Social Structures and Institutions: Family, Education, Work, Religion, Stratification and Mobility
Institutions
Family: types (nuclear/extended, patrilocal/matrilocal), functions (reproduction, socialisation, economic support), changing forms (single-parent, blended). Education: manifest (skills, credentials) and latent (socialisation, sorting) functions; hidden curriculum; credentialism. Work: division of labour (Durkheim's mechanical vs organic solidarity), Taylorism, Fordism, post-Fordism, precarious work, informal sector. Religion: Durkheim's sacred/profane, Weber's Protestant ethic, secularisation debate.
Stratification and mobility
Stratification by class, status, party (Weber) or class (Marx). Systems: slavery, caste, estate, class. Social mobility: vertical/horizontal, intragenerational/intergenerational. Social reproduction theories (Bourdieu: cultural and social capital, habitus) explain persistence of inequality.
Traps
- Confusing caste (closed, ascribed) with class (relatively open, achieved).
- Mixing vertical mobility (up/down) with horizontal (lateral).
- Treating the extended family as disappearing rather than transforming.
- Assuming education always increases mobility - credential inflation can reproduce inequality.
Worked example
A worker's son becomes a doctor: intergenerational vertical upward mobility. A teacher moving to a similar post in another school: horizontal intragenerational mobility. A daughter entering her father's trade: intergenerational horizontal mobility.