Social institution

“ It is never to be reckoned as equal in importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in its purpose for years together. It is the fixed group, the social institution, that does the work of the world and carries society forward from lower to higher levels of civilization. ”

“ To keep in view this general end, to ascertain the way in which the powers composing that social necessity act, and their variable ingredients, and to maintain that end in them and against them, is the work of an institution which assumes on one hand, to the concrete of civil society, the position of an external universality. ”

“ It furnishes the prescribed rule for dealing with the ordinary occasions of life, which is for the most part accepted without inquiry and applied without reflection. It furnishes the appropriate institution for providing for each class of social needs, for meeting common dangers, for satisfying social wants, for regulating social relations. It constitutes, in short, the framework of society's life which to each new generation is a part of its hereditary outfit. ”

“ When, therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and another as bad—one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. ”

“ Part two, on Social institutions, does not take up the evolution of social institutions, but is a study of the organization and control of society through its institutions, taking up the state, property, the family, the church, the school, occupation and under minor institutions, charity, amusement, art, science, business, and war. ”

“ Thus the formation of society as well as the creation of state, organisation of education as well as the cultivation of letters, the institution of religious practices as well as the foundation of institutions, in fact, all aspects of human life, are influenced and modified by the social and physical atmosphere in which man is placed, and vary with the varying circumstances that diversify it. ”

“ Or, similarly, another author might take political institutions, or perhaps economic conditions—i.e., wealth, labour, capital, commerce, or, again, the fundamental social institutions, such as the family, and the relations of the ranks and classes in a community, and build up round one or other of these manifestations and embodiments of the creative energy of mankind the general story of man’s movement from barbarism to civilisation. ”

“ The important and interesting institutions in such a case, those institutions which fill a large angle in men's vision and carry a great force of authenticity, are the institutions of coercive control, differential authority and subjection, personal dignity and consequence; and the speculative generalisations, the institutions of the realm of knowledge, are created in the image of these social institutions of status and personal force, and fall into a scheme drawn after the plan of the code of honor. ”

“ In the first place, leaving individuals to the operation of the common motives, we may labor at the social institutions, to adjust them to the rule, that, each seeking his own, after the common apprehension of present interests, may do so consistently with acting the part of a good citizen—contributing something to the general welfare ”

“ The organization of a society, whose institution shall serve as a bond to its members, for the purposes of virtue, happiness, liberty, and wisdom, by the means of intellectual opposition to grievances, would probably be useful. ”

“ The social organization system and legal regime, ranging from ancestral family and community principles and ethical and moral standards, passing through production and trade relations, solidarity and social responsibility, forms of community and state administration; up to a very complex system of laws, rules, uses and customs that embodied free work by the community, the stewardships and charges system, which allowed the orderly and balanced community life as well as relationships and exchanges with other communities or states. ”

“ Within the past two centuries a flood of books and pamphlets has appeared dealing with social organization. To be sure, most of these publications have been of a political nature, but the effort was made none the less to understand society and its workings. The investigations, analyses, comparisons and conclusions are formulating themselves gradually into certain well-defined social laws, which men recognize as essential factors in social thinking. ”

“ The view of theoretic civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed in many cities being begun. ”

“ But it will be again objected that society is already highly organized; how, then, can it be said that the science of social organization is of recent origin? How could the principles of social organization be embodied without a knowledge of those principles? ”

“ There are in general two sorts of forces, one personal and one institutional, which hold people together in wedlock. By the personal I mean those which spring more directly from natural impulse, and may be roughly summed up as affection and common interest in children. The institutional are those that come more from the larger organization of society, such as economic interdependence of husband and wife, or the state of public sentiment, tradition and law. ”

“ What is a society? It is an organisation of human beings, alive, complex, exquisitely developed in co-ordinate inter-service. What is it for? It is for development, growth, progress, like any other living thing. How does a society improve? By combinations of individuals evolving social processes which react favourably upon the individual constituents, and develope in them better social faculties. For instance, early combinations of individuals evolve low forms of legal protection for the citizens of the early State. ”

“ Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.—There are five basic institutions in modern social organization. They may be named the family, the school, the church, the industrial order, and the state. They have all come to us as parts of our social inheritance from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled their tendencies of control and 9influence in varieties of social functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make the highest ideals of each and all seem fundamentally akin. ”

