Social institutions and change

What this covers

Social institutions are durable systems of roles, norms and authority through which society organizes family life, kinship, caste, tribe, religion, economy, education and politics. Durability does not mean immobility. Law, democratic representation, markets, agrarian change, migration, education, social movements and technology can alter institutional rules and incentives, while informal practices may reproduce older inequalities. Study change through mechanism, scale and consequence: what initiated it, which actors mediated it, how practice differed from formal design, and which groups gained or lost power.