LESSON 3

INTRODUCING THE MAJOR SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS:

(Family, Church/ Religion, Education, Economy, Government)

OBJECTIVES:

 To define the roles of social institutions

 To state the functions and responsibilities of each institution in society
 To give examples of social functions and dysfunctions

Social Institutions

Social institutions have been created by man from social relationships in society to meet such
basic needs as stability, law and order and clearly defined roles of authority and decision making.

Every organization is dependent upon certain recognized and established set of rules, traditions
and usages. These usages and rules may be given the name of institutions. These are the forms
of procedure which are recognized and accepted by society and govern the relations between
individuals and groups.

Definition
Wood ward and Maxwell: An institution is a set of folkways and mores into a unit which serves a
number of social functions.

Horton: An institution is an organized system of social relationships which embodies certain

common values and procedures and meets certain basic needs of society. Landis: Social
institutions are formal cultural structures devised to meet basic social needs.

Characteristics

i. Institutions are the means of controlling individuals.

ii. Institutions depend upon the collective activities of men.
iii. The institution has some definite procedures which are formed on the basis of customs
and dogmas.
iv. Institution is more stable than other means of social control.
v. Every institution has some rules which must be compulsorily obeyed by the individual.

Five major institutions in rural sociology are political, educational, economic, family
and religion.

1. Political: Government as political institution, administers the regulatory functions of Law and
order, and maintains security in society. Form of government and its method of working depends

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on the accepted patterns of behavior in a society. Development work is now-a-days a major
responsibility of the government. For effective implementation of programmes, government may
decentralize its functioning by creating local self-government like panchayats at different level.

2. Education: is the process of socialization, which begins informally at home and then formally
in educational institutions. Education as an institution helps develop knowledge, skill, attitude and
understanding of the people and strive to make them competent members of the society.
Education widens the mental horizon of the people and make them receptive to new ideas. .

3. Economic: Economy provides basic physical sustenance of the society by meeting the needs
for food, shelter, clothing, and other necessary supply and services. Economic institutions include
agriculture, industry, marketing, credit and banking system, co-operatives etc.

4. Family: is the most basic social institution in a society, and is a system of organized relationship
involving workable and dependable ways of meeting basic social needs.

5. Religion: -is belief in supernatural. Religion constitutes a set of beliefs regarding the ultimate
power in the universe, the ideal and proper pattern of behavior, and ceremonial ways to
expressing these beliefs. Religion also provides a foundation for the mores of the society. Taboos
in various cultures have religious sanction. Religion provides a means by which individuals can
face crises and ups and downs in life with strength and fortitude.

Function
1. Sex regulation.
2. Reproduction and perpetuation of the family and human race.
3. Socialization
4. Provision of economic maintenance and livelihood in many cultures.
5. Provision of love, affection and security to the individual.
6. Provision of class status to the individual of the family into which he has been
born.

Definition of Family
Family is defined by Burgress and Locke as a group of persons united by the ties of marriage,
blood or adoption; constituting a single household, interacting and inter communicating with each
other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter,
brother and sister, creating a common culture. Eliott and Merrill defined the family as "the
biological social unit composed of husband, wife and children".

Characteristics of family
Family is the most universal group. Family is classified based on structure (patriarchal or
matriarchal) and residence.

1. Patriarchal family
It is the family where male is the head of family inclusive of powers. He is the owner and
administrator of the family property and right. To him all persons living in the family are
subordinated.

2. Matriarchal family
The authority vests in the woman head of the family. The male is subordinated to her. She is the
owner of property and rules over family. This type of family is said to prevail among the primitive
people, who led a wandering or hunting life.

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3. Based on residence the family is classified as
a) Matrilocal family: In this type of family husband goes to live in the house of his wife.
b) Patrilocal family: Wife goes and lives in the house of her husband.

4. Based on the marriage the family is classified as:

i. Monogamous family: In which man marries one woman only at one time.
ii. Polygamous family: In this kind of family one man marries many women at one time.
iii. Polyandrous family: In. this kind of family one man marries many women and lives with all of
them or each of them alternatively.

