Community, Association and Institution
Chapter Seventeen
Syllabus topic 1.5.3, "Community, Associations, Institutions"
Pages 73 to 76 of 451
In one line
A community is a group of people who live a whole common life in an area; an association is a group organised to pursue one particular interest; an institution is not a group at all, but an established way of doing something.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: a community is a group of people living together in a definite locality and sharing a common way of life, with a sense of belonging together that MacIver called community sentiment; an association is a group deliberately organised for the pursuit of one or more specific interests, with a definite membership and structure; and an institution is not a body of people but an established set of norms and procedures by which a society regularly meets one of its permanent needs.
Community
The two essentials
MacIver's account requires two things, and an answer that gives only the first is incomplete.
Locality. A community occupies a definite territory. People who live together develop, from that fact alone, common interests and constant contact.
Community sentiment. A feeling of belonging together, which MacIver analysed into three elements: we-feeling, the sense that this is us; role-feeling, the sense that one has a part to play within it; and dependency-feeling, the sense that one needs it, both materially and for one's identity.
Locality without sentiment produces a settlement, not a community. This is why a new high-rise whose residents do not know each other is a locality and becomes a community only if sentiment develops, and why some do and some never do.
Other characteristics
A community is a group of people; it covers the whole of common life rather than one interest; it arises naturally rather than being founded; it has permanence; it has a particular name; it has its own way of life or culture; and membership is not chosen, being acquired by birth or residence.
Examples and the question of scale
A village, a tribe, a town, a neighbourhood, a city. Whether a nation is a community is debated: it satisfies sentiment and territory, but no member can know more than a fraction of the others, which is why Benedict Anderson's description of the nation as an imagined community has been so influential. It is imagined not because it is false but because the communion is held in the mind of each member rather than in face-to-face contact.
Association
What it is
An association is deliberately created to pursue a specific interest. Where a community grows, an association is founded.
Characteristics
- A group of people. Like a community, it is a body of persons.
- Organisation. It has a structure, offices and rules.
- A specific interest, and only that. A cricket club exists for cricket.
- Deliberate creation. Somebody decided to form it.
- Voluntary membership, usually, and always determinate.
- Rules and a constitution, formal or informal.
- Legal recognition is possible, and this is the practical point: an association can be registered, incorporated, represented and sued.
- Duration varies. It lasts as long as the interest does.
Community, Association and Institution
Examples
A trade union, a company, a political party, a cooperative housing society, a bar association, a students' union, a religious trust.
Institution
The concept students find hardest
An institution is not a group of people. This is the single point on which marks turn, and the confusion is encouraged by ordinary usage, in which a hospital or a university is called an institution.
Sociologically, an institution is an established procedure: a set of norms, roles and practices organised around a permanent need of society. Marriage is an institution; a particular married couple is not. Property is an institution; a particular title deed is not. Law is an institution; the Bombay High Court is an organisation within it.
Characteristics
- It is a system of norms and procedures, not a body of persons.
- It meets a permanent social need: reproduction and child-rearing, subsistence, order, the sacred, the transmission of knowledge.
- It is universal in its function, though its form varies enormously between societies. Every society has marriage of some kind; the forms are in [Forms of Marriage].
- It is relatively permanent, changing slowly.
- It is normative and obligatory. It prescribes, and departure is sanctioned.
- It carries symbols and codes: a ring, a robe, a ceremony, a rulebook.
- It is interconnected with the other institutions of the society, so change in one moves the others.
The five basic institutions
The list conventionally given is family, religion, economy, education and the state, including law, each answering one permanent need. Some writers add recreation.
