INTRODUCTION
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle.
The term ‘institution’ immediately reminds us of our educational institutions. But social institutions are entirely different in meaning. S.N. Eisenstadt had defined institutions as those processes and structures, together with the associated set of regulative principles that arrange human activities in a community “into definite organizational patterns from the point of view of some of the perennial, basic problems of any society or ordered social life”. (Eisenstadt,1968). The social dimension of the concept of social institutions is seen in terms of its "institutional spheres," which include family and kinship, education, economics, politics, culture, and stratification. The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology has …show more content…
Sociologists, unlike social pathology theorists, view deviants as not as persons with certain inherent attitudes, rather they view deviants as a formal property of social institutions. Thus, deviance can be said to be a pattern of norm violation; a range of norms being specified by the social institutions. Hunt says deviance is the absence of conformity.
M. Harlambos has said that deviance can be either positively sanctioned thereby being rewarded or negatively sanctioned resulting in punishment or can be simply accepted without punishment or reward. Suppose a girl is a follower of communism. She begins to talk against the rituals of Hinduism at a temple. She will be reprimanded and might be pushed out of the temple. In the institution of religion, she is a deviant. But may be at a meeting of a leftist student union, she says those same things, she will be rewarded with appreciation. Thus, in the institution of political party, she is not a
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle.
The term ‘institution’ immediately reminds us of our educational institutions. But social institutions are entirely different in meaning. S.N. Eisenstadt had defined institutions as those processes and structures, together with the associated set of regulative principles that arrange human activities in a community “into definite organizational patterns from the point of view of some of the perennial, basic problems of any society or ordered social life”. (Eisenstadt,1968). The social dimension of the concept of social institutions is seen in terms of its "institutional spheres," which include family and kinship, education, economics, politics, culture, and stratification. The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology has …show more content…
Sociologists, unlike social pathology theorists, view deviants as not as persons with certain inherent attitudes, rather they view deviants as a formal property of social institutions. Thus, deviance can be said to be a pattern of norm violation; a range of norms being specified by the social institutions. Hunt says deviance is the absence of conformity.
M. Harlambos has said that deviance can be either positively sanctioned thereby being rewarded or negatively sanctioned resulting in punishment or can be simply accepted without punishment or reward. Suppose a girl is a follower of communism. She begins to talk against the rituals of Hinduism at a temple. She will be reprimanded and might be pushed out of the temple. In the institution of religion, she is a deviant. But may be at a meeting of a leftist student union, she says those same things, she will be rewarded with appreciation. Thus, in the institution of political party, she is not a