5. The family is also classified based on ancestry as follows:

i. Matrilineal family: Here woman is believed to be the ancestor of the family.
ii. Patrilineal family: Here the ancestry continues through the father.

6. Religion: is belief in super natural. Religion constitutes a set of beliefs regarding the ultimate
power in the universe, the ideal and proper pattern of behaviour and ceremonial ways of
expressing these beliefs. Religion also provides a foundation for the mores of the society. Taboos
in various cultures have religious sanction. Religion provides a means by which individuals can
face crises and ups and downs in life with strength and fortitude.

FAMILY
Sociological Perspectives on the Family
Theoretical perspective

Functionalism
The family performs several essential functions for society. It socializes children, it provides
emotional and practical support for its members, it helps regulate sexual activity and sexual
reproduction, and it provides its members with a social identity. In addition, sudden or far-reaching
changes in the family’s structure or processes threaten its stability and weaken society.

Conflict
The family contributes to social inequality by reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing
patriarchy. The family can also be a source of conflict, including physical violence and emotional
cruelty, for its own members.

Symbolic interactionism
The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their
situations. Wives and husbands have different styles of communication, and social class affects
the expectations that spouses have of their marriages and of each other. Romantic love is the
common basis for American marriages and dating relationships, but it is much less common in
several other contemporary nations.

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Social Functions of the Family
Recall that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several
important functions to help preserve social stability and otherwise keep a society working. A
functional understanding of the family thus stresses the ways in which the family as a social
institution helps make society possible. As such, the family performs several important functions.
First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children. As previous chapters indicated, no
society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In most societies, the family is the
major unit in which socialization happens. Parents, siblings, and, if the family is extended rather
than nuclear, other relatives all help to socialize children from the time they are born.
Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. It
provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love,
comfort, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all need.
Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction. All societies have norms
governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for
teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason
for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born.
The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps to
minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties
among different families and thus among society as a whole.
Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity. Children are born into their parents’
social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social
identity is important for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because
of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because
the social class or race and ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social
hierarchy.
Beyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that
sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the
family’s stability and thus that of society. For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family
textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear
family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-
rearing needs. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and by extension
the family as a social institution and even society itself. Textbooks no longer contain this warning,
but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working
mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns shortly.

The Family and Conflict

Conflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also
point to problems within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks
altogether.
First, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality in several ways. The social
identity it gives to its children does affect their life chances, but it also reinforces a society’s system
of stratification. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families
differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As
it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family also became

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more and more of a patriarchal unit (see earlier discussion), helping to ensure men’s status at the
top of the social hierarchy.
Second, the family can also be a source of conflict for its own members. Although the functional
perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and support, many
families do just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s
television shows. Instead, and as the news story that began this chapter tragically illustrated, they
argue, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. We return to family violence later
in this chapter.

Families and Social Interaction

Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples
interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded
in social interactionism give us a keen understanding of how and why families operate the way
they do.
Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to
which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001).Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t
understand: Women and men in conversation. New York, NY: Quill. A classic study by Mirra
Komarovsky (1964)Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage. New York, NY: Random House.
found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they
were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender
differences seem less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more
emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Another classic study by Lillian
Rubin (1976) Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family. New York, NY:
Basic Books. Found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who
communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to
say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

Other studies explore the role played by romantic love in courtship and marriage. Romantic love,
the feeling of deep emotional and sexual passion for someone, is the basis for many American
marriages and dating relationships, but it is actually uncommon in many parts of the contemporary
world today and in many of the society’s anthropologists and historians have studied. In these
societies, marriages are arranged by parents and other kin for economic reasons or to build
alliances, and young people are simply expected to marry whoever is chosen for them. This is the
situation today in parts of India, Pakistan, and other developing nations and was the norm for much
of the Western world until the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Lystra, 1989).Lystra, K. (1989).
Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.

Conclusion
The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical
and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members
with a social identity.

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Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular,
it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence,
arguments, and other forms of conflict.
Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a
daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently
in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of
functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual
reproduction? Why or why not?

