Human beings have innate desire for survival. For this instinctive desire and due to the fear of natural calamities and extinction, individuals were compelled to live together or in groups within caves, which led to the development of family institution. However, Individuals needs and wants elevated with the passage of time. As a result, in order to gratify those needs and wants other social institutions were created within a society.
As discussed above social institutions are established to fulfill various felt needs of individuals within society. These basic needs of individuals are satisfied through five basic social institutions, which exist in every single society these include, family, education, politics, religion and economy. Each of these social institutions has its own objectives and functions such as, institution of family carry out production of offspring as well as, it is primary socialization agent for members of society. Whereas, individuals learn knowledge and specialized skills in educational institutions. Additionally, economic institutions are responsible for production and distribution of goods and services. While, government formulate and enforce rules and procedures.
Interdependence of Social Institutions
One of the primary concern of sociology is to understand, how social institutions work and aid in the functioning of a society as whole. Despite the fact, each social institution has its own objectives and functions yet, they depend on one another for carrying out their respective functions. However, each social institution has established norms, which control the behavior of individuals in a given institution. These formal and informal rules of conduct support social institutions to accomplish its goal or, to fulfill multifarious needs of society for instance, patriarchal societies stress on male dominance and usually, societies such as these have men centered norms compare to women because of interdependence these norms are enforced in every social institutions — seniority and decision making power rest in the hand of men in family, economic, political, religious and educational institutions within patriarchal societies.
In some cases social institutions work as vital source of social change because each institution of a give society has influence over others — change in one institution bring about change in other institutions as well. Any structural change in the institution of family or politics — religion or technology change the structure of society and each social institution for instance, when government structure become information technology centered — curriculum of educational institutions and economic institutions structure change in accordance with government structure. Schools, colleges and universities instill those technical skill in individuals which aid them to acquire jobs and to fulfill their job responsibilities in future. If government structure of a given society is IT based, individuals must have to learn IT related skills in order to get government job and to function within government organizations.
Written by; Khushdil Khan kasi