ECONOMY AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

Around 1800 the concept of 'economy' became extremely important in the context of theoretical reflection in the West and also acquired a new meaning. After long denoted mostly the management of Home Affairs, the term economy began to be used for a chunk of the company. This conceptual change depended on a plurality of reasons. At that time, for example, thanks to the contribution of Adam Smith and other scholars, was born the modern economics. At the same time also it started out the process of industrialization, first in England and then in the rest of Europe and the United States. In increasingly secular society that began to emerge it was unleashed soon a lively debate about which was the role that this new sector in the economy, in fact was called to play in society. According to the economic sector must be left completely free and now he never had to limit its action. Others, however, were of the view that the economy should be subject to the company and / or the state. In this article we will only occasionally directly political aspects of this debate, although it must be borne in mind that the debate on the relationship between economy and society that will participate politicians or sociologists often involves an ideological component. The problem we face, however, is another: how we should understand the relationship between economy and society from the point of view of the social sciences? The answer to this question will be given with the submission of the thesis that several economists and sociologists have put forward in this regard by the end of the eighteenth century to the present day.

In the social sciences debate on economy and society it is essentially rotated around three main locations. According to the first economy it is a universe unto itself in society and can be analyzed only in purely economic or social. The company is considered alien to the economic and, at most, to the economist plays a purely marginal interest. For the second position the economy is an integral part of society and operates as the rest of society. Few scholars have supported this view with conviction, because it involves, ultimately, a total rejection of the economic standard. Some scholars, however, share this view because it is radically opposed to the dominant economic theory. The third point of view, finally, has a greater number of members, as it is less extremist; according to this view, the most important parts of the economy should be studied using the normal instruments (not social) of economic thought, but, as in the economic sector there are also social institutions, these should be analyzed in terms sociological. Many economists and other members of the social sciences have fluctuated between these different positions, even within the same work.

References:
http://thecollaboratory.wikidot.com/thompson-social-institutions
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/Economy
http://www.e-ir.info/2012/09/19/the-importance-of-institutions-to-economic-development/

PROBLEMS OF YOUNG IN THE SOCIETY

Youth disadvantage is a current problem and is a special acknowledgment in today's society.
Young people feel oppressed in the reality in which we live because they are accused of attacking negatively values ​​governing the society of the past, and then you want to have too much freedom, few rules, and be comfortable life often responsible for violent acts of hooliganism and vandalism, so young people, targeted by controversy, not feel understood by the society in which they live. The youth problems is part of a broader crisis that covers the entire company. The precariousness of the values, the flexibility in all fields, the loss of social symbols shared, uncertainty and fear of the future, seem to fully confirm the uneasiness that young people living in today's society. But we must point out a few things. The term "juvenile delinquency" has several meanings, so we have to focus on the major social dimensions within which it moves and interacts the young: the family, schools, places of socialization in free time. Continuing this analysis, we highlight those risk factors that threaten the world of the young, to invite them to drug use. On the other hand, through drugs, man has always tried to treat the ill, to escape the cares, worries, sadness, to break the constraints of everyday life, to acquire a mystical perception and come to different experiences. Some difficulties have been encountered in dealing with the problem of drugs, "recreational", especially "Ecstasy".

