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Social Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Shahrough Akhavi
Shahrough Akhavi*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Extract

According to S. N. Elsenstadt, Institutions are 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.” From this perspective, 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. To this list may be added those approaches in psychology in which the unit of analysis is the group, community, or society.

Because the subject of “Social Institutions” covers such a vast domain, it will be necessary to focus upon only certain entries of the EIr in this domain. However, before proceeding, it is worth noting that some 150 articles in the first seven volumes may be classified under “social institutions,” including the subsections of articles.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3-4: A Review of the “Encyclopaedia Iranica” , Summer Fall 1998 , pp. 691 - 701
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

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References

1. Eisenstadt, S. N. “Social Institutions,” International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 14 (New York: Macmillan/Free Press, 1968), 410.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., 410-11.

3. Readers should be aware that some entries that might normally be considered under the rubric of “Social Relations and Institutions” will be found under other categories, to which they should turn for information. Among the most likely of these are: Anthropology and Folklore, Ethnography and Tribes, Geography and Historical Geography, History, Neighboring Cultures, Sufism, and Religion. Additionally, sections of articles falling within the purview of the humanities (such as Art, Architecture, Language, Literature, and Music) may have sections pertinent to the present category of “Social Relations and Institutions.”

4. Naturally, all the successful articles are, in part, based on analysis, and not mere description.

5. One may note the similarities between the Orientalist and neo-Weberian views. As to Weber himself, he would have repudiated the Parsonians’ efforts to present him as a proponent of linear incrementalism who believes that the non-European societies must follow the patterns of the West if they wish to modernize. He would have insisted on the discontinuous (not continuous) nature of social change.

6. On “inclusionary” vs. “exclusionary” corporatism, see Stepan, Alfred The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; also, Schmitter, Philip C. “Still the Century of Corporatism?” in The New Corporatism, ed. Pike, Frederick and Stritch, Thomas (South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1974), 85-131.Google Scholar

7. This is not to imply that Marx defined capitalists in the same way that liberals, taking their cue from Weber, do. For Marx, capitalists are compelled to behave in particular ways by their search for surplus value. Liberals, by contrast, believe capitalists freely choose among strategies to optimize their utilities in the market.

8. Richards, Alan and Waterbury, John The Political Economy of the Middle East: State, Class, and Economic Development (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), 217.Google Scholar

9. For these functions, see Eisenstadt, “Social Institutions,” 411-12.

10. In one characterization, a former deputy minister of court believed that a conspiracy involving the ᶜulamaᵓ, leftists, the Western media, the big oil companies, the British, and the United States worked together to destroy Iran. This conspiracy supposedly originated in “the emergence of the Shiᶜite ᶜulamaᵓ in the fourth century [which] constitutes the greatest conspiracy in Persian history and perhaps the oldest conspiracy in world history” (p. 144).