Social Institutions
What this domain covers
This domain tests the major institutions - family, education, religion, economy, politics, health - through their functions, structures, and theoretical readings. Items often ask you to label something manifest versus latent or to attribute a concept to the right theorist.
Core rules and concepts
- Family: kinship by blood, marriage, or adoption; nuclear versus extended; endogamy (marry within) versus exogamy (marry outside); monogamy versus polygamy (polygyny, one man with several wives; polyandry, one woman with several husbands); descent and residence patterns.
- Education: manifest functions (transmitting knowledge, sorting for credentials) versus latent functions (childcare, socialization, mate selection). The hidden curriculum teaches compliance and punctuality; tracking channels students.
- Religion: Durkheim split the sacred from the profane and saw religion binding the group through collective effervescence; Weber linked the Protestant ethic to capitalism; Bellah described civil religion; secularization and fundamentalism are countervailing trends.
- Politics: Weber's authority types - traditional, charismatic, legal-rational - corresponding to custom, personal inspiration, and rules or office.
- Economy: capitalism versus socialism; division of labor; alienation.
- Health: the sick role (Parsons) exempts the ill from duties but obliges them to seek recovery; medicalization extends medical jurisdiction over ordinary conditions.
Worked example
A student asks whether a professor's power comes from personal magnetism or from the position. Because it rests on office, credentials, and published rules, it is legal-rational authority; charisma would not survive the professor's replacement.
Traps that cost marks
- Swapping manifest and latent functions.
- Confusing polygyny with polyandry.
- Attributing the Protestant ethic thesis to Durkheim.
- Treating charismatic authority as stable across succession.