The history of this substance is recent, like that of amphetamines. Nate as a drug substance with stimulant effects, they were soon used by American students to overcome sleep during the exam preparation. From this use "functional" to the study, practice slipped into a different function and typical of drugs. However, it surprised that Ecstasy has had a very rapid diffusion in all countries with high development rate, bringing young people to the worship of "extreme", which means to dance all night, and then start again at dawn and Finally in the afternoon of the next day. Ecstasy acts as "additive" to keep this kind of pace. Discomfort, then, is not the product of the substances consumed, but is prior to this, and the use of drugs is the result. The individual has to face problems in a situation where it is bad or is choked by fears and needs of various types. This is one reason why therapeutic communities or any other preventive intervention must aim to reduce stigma, trying to reconstruct, in real terms, and clean, the environment in which the young person is engaged or must be placed in the near future . In this way one can well understand the increase in the number of centers authorized to their recovery. A very important thing is the commitment to a constant dialogue with young people. The big problem of young people is also to make man free and more spontaneous in life without disguise, because there can be no happiness in hypocrisy. The problem really is not of man but of society. Man lives suffocated by the ideals of a society too consumerist and founded on prejudice. His desire to rebel springs precisely from the protest against the social order which he has created around him despite and against all the functions that imprison him preventing him from being himself, so young people are in revolt because they have their own personality and early efficient and why they do not want to lose this individuality. It 'a mistake to call them rebels for this behavior. Rather the latter is like the warning bell of an old world collapses and a new world rising. Young people become rebels to affirm the ideals they consider fundamental for a better life in society and that is the truth, freedom, love, generosity, loyalty, understanding and forgiveness. What the company does not understand is that most of today's youth faces life with seriousness and commitment and that the reliance on individual cases is wrong. Of course, there are the mass youth who have bad intentions, who have no desire to do anything, always depend on others and claim by the parents, but the majority of us think again because he wants to establish itself, to fight and to build a better tomorrow. Must now understand that if they will lash out against it because they see misunderstood, labeled and mistreated by this society full of appearances and lies.

References:
http://www.freechild.org/issues.htm
http://www.youngminds.org.uk/about/whats_the_problem
http://drugscope.org.uk/why-do-young-people-take-drugs/

RELIGION AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

Among the American community and religion it has established a strong bond that has never broken through the centuries. Faith continues to have an important role in society, and not necessarily for the work of religious denominations together, which indeed are often overtaken by events and actions of individual believers.
Religious pluralism has helped keep up the role of faith in everyday life, resulting in what is commonly called 'American civil religion', where the state also welcomes '' expectations specifically religious, giving way to an aspect of his secularity in order to separate churches.
This intense relationship does nothing but highlight the American paradox of a strongly religious society not willing to give up the presence of faith in the public dimension and a law aimed at finding a balance between the assertion of the separation of the state from churches and respect full religious freedom, understood both as a freedom of the citizen to istutizioni, both of these pressures toward confessional.
Conseguemente, the American state '' has identified the problem of the separation of church and state with the theoretical assumption of 'agnosticism state in religious matters, but started from the pragmatic problem of how to ensure the fullest possible equality and freedom of citizens and denominations before the law, thus establishing the principle of the separation in order to better achieve this goal, but without rejecting the religious values ​​''

This absence of antagonism is revealed in some legal and social particularities in our Europe would certainly be criticized for residues confessionismo.
The influence of religion has had and continues to have in the development of civil and economic power of the US an important place.
The presence of religious lobbies, for example, in the political field is very strong and certainly not raise the sensation that in Europe certain positions taken by the same religious denominations

References:
http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-religion-affect-social-cultural-changes-468241
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/religion-in-america/