POLTICS AND ECONOMY

Politics involves the distribution of power in a society. Three types of authority, or the legitimate
use of power, exist. Traditional authority is based on a society’s customs and traditions, while
rational-legal authority stems from a society’s rules. Charismatic authority derives from an
individual’s extraordinary personal qualities and is the most unstable of the three types of
authority, because it ends with the death of the person who possesses this type of authority.
The major types of political systems in the world today are democracies, monarchies, and
authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Few pure democracies exist, and most take the form of
representative democracies, in which people elect officials to represent their views and interests.
Monarchies are much less common than they used to be, and today’s monarchs primarily serve
symbolic and ceremonial functions. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes exist in different parts
of the world and typically involve harsh repression of their citizenries.
Pluralist and elite theories both try to explain the distribution and exercise of power. Pluralist
theory says that society is composed of special-interest groups whose competition ensures that
the interests of all segments of society are represented. Elite theory says that power is
concentrated in the hands of relatively few individuals and organizations. Mills’s power-elite model
attributes power to the nation’s top government, business, and military leaders, while other elite
theories say that power is concentrated in the hands of a relatively few families at the top of the
socioeconomic system.
Political ideology is usually classified along a continuum from very liberal to very conservative. It
consists of social and economic views on which some people may hold inconsistent positions; for
example, they may hold liberal views on social issues but conservative views on economic issues.
Political participation is the cornerstone of democracy, but in the United States relatively few
people vote or otherwise take part in the political process. Voter apathy and alienation help
account for the lack of voting, as do low levels of education and other variables.
Lobbying by various special-interest groups certainly influences the political process, but the
different parties disagree on whether lobbying is good or bad. To the extent that lobbying by
corporate interests unduly influences the political process, elite theories of the political system are
supported.

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The type of economy characterizing societies has changed over the centuries. With the
development of agricultural societies, economic functions began to be separated from family
functions. Industrialization increased this separation further, and factories and machines became
the primary means of production. The development of postindustrial societies in the last few
decades has had important implications for the nature of work and other aspects of social and
economic life in modern societies.
Capitalism and socialism are the two primary types of economic systems in the world today.
Capitalism involves private ownership, the pursuit of profit, and competition over profit, while
socialism involves the collective ownership of goods and resources and efforts for the common
good. The relative merits of capitalism and socialism continue to be debated; several nations
practice democratic socialism, which is meant to combine the best of capitalism and socialism.
Corporations are essential players in modern economic systems but remain quite controversial.
They concentrate economic power in the hands of a few organizations and often act in a way that
stifles competition and harms their own workers and much of the public.
The development of labor unions occurred amid a concerted effort by management to resist
demands for wage increases and better working conditions. In the recent past, U.S. workers have
faced declining wages in constant dollars, although this general trend obscures some important
gender, race and ethnicity, and social class differences in wage trends. Postindustrialization has
meant a loss of manufacturing jobs across the United States but especially in its large cities.
Unemployment, underemployment, and job alienation remain problems facing U.S. workers. Job
alienation is probably less than what Karl Marx envisioned in a capitalist society, in part because
workers develop workplace friendships.

RELIGION
Sociological Perspectives on Religion
Sociological perspectives on religion are similar to those on education in that they try to
understand the functions religion serves, the inequality and other problems it can reinforce and
perpetuate, and the role it plays in our daily lives (Emerson, Monahan, & Mirola, 2011).Emerson,
M. O., Monahan, S. C., & Mirola, W. A. (2011). Religion matters: What sociology teaches us about
religion in our world. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Table 12.5.1 summarizes what these
perspectives say.

Theoretical perspective
Major assumptions
Functionalism
Religion serves several functions for society. These include (a) giving meaning and purpose to
life, (b) reinforcing social unity and stability, (c) serving as an agent of social control of behavior,
(d) promoting physical and psychological well-being, and (e) motivating people to work for positive
social change.

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Conflict theory
Religion reinforces and promotes social inequality and social conflict. It helps to convince the poor
to accept their lot in life, and it leads to hostility and violence motivated by religious differences.

