The social institutions of the family, religion, education, government, and the economy are cultural universals, found in various forms in all human cultures. Functionalists stress the essential tasks social institutions perform, but conflict theorists charge that social institutions strengthen the powerful at the expense of the powerless. This chapter examined kinship and the family; the social functions of religion; schools as formal organizations; forms of power and authority in government; and the changing nature of our economic systems.

1. The extended family, common in the past, offers certain advantages over today's nuclear family. Some sociologists think that in the United States, the egalitarian family has become the norm, replacing the older patriarchal family.

2. All cultures determine kinship in one of three ways: by descent from both parents, a method called bilateral descent; by descent from the father only, called patrilineal descent; or by descent from the mother only, called matrilineal descent.

3. Émile Durkheim stressed the role of religion in integrating a diverse society and providing social support in time of need. But from a Marxist point of view, religion serves to reinforce the control of those in power and to discourage collective political action.

4. Max Weber saw a connection between capitalism and religious allegiance, which he termed the Protestant ethic.

5. Today, most schools in the United States are organized in a bureaucratic fashion. Weber's five basic characteristics of bureaucracy are all evident in schools.

6. Schools are complex social organizations. Teachers suffer from the stress of role conflict--that of being both an educator and a disciplinarian--that is inherent in their job. Students are divided into many subcultures based on their interests and experiences, gender, race, age, and sexual orientation.

7. There are three basic sources of power in any political system: force, influence, and authority. Max Weber identified three ideal types of authority: traditional, legal-rational, and charismatic.

8. Advocates of the elite model of the nation's power structure see the United States as being ruled by a small group of individuals, called the power elite, who share common political and economic interests. Advocates of the pluralist model believe that power is shared more widely among conflicting groups.

9. While capitalist economic systems vary in the degree to which government regulates economic activity, all emphasize private ownership and the profit motive. Socialist economic systems, in contrast, aim to eliminate economic exploitation and meet people's needs through government regulation and even ownership. Marx believed that communism would evolve naturally out of socialism.

10. The U.S. economy is changing. Sociologists have noted the changing face of the workforce, the effects of deindustrialization and downsizing, increased reliance on a contingency workforce, and the emergence of e-commerce.