A Presentation on Associations

1. ASSOCIATIONS AND
INSTITUTIONS
By: Hadiya Khanam

2. OBJECTIVES
Understand the meaning of Associations and Institutions;
Distinguish Associations and Institutions;
Characteristics of Associations;
How the concept of association differ from interest, community and
institution;
Understand the importance of different kind of viz. Social, political,
economic associations in our social life;
Identify different types of Institutions; and
Understand perspectives on Institutions.

3. INTRODUCTION
As we know people have different needs and desires. Consequently
they also adopt different means to fulfil those needs and desires.
Associations were known in earlier social formations but the nature of
association as a form of social group in modern industrial society is
different from earlier ones.
As society gets more complex people’s needs and interest also
expand. Interest or utility takes supremacy in more complex societies
and begin to determine every sphere of life .
Therefore, sociologically speaking groups which are established in
order to protect and enhance people’s interests through certain
specified rules and regulations in an organised manner are called
associations

4. Institutions are set of rules that structure social interaction (Jack
Knight, 1992). Institutions can be understood as code of conduct or a
set of rules and guidelines for human activity.
They structure human interaction through stated or implied rules that
set expectations. Some examples of institutions are law, education,
marriage, and family.

5. MEANING AND DEFINITION OF
ASSOCIATION
As per R.M MacIver, “an organisation deliberately formed for the
collective pursuit of some interest or a set of interests, which its
members share”.
According to Morris Ginsberg, an association is “a group of social
beings related to one another by the fact that they possess or have
instituted in common an organisation with a view to securing a
specific end or specific ends”.
An association is “a group organised for the pursuit of an interest or
group of interest in common”.
Hence, humans have different interests and they establish different
associations to fulfil them. No single association can satisfy all the
interests of the individual or individuals.

6. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF AN
ASSOCIATION
Association-a Human Group:
By the term group here means collection of social being who share
distinctive social relationships with one another.
As group which refers to reciprocity between its members.
Therefore, here association as a group expressly organized around a
particular interest.
The idea of expressly organized differentiates association as social
group from other social groups like primary and secondary groups or
class and crowd.

7. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF AN
ASSOCIATION
Common Interests: It is not just collection of individuals but
association as a distinct social group in terms of interest aspect of
association.
Because the association is organized for particular purposes, for the
pursuit of specific interests, we belong to it by virtue of these
interests. /Thus, interests are the foundational virtue around which
different forms of associations are formed.
Association as an organisation: Association denotes some kind of
organisation.
An association is known essentially as an organised group. The
character of Associations and Institutions organisation gives stability
and proper shape to an association.
The idea of association as an organisation also determines the way in
which the status and roles are distributed among its members.

8. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF AN
ASSOCIATION
Regulation of Relations: Every association has its own ways and
means to regulate the behaviour and relations of its members.
Therefore, they frame certain rules and regulations which may be in
written or unwritten forms.
Co-operative Spirit: One of the characteristics of association is its co-
operative pursuit to fulfil its interests.
This co-operative pursuit may be spontaneous as offering a helping
hand to a stranger.
It may be casual or in fact may be determined or guided by the
customs of a community as in case of farmers assisting their
neighbours at harvest time. But indeed association is guided by
common interests of group members.

9. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF AN
ASSOCIATION
Membership is Voluntary: Membership in association is voluntary. It depends
on individual choice as per their interests.
In fact individuals are at liberty to join them. One can join athletic club for
purposes of physical recreation or sport, to a business for livelihood or
profits, to a social club for fellowship.
Therefore, membership in an association has social limited significance.
Associations as Agencies: Associations are means or agencies through which
their members realize their similar or share interests.
Such social organizations necessarily act, not merely through leaders but
through officials or representatives as agencies. In a way associations
normally act through agents who are responsible for and to the association.
It also give a distinctive character of association as a legal entity

10. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF AN
ASSOCIATION
Association has Corporate Character: Association by virtue of being a
social organisation may own property or funds which are held
collectively and do not belong to individual members.
It possesses rights and obligations, powers and liabilities which the
members can not exercise as individuals.
It is in this sense, corresponding to its peculiar method of functioning
that association has a corporate character.
Durability of Association: The nature of association may be
permanent or temporary. There are some more enduring and exist on
a larger scale like the state, family, religious organisations etc.
However, some associations are very temporary in nature

11. ASSOCIATION AND COMMUNITY
An association is deliberately formed for the purpose of fulfilment of certain
common needs of people. But a community is more than any specific
organization. In fact organization develops within it.
For example, the business or the church or the club with the village or city or
nation. Thus, we can call a city or a village a community but not a church.
These organisations exist in terms of fulfilment of particular interest around
which they are organizations.
Therefore, there can be multiple of associations within a community. On
contrast community is a natural development and is guided by more general
principles than specific interests.
In fact community is more free and wider than even many bigger
associations. Moreover, the membership in community is concerned is more
open. But the membership in association has limited significance. As a result
community is relatively larger and more stable than associations.