Symbolic interactionism
This perspective focuses on the ways in which individuals interpret their religious experiences. It
emphasizes that beliefs and practices are not sacred unless people regard them as such. Once
they are regarded as sacred, they take on special significance and give meaning to people’s lives.

The Functions of Religion

Much of the work of Émile Durkheim stressed the functions that religion serves for society
regardless of how it is practiced or of what specific religious beliefs a society favors. Durkheim’s
insights continue to influence sociological thinking today on the functions of religion.
First, religion gives meaning and purpose to life. Many things in life are difficult to understand.
That was certainly true, as we have seen, in prehistoric times, but even in today’s highly scientific
age, much of life and death remains a mystery, and religious faith and belief help many people
make sense of the things science cannot tell us.
Second, religion reinforces social unity and stability. This was one of Durkheim’s most important
insights. Religion strengthens social stability in at least two ways. First, it gives people a common
set of beliefs and thus is an important agent of socialization (see Chapter 3). Second, the
communal practice of religion, as in houses of worship, brings people together physically,
facilitates their communication and other social interaction, and thus strengthens their social
bonds.
A third function of religion is related to the one just discussed. Religion is an agent of social control
and thus strengthens social order. Religion teaches people moral behavior and thus helps them
learn how to be good members of society. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Ten
Commandments are perhaps the most famous set of rules for moral behavior.
A fourth function of religion is greater psychological and physical well-being. Religious faith and
practice can enhance psychological well-being by being a source of comfort to people in times of
distress and by enhancing their social interaction with others in places of worship. Many studies
find that people of all ages, not just the elderly, are happier and more satisfied with their lives if
they are religious. Religiosity also apparently promotes better physical health, and some studies
even find that religious people tend to live longer than those who are not religious (Moberg,
2008).Moberg, D. O. (2008). Spirituality and aging: Research and implications. Journal of
Religion, Spirituality & Aging, 20, 95–134.We return to this function later.
A final function of religion is that it may motivate people to work for positive social change. Religion
played a central role in the development of the Southern civil rights movement a few decades
ago. Religious beliefs motivated Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists to risk their
lives to desegregate the South. Black churches in the South also served as settings in which the
civil rights movement held meetings, recruited new members, and raised money (Morris,
1984).Morris, A. (1984). The origins of the civil rights movement: Black communities organizing
for change. New York, NY: Free Press.

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Religion, Inequality, and Conflict
Religion has all of these benefits, but, according to conflict theory, it can also reinforce and
promote social inequality and social conflict. This view is partly inspired by the work of Karl Marx,
who said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” (Marx, 1964).Marx, K. (1964). Karl Marx:
Selected writings in sociology and social philosophy (T. B. Bottomore, Trans.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.By this he meant that religion, like a drug, makes people happy with their existing
conditions. Marx repeatedly stressed that workers needed to rise up and overthrow the
bourgeoisie. To do so, he said, they needed first to recognize that their poverty stemmed from
their oppression by the bourgeoisie. But people who are religious, he said, tend to view their
poverty in religious terms. They think it is God’s will that they are poor, either because he is testing
their faith in him or because they have violated his rules. Many people believe that if they endure
their suffering, they will be rewarded in the afterlife. Their religious views lead them not to blame
the capitalist class for their poverty and thus not to revolt. For these reasons, said Marx, religion
leads the poor to accept their fate and helps to maintain the existing system of social inequality.
As Chapter 8 discussed, religion also promotes gender inequality by presenting negative
stereotypes about women and by reinforcing traditional views about their subordination to men
(Klassen, 2009).Klassen, P. (Ed.). (2009). Women and religion. New York, NY: Routledge. A
declaration a decade ago by the Southern Baptist Convention that a wife should “submit herself
graciously” to her husband’s leadership reflected traditional religious belief (Gundy-Volf,
1998).Gundy-Volf, J. (1998, September–October). Neither biblical nor just: Southern Baptists and
the subordination of women. Sojourners, 12–13.
As the Puritans’ persecution of non-Puritans illustrates, religion can also promote social conflict,
and the history of the world shows that individual people and whole communities and nations are
quite ready to persecute, kill, and go to war over religious differences. We see this today and in
the recent past in central Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. Jews and other religious
groups have been persecuted and killed since ancient times. Religion can be the source of social
unity and cohesion, but over the centuries it also has led to persecution, torture, and wanton
bloodshed.
News reports going back since the 1990s indicate a final problem that religion can cause, and
that is sexual abuse, at least in the Catholic Church. As you undoubtedly have heard, an unknown
number of children were sexually abused by Catholic priests and deacons in the United States,
Canada, and many other nations going back at least to the 1960s. There is much evidence that
the Church hierarchy did little or nothing to stop the abuse or to sanction the offenders who were
committing it, and that they did not report it to law enforcement agencies. Various divisions of the
Church have paid tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits. The numbers of priests, deacons,
and children involved will almost certainly never be known, but it is estimated that at least 4,400
priests and deacons in the United States, or about 4% of all such officials, have been accused of
sexual abuse, although fewer than 2,000 had the allegations against them proven (Terry & Smith,
2006).Terry, K., & Smith, M. L. (2006). The nature and scope of sexual abuse of minors by
Catholic priests and deacons in the United States: Suppelmentary data analysis. Washington,
DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Given these estimates, the number of children
who were abused probably runs into the thousands.