“ The social will is brought to bear upon the individual through a variety of agencies. The family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade or profession, the political party, the social class—all these have their habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a sense of moral obligation. ”

“ Though actively engaged with serious problems of State government, of city administration and of home economics, the association has never overlooked the fact that social activities are essential to good government and right living and has made its social affairs a noteworthy feature during the past years. ”

“ A community where all the property belongs to the government, and to which every man contributes by his labour, that he may have his own wants supplied; a domestic society which very much resembles a great public school, and converts a citizen, through all the gradations of his existence, from form to form; and where every man, like an automatical machine, must be fixed in his proper place,—supposes a society of passionless beings which social life has never shown, and surely never can. ”

“ This society now publishes books and tracts upon the moral, economical, physiological, political, financial, religious, medical and social phases of the reform. We have the writings of over two hundred different persons in almost every walk and station in life. We already have a literature of no mean character. Its influence is not only felt in every State and Territory in the land, but in every country on the globe. ”

“ The present disposition is to liquidate any distinction between State and Society, conceptually or institutionally. The State is Society; the social order is indeed an appendage of the political establishment, depending on it for sustenance, health, education, communications, and all things coming under the head of "the pursuit of happiness." ”

“ The great institutions are the outcome of that organization which human thought naturally takes on when it is directed for age after age upon a particular subject, and so gradually crystallizes in definite forms—enduring sentiments, beliefs, customs and symbols. And this is the case when there is some deep and abiding interest to hold the attention of men. Language, government, the church, laws and customs of property and of the family, systems [Pg 314] of industry and education, are institutions because they are the working out of permanent needs of human nature. ”

“ The structure of human society consists of specialized economic, political, administrative and cultural groupings assembled and maintained in relationships that supply necessities, conveniences, comforts, luxuries for the individuals, together with capital goods and services for the social groups composing the civilization. ”

“ We spoke once of vital lungs for Society: and in fact this question always rises as the alpha and omega of social questions, What methods the Society has of summoning aloft into the high places, for its help and governance, the wisdom that is born to it in all places, and of course is born chiefly in the more populous or lower places? ”

“ We have been dealing exclusively with institutions, and the manner in which their growth has been accomplished. For it is in the institutional life of a people, and in the change and development it undergoes, that are to be found those elements which form the basis for all future changes, whether simply in the form of its government or in the structure of its social system. ”

“ Our present social organization, however, will and must endure until our middle class is provided with some better ideal of life than it has now. Our present organization has been an appointed stage in our growth ”

“ That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. ”

“ Lack of success has led to the search for causes, and investigation has revealed the obstacles, as well as the aids, to reform embodied in influential persons, "political bosses," "union leaders," "the local magnate," and in powerful groups such as party organizations, unions, associations of commerce, etc. Social control, it appears, is resident, not in individuals as individuals, but as members of communities and social groups. ”

“ If now we are asked, what questions we have determined, what results we may fairly claim to have accomplished through our nine years of associated life and efforts at organization, we may answer in brief, that so far as the members of this body are concerned, we meet the universal demand of this day with institutions which guarantee the rights of labor and the products thereof, of education, and a home, and social culture. ”

“ In advanced and complex societies, however, each individual belongs to a number of groups—to a town, a factory, a school, a home, a political party, a fraternal order, a church. In complex societies these groups are united to form the whole social structure. The individual belongs to society, therefore, because he belongs to one or more of the groups composing society, and his membership in society is dependent upon his membership in a social group. ”

“ No doubt, however, our growing system of voluntary institutions—churches, philanthropic societies, fraternal orders, labor unions and the like—are training us in the habit of expressing ourselves through the check-book and other indirect agents. ”

“ It is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress. ”

“ Hence one of the chief needs of a society which desires to reconstitute itself on eugenical principles is a thorough revision of social status. It must bring the social position of various services into closer agreement with their present value. ”

“ Until we have developed and applied, much beyond present standards, the policy and practice of social agency on the part of individuals in the conduct of business, direct public control, and even public management of many kinds of business is the dictate of reason, of prudence and of patriotism. ”

“ The same is true of the large array of people who, in the domestic and ecclesiastical institutions, are teaching the children at home or in the schools and churches ; of the policemen and prison officials who are dealing with anti-social classes ; of the charity workers and pauper overseers who are dealing with the sub-social classes ; these are fitting social material for society, just as the other technical workers are fitting natural material for society's uses. ”