Unit 11 Introduction
Reading: Chapter 12 in Macionis, pp. 333 - 369
Unit 11 offers an in-depth look at two important social institutions in modern society: economics and politics. Economic institutions organize production, consumption and trade, and structure how people think about and carry out their work. Political institutions (also known as governance institutions) organize the distribution of power and authority in society. Political institutions provide a structure of leadership and empower some people by giving their ideas and preferences more weight than others.
 Fig. 11-1: U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, DC |
People have always produced and consumed goods and have always had leaders, but these functions have become institutionalized in particular ways with the advance of industrial society, and have taken on significant meaning. People no longer rely primarily on personal contacts and relations, formed through families, churches and communities; rather, some of these are replaced by the instrumental contacts that emerge with bureaucratized forms of political and economic organization.
In Unit 11 we will study the evolution of economic organization, to better understand how we got to where we are today. In modern societies, different models (or systems) of economic organization have emerged, including capitalism and socialism. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and today most industrialized countries mix the two forms to some extent.
Unit 11 also examines the emergence of modern forms of political organization. Politics and governance allocate power in a society, and institutionalize decisions by creating structures of authority. We will learn various ways that authority is constructed, some models of political organization and power, and how politics is organized in the United States. The concept of legitimacy, or the extent to which people willingly buy into a power structure, is an important theme in this chapter.
In Unit 11 you will appreciate how an institutional "superstructure" exercises social control in the U.S. and around the world. You will also see how this is changing as we move into a global world system, in which corporations, a bureaucratic form of economic organization, are taking on increasing control and displacing governments, a bureaucratic form of political organization.
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