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Symbolic Interactionism and Religion
While functional and conflict theories look at the macro aspects of religion and society, symbolic
interactionism looks at the micro aspects. It examines the role that religion plays in our daily lives
and the ways in which we interpret religious experiences. For example, it emphasizes that beliefs
and practices are not sacred unless people regard them as such. Once we regard them as sacred,
they take on special significance and give meaning to our lives. Symbolic interactionists study the
ways in which people practice their faith and interact in houses of worship and other religious
settings, and they study how and why religious faith and practice have positive consequences for
individual psychological and physical well-being.

Religious symbols indicate the value of the symbolic interactionist approach. A crescent moon
and a star are just two shapes in the sky, but together they constitute the international symbol of
Islam. A cross is merely two lines or bars in the shape of a “t,” but to tens of millions of Christians
it is a symbol with deeply religious significance. A Star of David consists of two superimposed
triangles in the shape of a six-pointed star, but to Jews around the world it is a sign of their religious
faith and a reminder of their history of persecution.
Religious rituals and ceremonies also illustrate the symbolic interactionist approach. They can be
deeply intense and can involve crying, laughing, screaming, trancelike conditions, a feeling of
oneness with those around you, and other emotional and psychological states. For many people
they can be transformative experiences, while for others they are not transformative but are
deeply moving nonetheless.

Types of Religious Organizations

Many types of religious organizations exist in modern societies. Sociologists usually group them
according to their size and influence. Categorized this way, three types of religious organizations
exist: church, sect, and cult (Emerson et al., 2011).Emerson, M. O., Monahan, S. C., & Mirola, W.
A. (2011). Religion matters: What sociology teaches us about religion in our world. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall. A church further has two subtypes: the ecclesia and denomination. We
first discuss the largest and most influential of the types of religious organization, the ecclesia,
and work our way down to the smallest and least influential, the cult.

Church: The Ecclesia and Denomination

A church is a large, bureaucratically organized religious organization that is closely integrated into
the larger society. Two types of church organizations exist. The first is the ecclesia, a large,
bureaucratic religious organization that is a formal part of the state and has most or all of a state’s
citizens as its members. As such, the ecclesia is the national or state religion. People ordinarily
do not join an ecclesia; instead they automatically become members when they are born. A few
ecclesiae exist in the world today, including Islam in Saudi Arabia and some other Middle Eastern
nations, the Catholic Church in Spain, the Lutheran Church in Sweden, and the Anglican Church
in England.
As should be clear, in an ecclesiastic society there may be little separation of church and state,
because the ecclesia and the state are so intertwined. In some ecclesiastic societies, such as
those in the Middle East, religious leaders rule the state or have much influence over it, while in
others, such as Sweden and England, they have little or no influence. In general the close ties

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that ecclesiae have to the state help ensure they will support state policies and practices. For this
reason, ecclesiae often help the state solidify its control over the populace.
The second type of church organization is the denomination, a large, bureaucratic religious
organization that is closely integrated into the larger society but is not a formal part of the state.
In modern pluralistic nations, several denominations coexist. Most people are members of a
specific denomination because their parents were members. They are born into a denomination
and generally consider themselves members of it the rest of their lives, whether or not they
actively practice their faith, unless they convert to another denomination or abandon religion
altogether.

