Structure and Institutions

Chapter 5 looked at groups and organisations, the settings in which social life happens. This chapter steps back to the larger framework those settings sit inside. Sociologists use the idea of social structure for the patterned arrangements of a society, and they break it down into positions (statuses), the behaviour expected of people in those positions (roles), and long-lasting systems of rules (institutions). The chapter ends with the question that worried several of the founders: why does society hold together at all, rather than falling into chaos? Chapter 4 touched on roles briefly and promised that this chapter would return to status and roles as parts of social structure; that is what happens here.

Social Structure

Wikipedia's Social structure article defines it as an "aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society" that both emerges from and shapes individual actions. It says the structure is the framework that determines norms and relations among a society's institutions, and that the term has been in general use since the 1920s. The page says Tocqueville is said to have been the first to use the term, but it gives no date, so none is claimed here.

Different thinkers locate the "structure" in different places, according to the same page. Marx related political, cultural and religious life to the mode of production, arguing that the economic base largely determines the superstructure; Althusser later gave cultural and political institutions more autonomy, with economics determining them only "in the last instance". Tönnies argued in 1905 that a multitude becomes a social structure only when it is constituted as a unity. Durkheim contrasted mechanical solidarity (similar parts united by shared culture) with organic solidarity (differentiated parts united by interdependence). Anthony Giddens, in structuration, treats structure and agency as inseparable, so that structures are sets of rules and resources that actors draw on and reproduce. Pierre Bourdieu, in practice theory, sees structure as embedded in individual behaviour rather than determining it. The gap between Durkheim's 1895 call to study institutions (from the Institution page below) and Tönnies's 1905 essay is 10 years (computed in Python).

Status: Positions in the Structure

Wikipedia's Social status article defines status as "the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess." It credits Ralph Linton's The Study of Man (1936) as the source of two terms. Ascribed status is fixed at birth, with caste, race and beauty as the page's examples. Achieved status comes from effort and ability, such as education or occupation, and the page links it to social mobility, which Chapter 7 takes up (that chapter pointer is my own course plan) (check). Wasserman and Faust are quoted on the same page as saying that Linton "uses the term 'status' in a way that is identical to our use of the term 'position'". So in this chapter "status" has two senses: honour or standing, as above, and a place in the structure. The page itself uses both.

Roles: What Is Expected of a Position

Wikipedia's Social role article defines a role as "a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation." It can be achieved or ascribed, and semi-permanent or transitory. A status is the position; the role is what goes with it (this one-line summary is my own wording, joining the two pages) (check). The article credits George Herbert Mead (1934, Mind, Self, and Society) with exploring how children learn through "imaginative role-taking, observing and mimicking others", the same Mead as in Chapter 4. It credits Robert K. Merton (1957) as the source of the role set, and Talcott Parsons (late 1940s) with the "sick role", in which a person is "exempted from their usual roles" and expected to follow transitory standards such as doctors' orders. Linton's 1936 book came 21 years before Merton's 1957 and 2 years after Mead's 1934 (computed in Python).

Institutions

Wikipedia's Institution article defines an institution as a socially constructed structure of rules and norms that shapes and constrains behaviour. Definitions range from informal practices to highly formal systems, and persistence and continuity are common to all of them. The page's examples include the family, religion, peer groups, economic systems, legal systems, schools, universities, medicine, the military, language and mass media, and in a broader sense art, culture and the nation-state. Notice that several are things earlier chapters treated as groups or agents of socialisation: the same family appears as a primary group (Chapter 5), an agent of socialisation (Chapter 4) and an institution (here). The group is the people; the institution is the lasting pattern of rules around them (this contrast is my own summary) (check).

Where institutions come from, and how they change

The page reports that scholars do not agree about how institutions form. Some say they emerge spontaneously as actors converge on arrangements (Sugden, 1989); others point to evolutionary or learning processes, to social contracts (Hechter, 1990) or to rational design (Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal, 2001). The "credibility thesis" holds that institutions arise from deliberate building but rarely take their intended form. On change, Meyer and Rowan (1977) introduced institutional theory, and DiMaggio and Powell (1983) described institutional isomorphism through coercive, mimetic and normative pressures, which means that organisations come to resemble each other. Six years separate those two papers (1983 minus 1977, computed in Python). The page also says North describes change as incremental and driven by "political entrepreneurs", and that Mahoney studies path dependence through critical junctures. Many of the names listed (Acemoglu, North, Keohane) are, from my general knowledge, economists or political scientists rather than sociologists (check), so this page is wider than sociology.

Social Order

Wikipedia's Social order article says the phrase has two meanings. It can mean a particular system of social structures and institutions, such as the feudal or capitalist order, or a stable state of society as opposed to chaos. The "problem of order" asks "the question of how and why it is that social orders exist at all." The page credits Hobbes as the first to state the problem clearly, answering with the social contract, and gives no date for his work.

The page sorts these into contrasts. One is material versus normative versus institutional (Marx, Durkheim, Parsons). Another, citing Hechter and Horne (2003), sets control by an external coercive state against values the individual has internalised. A third is planned versus spontaneous order: the page says predictability can arise without central control, and gives Schelling's segregation study, which it quotes as finding that "when all individuals pursue their own preferences, the outcome is segregation rather than integration". That passage is tagged "[citation needed]" on the page, so it is a claim to treat with care, and I did not check Schelling's own work (check).

Where to Read More

• Pages used. This chapter uses five Wikipedia pages: Social structure, Institution, Social status, Social role and Social order. The Social structure, Social status, Social role and Social order fetches each reported no length and appeared complete, but I cannot tell exactly how much of each was read. The Institution page was cut off after 100,000 of 130,101 characters.
• Summaries. The fetch tool returns a summary made by a small model, not the raw page, so quotations are only as exact as that summary. Where the tool said a page gave no date (Tocqueville, Hobbes, Weber on the Social order page), none is given here.
• Primary texts. I have not read Linton, Merton, Mead, Parsons, Giddens, Bourdieu or any other thinker named above directly; every claim comes from the Wikipedia pages.

Exercises