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

We know that freedom of thought is something recent, born a few centuries and developed exponentially with the invention of all the new means of mass communication which permit its expression, and if we find a symbolic startup of this trend can certainly place from the intellectual point of view in the proclamation of "free examination" of the scriptures by the Protestant church, and from the "physical" in the birth of the printing process with the subsequent dissemination of books and the ability to read them. It's not so hard to notice that since the Protestant Church gave everyone the chance to interpret the Holy Scriptures as best saw fit arose a myriad of denominations and different sects, each of which is considered to be the sole repository of the correct interpretation. This simple statement, covering all fields of thought, has inevitably led to an intellectual side to a production which never had seen before in human history, but the other has inevitably eclipsed by the West, the concept of intellectual truth, that is now totally misunderstood, often denied, and often bent to the will and the interest of the ruling classes.
Freedom of thought should in fact be the instrument to search for the truth, and once you find this should remain the foundation of all subsequent world view, but the demise of the western horizon this concept, or its extreme relativism, have transformed the means in order to point out that freedom of thought and expression thereof are considered "inalienable human rights" such as the right to life, or rather, the right to life is not in fact an inalienable human right, while the right to freedom of Thought so.
What is opposed to the exaltation of the freedom of thought? Usually the period of the Inquisition, where many heretics were burned at the stake for having supported thesis in stark contrast to the official doctrines of the Church, and then to the totalitarian period, where opponents of dictatorial regimes intellectuals were imprisoned or exiled for expressing opinions or ideas contrary to the dominant ones. I do not want to pass judgment on these two situations as they would mean extensive explanations, but just look, sine ira et studio, the results that this situation has led.
Today there are more shared parameters to which to refer to evaluate the truth or otherwise of any concept, and I myself have found very often to discuss the simple meaning of a word that my interlocutor interpreted in a certain way and to which (at least when I discussed with him) claimed that I adeguassi.

If there is not even agreement on the meaning of words, as you can find it on the concepts or even on the "concept" for excellence that is to truth?
Theologians and philosophers, who should be those most targeted search of the truth, have lost any capacity and intuitive computing, becoming an event of historical theology and another in history of philosophy, and simply record and communicate thought of their predecessors.
What, then, he led the "freedom of thought"? The non-thought, a vague and confusing intellectual slime where the nonsense most obvious have the same dignity intellectual thoughts higher and nobler, a slime in which a brilliant thought of truth, which will always be lonely because the truth is not understandable by all, it will sink inexorably into the mud of intellectual expressions stupid and vulgar, often coinciding with special interests, caste or even personal, since these are to have a sufficient power of the media to disseminate it.
But there is an exception. In the "vast sea" of free thought there is a "truth" untouchable: that of science. Science can not put into question, it is sacred. Of course some will say that is not true, argues that science every day, so that questions everything: safe, but only on the inside, just like it always has the Church with the various councils and various assizes in where debates were held accesissimi perhaps even more than among scientists; but, when it was decided, what was communicated outside was indisputable dogma was, that people could not simply take note, and the Church was the only institution authorized to change it and ridiscuterlo. For modern science happens the same: in lively discussions, but once you have made a decision that is, he is saddled the attribute of "scientific" that turns it into dogma and no longer has to venture to put its beak. Sure in theory you can do it, no one puts you at the stake, but the consent given to what is considered science is such that anything that can not boast of this noble title will be ridiculed by the great mass media apparatus, or declassified in crap, to superstition, and if a concept appears briefly fancier will be lucky enough to earn the title of "Saw mental".
The scientific community has become, in actuality, what was the Church in the Middle Ages.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/a-history-of-freedom-of-thought/649
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5474

FUNCTIONALISM

Functionalism has held for several years a dominant position among the contemporary sociological theories. In functionalism society it is conceived as a set of interconnected parts between them. None of them, therefore, can be understood isolated from the other, but only in its context.

The relationships between the parts of the company are functional, and each element performs a particular task which if combined with all the others things, helps to create and keep working that part of the world that we call society. 

There exists, therefore, for functionalism a state of equilibrium in society, that is happen when each part performs its job properly. For this reason we can say that the functionalism is based on the model of the organic system that we find in the life sciences.

Functionalism is a line of research in psychology, which begin in the United States in the late nineteenth century by William James and John Dewey, who plays psychic phenomena not as separate elements from each other (as he tried to do the contemporary European structuralism Edward Titchener) but as functions by which the body adapts to the social and physical.

The manifesto of functionalism is considered the classic article "The Province of Functional Psychology", James Rowland Angell (1907). In the article, Angell argues that mental functions are not "abstract entities", but are the result of evolutionary processes functional in humans mediate the relationship between the environment and needs of the organism.