The Megachurch
A relatively recent development in religious organizations is the rise of the so-called megachurch,
a church at which more than 2,000 people worship every weekend on the average. Several dozen
have at least 10,000 worshippers (Priest, Wilson, & Johnson, 2010; Warf & Winsberg,
2010);Priest, R. J., Wilson, D., & Johnson, A. (2010). U.S. megachurches and new patterns of
global mission. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 34(2), 97–104; Warf, B., &
Winsberg, M. (2010). Geographies of megachurches in the United States. Journal of Cultural
Geography, 27(1), 33–51. the largest U.S. megachurch, in Houston, has more than 35,000
worshippers and is nicknamed a “gigachurch.” There are more than 1,300 megachurches in the
United States, a steep increase from the 50 that existed in 1970, and their total membership
exceeds 4 million. About half of today’s megachurches are in the South, and only 5% are in the
Northeast. About one-third are nondenominational, and one-fifth are Southern Baptist, with the
remainder primarily of other Protestant denominations. A third spend more than 10% of their
budget on ministry on other nations. Some have a strong television presence, with Americans in
the local area or sometimes around the country watching services and/or preaching by
televangelists and providing financial contributions in response to information presented on the
television screen.
Compared to traditional, smaller churches, megachurches are more concerned with meeting their
members’ practical needs in addition to helping them achieve religious fulfillment. Some even
conduct market surveys to determine these needs and how best to address them. As might be
expected, their buildings are huge by any standard, and they often feature bookstores, food
courts, and sports and recreation facilities. They also provide day care, psychological counseling,
and youth outreach programs. Their services often feature electronic music and light shows.
Although megachurches are obviously popular, they have been criticized for being so big that
members are unable to develop the close bonds with each other and with members of the clergy
characteristic of smaller houses of worship. Their supporters say that megachurches involve
many people in religion who would otherwise not be involved.

Sects
A sect is a relatively small religious organization that is not closely integrated within the larger
society and that often conflicts with at least some of its norms and values. Typically a sect has
broken away from a larger denomination in an effort to restore what members of the sect regard
as the original views of the denomination. Because sects are relatively small, they usually lack
the bureaucracy of denominations and ecclesiae and often also lack clergy who have received
official training. Their worship services can be intensely emotional experiences, often more so

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than those typical of many denominations, where worship tends to be more formal and restrained.
Members of many sects typically proselytize and try to recruit new members into the sect. If a sect
succeeds in attracting many new members, it gradually grows, becomes more bureaucratic, and,
ironically, eventually evolves into a denomination.

Cults
A cult is a small religious organization that is at great odds with the norms and values of the larger
society. Cults are similar to sects but differ in at least three respects. First, they generally have
not broken away from a larger denomination and instead originate outside the mainstream
religious tradition. Second, they are often secretive and do not proselytize as much. Third, they
are at least somewhat more likely than sects to rely on charismatic leadership based on the
extraordinary personal qualities of the cult’s leader.

EDUCATION
The Functions of Education
Functional theory stresses the functions that education serves in fulfilling a society’s various
needs. Perhaps the most important function of education is socialization. If children need to learn
the norms, values, and skills they need to function in society, then education (as Chapter 3 noted)
is a primary vehicle for such learning. Schools teach the three Rs, as we all know, but they also
teach many of the society’s norms and values. In the United States, these norms and values
include respect for authority, patriotism (remember the Pledge of Allegiance?), punctuality,
individualism, and competition. Regarding these last two values, American students from an early
age compete as individuals over grades and other rewards. The situation is quite the opposite in
Japan, where, as we saw in Chapter 3, children learn the traditional Japanese values of harmony
and group belonging from their schooling (Schneider & Silverman, 2010).Schneider, L., &
Silverman, A. (2010). Global sociology: Introducing five contemporary societies (5th ed.). New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill. They learn to value their membership in their homeroom, or kumi, and are
evaluated more on their kumi’s performance than on their own individual performance. How well
a Japanese child’s kumi does is more important than how well the child does as an individual.

