SOCIOL 10 Lecture 9: Lecture 9 - Inequality and Identity_ Crime _ Law
Document Summary
Intro to institutions institution: a cluster of organizations, values, normal, and understandings that are understood by the members of society as the appropriate means of performing some vital social task (major building block of society) Agenda that sociologists have for institutions (how they look at institutions, kinds of questions they ask, kind of explanations they give) in order to understand how society works. 1: institutions perform some task task is defined in terms of what that institution does. Ex. education - what schools & universities do (though there are other things that involve training young people, learning, intellectual achievement) Ex. religion - what religious institutions do (though there are other things that involve questions of god, the sacred, rituals) 2: each institution has a logic of what is appropriate / effective / reasonable. Different institutions think about things in different ways. 3: each institution has a jurisdiction of activities that it is responsible for.