Although functionalism, as school specific psychological, has seen a decline since the late '20s (in conjunction with the growth of the contemporary academic psychology, behavior modification in the US), some of its basic assumptions are filtered within the principles implicit in contemporary psychological research, both in specific sectors such as Evolutionary Psychology that, in general, most of the Cognitive Science.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_functionalism

http://study.com/academy/lesson/structural-functional-theory-in-sociology-definition-examples-quiz.html

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

The symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach developed in the United States of America, is a continuation in sociology and psychology of thinking pragmatist of William James. It focuses on the creation of meaning in life and in human actions, emphasizing the pluralistic nature of the society, cultural relativism and social standards and the rules of ethics and social vision of the self as socially structured. It mainly deals with the social interaction that takes place in people's daily lives.

The thought of George Herbert Mead over all laid the foundations of the approach of symbolic.

The mind develops in this process of interaction, that is, in society, which is a set of shared meanings. 

In action and behavior, then you have the origin of conscious psychic life so that even the private social explained by the memory.

Therefore, the basic principles of the symbolic interactionism is based on three premises:

1) Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that these things have for them (these things can be physical objects, ideas, activities of others, situations, etc.).

2) The significance of these things is derived from social interaction that the individual has with others.

3) These meanings are processed and transformed into an interpretive process put in place by a person in dealing with the things he comes across.

The position of symbolic argues that the meaning that things have for humans is central in itself. Ignore the significance of the things to which people act is considered a falsification of the behavior being studied. Bypassing the meaning in favor of the factors believed to produce the behavior is considered a seriously neglecting its role in the formation of the same.

A major difference between other approaches and symbolic interactionism is offered by the second premise, referring to the origins of meaning: there are two traditional ways well known to explain their origin. One is considered intrinsic to things, natural part of their objective representation. Being inherent to the thing that expresses it, the meaning must only be made autonomous so they can look at it objectively it determines. The meaning emanates so to speak the traditional position of "philosophical realism". The other main consideration is on the traditional significance as psychic development contributed to what the person. This psychic development is treated as an expression of components of the psyche, the mind or the psychological organization of the person. Factors such as sensations, feelings, ideas, memories, motives and attitudes. The meaning of a thing is only the expression of psychological elements activated data in relation to his perception that they try to explain their meaning by isolating the psychological elements that produce particular. Interactionism symbolic shows that the meaning has an origin different from that of the two dominant visions. The meaning sees him arise from the process of interaction between people. The meaning of a thing arises for a person from the way other act against it with respect to that thing. The symbolic interactionism sees meanings as social products, creations formed and determined by definition activities carried out by people in their interaction.

Third premise: it is wrong to think that its use by a person is merely an application of the meaning of such proceeds. The use of the meanings carried by a person in your situation involves an interpretive process.

The dominant approaches have in common to see the use of meaning by the human being in his action as nothing more than something that arises and is applied on the basis of already agreed parameters. All fail to see that the use of meanings by the actor is determined through a process of determination. This process has two phases: the first, the actor tells himself things to which it is acting. The construction of such information is an internalized social process in which it interacts with itself. Second, the interpretation becomes a way to manage meanings. The actor selects, monitors, suspends, groups and transforms the meanings in the light of the situation in which it is party and its leadership. The interpretation should not be considered a simple automatic application of certain meanings, but rather an educational process in which meanings are modified and used as tools for the guidance and training of the action. The meanings play their part in the action through the process of autointeraction. The "original images" refer and represent the nature of the following issues: human groups or societies, the social interaction of objects, the human being as an actor, human action and the interconnection of lines of action.

A small example of Symbolic Interactionism may be a faith of marriage, is only a small item but it is very important for the person wearing it

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_interactionism

http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/soc/s00/soc111-01/IntroTheories/Symbolic.html

http://sociology.about.com/od/Sociological-Theory/a/Symbolic-Interaction-Theory.htm

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