A second function of education is social integration. For a society to work, functionalists say,
people must subscribe to a common set of beliefs and values. As we saw, the development of
such common views was a goal of the system of free, compulsory education that developed in
the 19th century. Thousands of immigrant children in the United States today are learning English,
U.S. history, and other subjects that help prepare them for the workforce and integrate them into
American life. Such integration is a major goal of the English-only movement, whose advocates
say that only English should be used to teach children whose native tongue is Spanish,
Vietnamese, or whatever other language their parents speak at home. Critics of this movement
say it slows down these children’s education and weakens their ethnic identity (Schildkraut,
2005).Schildkraut, D. J. (2005). Press “one” for English: Language policy, public opinion, and
American identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

A third function of education is social placement. Beginning in grade school, students are
identified by teachers and other school officials either as bright and motivated or as less bright

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and even educationally challenged. Depending on how they are identified, children are taught at
the level that is thought to suit them best. In this way they are prepared in the most appropriate
way possible for their later station in life. Whether this process works as well as it should is an
important issue, and we explore it further when we discuss school tracking shortly.
Social and cultural innovation is a fourth function of education. Our scientists cannot make
important scientific discoveries and our artists and thinkers cannot come up with great works of
art, poetry, and prose unless they have first been educated in the many subjects they need to
know for their chosen path.
Education also involves several latent functions, functions that are by-products of going to school
and receiving an education rather than a direct effect of the education itself. One of these is child
care. Once a child starts kindergarten and then first grade, for several hours a day the child is
taken care of for free. The establishment of peer relationships is another latent function of
schooling. Most of us met many of our friends while we were in school at whatever grade level,
and some of those friendships endure the rest of our lives. A final latent function of education is
that it keeps millions of high school students out of the full-time labor force. This fact keeps the
unemployment rate lower than it would be if they were in the labor force.

Education and Inequality

Conflict theory does not dispute most of the functions just described. However, it does give some
of them a different slant and talks about various ways in which education perpetuates social
inequality (Hill, Macrine, & Gabbard, 2010; Liston, 1990).Hill, D., Macrine, S., & Gabbard, D.
(Eds.). (2010). Capitalist education: Globalisation and the politics of inequality. New York, NY:
Routledge; Liston, D. P. (1990). Capitalist schools: Explanation and ethics in radical studies of
schooling. New York, NY: Routledge. One example involves the function of social placement. As
most schools track their students starting in grade school, the students thought by their teachers
to be bright are placed in the faster tracks (especially in reading and arithmetic), while the slower
students are placed in the slower tracks; in high school, three common tracks are the college
track, vocational track, and general track.
Such tracking does have its advantages; it helps ensure that bright students learn as much as
their abilities allow them, and it helps ensure that slower students are not taught over their heads.
But, conflict theorists say, tracking also helps perpetuate social inequality by locking students into
faster and lower tracks. Worse yet, several studies show that students’ social class and race and
ethnicity affect the track into which they are placed, even though their intellectual abilities and
potential should be the only things that matter: white, middle-class students are more likely to be
tracked “up,” while poorer students and students of color are more likely to be tracked “down.”
Once they are tracked, students learn more if they are tracked up and less if they are tracked
down. The latter tend to lose self-esteem and begin to think they have little academic ability and
thus do worse in school because they were tracked down. In this way, tracking is thought to be
good for those tracked up and bad for those tracked down. Conflict theorists thus say that tracking
perpetuates social inequality based on social class and race and ethnicity (Ansalone, 2006;
Oakes, 2005).Ansalone, G. (2006). Tracking: A return to Jim Crow. Race, gender & class, 13, 1–
2; Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality (2nd ed.). New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Social inequality is also perpetuated through the widespread use of standardized tests. Critics
say these tests continue to be culturally biased, as they include questions whose answers are
most likely to be known by white, middle-class students, whose backgrounds have afforded them

