Love, Friendship, and Freedom

Abstract

At least since Emile Durkheim published The Rules of Sociological Method (1966) [1895], institutions have been a core focus of the discipline. There is a difference between lay and sociological understandings of institutions. In everyday discourse, they are considered like organizations such as educational institutions, state institutions, asylums, and so on. When we speak about someone being ‘institutionalized’, we mean that they have become subject to institutional duties of care. Another meaning is the one we attach to the institution of marriage, for example, and it comes closer, and in fact builds an important part of, the sociological conception; it refers to the legal formalization of an intimate relationship that is conferred public recognition by way of religious or civic ritual, and the legal attribution of shared rights and obligations. But sociological perspectives on institutions go further; they incorporate, but also elaborate, everyday discourse.