The three compared
| Community | Association | Institution | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A group of people | A group of people | A system of norms and procedures, NOT people |
| Basis | Living together in a locality | A shared specific interest | A permanent need of society |
| Scope | The whole of common life | One interest only | One function of society |
| Origin | Grows naturally | Deliberately founded | Grows over long periods |
| Membership | By birth or residence, not chosen | Voluntary, determinate | Nobody is a member; people act through it |
| Sentiment | Community sentiment: we, role, dependency | Common interest, weaker attachment | Not applicable |
| Permanence | Long | As long as the interest lasts | Very long |
| Example | A village, a town | A trade union, a company | Marriage, property, law, religion |
The compact way to remember it. A community is where people live; an association is what people form; an institution is how things are done. Or, in the standard formula: an association is a group organised for a purpose, an institution is the procedure that group follows. A trade union is an association; collective bargaining is an institution. A church congregation is an association; religion is an institution. A family is a group; marriage is an institution.
Community, Association and Institution
A worked example
Take a village in Ratnagiri district.
The village itself is a community. People live there, know one another, share a way of life, and have the three sentiments. Nobody chose to be born into it.
The cooperative society, the temple trust and the youth mandal are associations. Each was founded, each has a register of members, a set of rules and office-bearers, and each exists for one interest.
Marriage, property, caste, religion and law are institutions. No one is a member of marriage. It is the established way in which this society organises the union of two people and the raising of children, and it operates on everybody without anybody joining.
Now change one thing and watch the three respond. Say a road is built and half the young adults take work in Mumbai. The community weakens: contact falls, sentiment thins. The associations may formally survive with a membership that is absent. The institutions change slowest of all, but they do change: the joint household becomes harder to maintain, and the institution of the family shifts, which is [Changing Patterns of the Family].
What these are NOT
A community is not a society. A society is the whole web of relationships and may contain many communities.
An association is not a community. It is founded, not grown; partial, not whole; voluntary, not ascribed.
An institution is not a building or an organisation. A hospital is an organisation; medicine is the institution. Ordinary speech says otherwise, and an examiner is testing precisely whether you can set ordinary speech aside.
An institution is not the same as a norm. A norm is a single rule; an institution is a whole complex of norms, roles and procedures organised around a need.
Quick revision
- Community: locality plus community sentiment (we-feeling, role-feeling, dependency-feeling). Covers the whole of common life, grows naturally, membership by birth or residence.
- Association: deliberately founded, specific interest, organised, determinate and usually voluntary membership, capable of legal recognition.
- Institution: NOT a group. An established system of norms and procedures meeting a permanent need. Universal in function, various in form.
- Five basic institutions: family, religion, economy, education, and the state including law.
- The formula: an association is a group organised for a purpose; an institution is the procedure it follows. Union and collective bargaining; congregation and religion; family and marriage.
- A nation is an imagined community: sentiment and territory without face-to-face contact.
Community, Association and Institution
Test yourself
1. Define community and give its two essentials. A group of people living together in a definite locality and sharing a common way of life. Its essentials are locality, a definite territory the group occupies, and community sentiment, the feeling of belonging together, which MacIver analysed into we-feeling, role-feeling and dependency-feeling. Locality without sentiment is a settlement, not a community.
2. Distinguish an association from a community. An association is deliberately founded to pursue one specific interest, has a determinate and usually voluntary membership, a formal structure and rules, and lasts as long as the interest does. A community grows naturally, covers the whole of common life, is entered by birth or residence rather than by choice, and rests on community sentiment rather than on a shared purpose.
3. What is an institution, and why is a hospital not one? An institution is not a body of people but an established system of norms, roles and procedures by which a society regularly meets one of its permanent needs. A hospital is an organisation, a particular association of persons with premises and staff; the institution is medicine, or health care, the established way the society organises the treatment of illness, which operates through many hospitals and outlives all of them.
4. Give the relation between an association and an institution, with two examples. An association is a group organised for a purpose; an institution is the established procedure that group follows. A trade union is an association and collective bargaining is the institution; a congregation is an association and religion is the institution; a particular family is a group and marriage is the institution.
5. Is a nation a community? It satisfies both of MacIver's tests in one sense, since it occupies a territory and its members feel they belong together, but no member can know more than a tiny fraction of the others, so the face-to-face contact of a village is absent. Benedict Anderson's description of the nation as an imagined community captures this: the communion is real but is held in the mind of each member rather than produced by daily contact.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.