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various experiences that help them answer the questions. They also say that scores on
standardized tests reflect students’ socioeconomic status and experiences in addition to their
academic abilities. To the extent this critique is true, standardized tests perpetuate social
inequality (Grodsky, Warren, & Felts, 2008).Grodsky, E., Warren, J. R., & Felts, E. (2008). Testing
and social stratification in American education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), 385–404.
As we will see, schools in the United States also differ mightily in their resources, learning
conditions, and other aspects, all of which affect how much students can learn in them. Simply
put, schools are unequal, and their very inequality helps perpetuate inequality in the larger society.
Children going to the worst schools in urban areas face many more obstacles to their learning
than those going to well-funded schools in suburban areas. Their lack of learning helps ensure
they remain trapped in poverty and its related problems.
Conflict theorists also say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum, by which they mean a set
of values and beliefs that support the status quo, including the existing social hierarchy (Booher-
Jennings, 2008).Booher-Jennings, J. (2008). Learning to label: Socialisation, gender, and the
hidden curriculum of high-stakes testing. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29, 149–160.
Chapter 3’s discussion of socialization first presented the concept of the hidden curriculum by
having you pretend you were a ruler of a new society who wanted its children to grow up loving
their country and respecting your authority. Although no one plots this behind closed doors, our
schoolchildren learn patriotic values and respect for authority from the books they read and from
various classroom activities.

Symbolic Interactionism and School Behavior

Symbolic interactionist studies of education examine social interaction in the classroom, on the
playground, and in other school venues. These studies help us understand what happens in the
schools themselves, but they also help us also understand how what occurs in school is relevant
for the larger society. Some studies, for example, show how children’s playground activities
reinforce gender role socialization. Girls tend to play more cooperative games, while boys play
more competitive sports (Thorne, 1993) (see Chapter 8).Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls
and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Another body of research shows that teachers’ views about students can affect how much the
students learn. When teachers think students are smart, they tend to spend more time with them,
to call on them, and to praise them when they give the right answer. Not surprisingly these
students learn more because of their teachers’ behavior. But when teachers think students are
less bright, they tend to spend less time with them and in other ways act in a way that leads the
students to learn less. One of the first studies to find this example of a self-fulfilling prophecy was
conducted by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968).Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L.
(1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. New York, NY: Holt. They tested a group of students at the
beginning of the school year and told their teachers which were bright and which were not. They
tested the students again at the end of the school year; not surprisingly the bright students had
learned more during the year than the less bright ones. But it turned out that the researchers had
randomly decided which students would be designated bright and less bright. Because the “bright”
students learned more during the school year without actually being brighter at the beginning,
their teachers’ behavior must have been the reason. In fact, their teachers did spend more time
with them and praised them more often than was true for the “less bright” students. To the extent
this type of self-fulfilling prophecy occurs, it helps us understand why tracking is bad for the
students tracked down.

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Other research focuses on how teachers treat girls and boys. Several studies from the 1970s
through the 1990s found that teachers call on boys more often and praise them more often
(American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998; Jones & Dindia,
2004).American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. (1998). Gender gaps:
Where schools still fail our children. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women
Educational Foundation; Jones, S. M., & Dindia, K. (2004). A meta-analystic perspective on sex
equity in the classroom. Review of Educational Research, 74, 443–471. Teachers did not do this
consciously, but their behavior nonetheless sent an implicit message to girls that math and
science are not for girls and that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. This body of
research stimulated efforts to educate teachers about the ways in which they may unwittingly
send these messages and about strategies they could use to promote greater interest and
achievement by girls in math and science (Battey, Kafai, Nixon, & Kao, 2007).Battey, D., Kafai,
Y., Nixon, A. S., & Kao, L. L. (2007). Professional development for teachers on gender equity in
the sciences: Initiating the conversation. Teachers College Record, 109(1), 221–243.

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