12. As per the MacIver there are two major social organizations which
may seem to lie on the borderline between association and
communities are the family and the state.
According to him family has worked more as a community in
primitive and extremely rural societies. In such societies family has
performed larger functions than what family is today. In these cases,
people toil, play, and even worship almost wholly within the orbit of
the family.
ccIn fact family used to define the whole lives of its members.
However, in a more complex and civilized societies the family
function more as an association. Its functions are getting more and
more limited and defined as the social division of labour increases.
But here also in a complex society in the initial days of child family
performs more than associational functions but gradually it
transforms into an association of, often intense, but with limited
interest. As eventually adult member of family leaves it and establish
a new family.

13. Similarly, state is also an arena which is frequently confused with the
community.
However, MacIver says in reality the state is one form of social
organisation, not the whole community in all its aspects.
While talking about the associational character of state MacIver says
that the state is an agency of peculiarly wide range, but nevertheless
an agency.
Though at times state takes the form of ‘absolutist’ or ‘totalitarian’
and try to control and define every aspect of human lives but the
state would not become a community, but an association controlling
the community

14. ASSOCIATION AND INSTITUTION
Though it seems similar however, sociologically speaking both the
concepts differs in terms of their meaning, nature and in many more
ways. However, it needs to be clarified that we belong to associations
but not to institutions.
In a way institutions are defined as established forms or conditions of
procedure characteristic of group activity. While forming association
which is a deliberate formation surrounding certain common interests
also create rules and procedures to deliver the objective.
Thus, every association has, with respect to its particular interest, its
characteristic institutions. The church, for example, has its
sacraments, its modes of worship, and its rituals. The family has
marriage, that is, the institution of mating relationship; it has the
home, the family meal, and so forth.

15. The state has its own peculiar institutions, such as representative
government and legislative procedures.
However, we belong to associations but not institutions. It broadly
refers to the idea that when we consider something as an organized
group, it is an association but when we consider as a form of
procedure it refers to as an institution.
Association denotes membership; institution denotes a mode or
means of service. When we view a college as a body of teachers and
students, we are selecting its associational aspect, but when we
regard it as an educational system, we are selecting its institutional
features.
Therefore, we cannot belong to an institution. We do not belong to
marriage or property systems or solitary confinement, but we do
belong to families.

16. DEFINING INSTITUTIONS
Institutions are components of the society that help to maintain order
and stability through structuring human interaction and activity.
Institutions manifest themselves in terms of overt or implicit rules
that structure human interactions.
Associations and Institutions They function through the members of a
society being socialised into them.
This makes the study of institutions critical to the field of sociology.
Emile Durkheim referred to sociology as the scientific study of
principle institutions.
Institutions such as religion, family, education et cetera are still
critical to the discipline of sociology

17. Bronislaw Malinowski 2 argues that, “every institution centres around
a fundamental need, permanently unites a group of people in a co-
operational task and has its particular body of doctrines and its
technique or craft.
Institutions are not correlated simply and directly to new functions.
One need not receive one’s satisfaction in one institution.”
Jonathan Turner defines institution as “a complex of positions, roles,
norms and values lodged in particular types of social structures and
organising relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to
fundamental problems in producing life-sustaining resources, in
reproducing individuals, and in sustaining viable societal structures
within a given environment” (Turner 1997: 6)

18. Institutions function well in so far as they maintain stable patterns of
expectation, thought and action.
The consistency and synchronisation among these elements
determine the stability of the institution.
It is often argued that institutions have equilibrium like qualities, in
that, when disturbed, institutions reinstate their stability by
reinforcing order as purpose or preference.
Repeated and consistent behaviour that has rule-like qualities
assumes normative weight and act in ways that stabilise the
equilibrium status of the institution. Sociologists consider institutions
not singularly as stable static phenomena but as process.
Institutions have been understood in terms of the processes of
institutionalisation, de-institutionalisation, and re-
institutionalisation. They are generally considered as the “more
enduring features of social life” (Giddens, 1984: 24).

19. PURPOSE OF INSTITUTION
German Sociologist Arnold Gehlen (1980) suggested that human
being seek to supplement their instinctual world with a cultural
world.
He suggests that this feeling of incompleteness and the attempt to
supplement explains the emergence Associations and Institutions of
institutions.
In his book ‘the social construction of reality’ (1967) Thomas
Luckman elaborates this idea and suggests that human beings
compensate for their biological underdevelopment through
surrounding themselves with a social canopy or religion.
Institutions therefore make human life meaningful through
connecting human beings to their natural environment

20. TYPES OF INSTITUTIONS
Sociologists generally classify institutions into five clusters of major
institutions. They are:
Economic Institutions: These are the institutions that correspond to
production, consumption and distribution of goods and services.
Institutions of Social Stratification: These are the institutions that
regulate and control differential access to social status and prestige.
Kinship, Marriage and Family: These institutions control and regulate
reproduction.
Political Institutions: They are concerned with regulation and
distribution of power.
Cultural Institutions: They regulate religious, symbolic and cultural
practices

22. REFERENCES
Giddens, Anthony. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the
Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hunt, Chester L. and Horton, Paul B. (2004). Sociology. New Delhi:
Tata McGraw-Hill.
Knight, J. (1992). Institutions and Social Conflict. Cambridge, NY:
Cambridge University Press.
Page, Charles H. and MacIver R.M. (1986). Society: An Introductory
Analysis. Madras: Macmillan India Limited.
Turner, Jonathan. (1997). The Institutional Order. New York:
Longman.
Weber, M. (1964). The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.
New York: The Free Press.