If initially the property was collective (more precisely territorial, and represented a space where the process of collecting and cattle breeding was taking place), then from the moment of the emergence of the group hierarchy, and then the phenomenon of social classification, it becomes private or shared, focused on individual enrichment. In this case, property, in addition to purely economic functions, is clearly tied to the category of "family", thereby providing the possibility of direct inheritance of accumulated wealth.

Religion

Religion for some reason is considered part of the spiritual world, although it is actually freely included in the system of "the basic institutions of society." After all, generalized mystical views, as, strictly speaking, education, fulfill a strictly ideological function - the definition and justification of the dominant model of social development.