SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Dr. Orville Boyd Jenkins Each society has its own social institutions. These are not buildings or places, but structures of relationship, obligation, role and function. These are social concepts and practices, but also involve cognitive structures. Members of a society have a similar mental concept of right and wrong, order and relationships, and patterns of good (positive values). Those who do not honor these concepts are "criminals," or at least antisocial. Linguist Noam Chomsky provides a good model for cognitive culture. He presents a coherent theory of how children create language by organizing the early language experiences around them by using a native analytical "faculty" in the human psyche. The same pattern applies to culture. Let's look at some of the social institutions that insiders learn through their socialization experiences, which affect insider identity. Political: Every society has an organizational principle, with authority figures