Abstract
Assisted living institutions such as nursing homes were established to answer a vital social need. Such services are needed by the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill. The social demand for these institutions is growing due to a deficit of care functions in families, among other factors. Undoubtedly, assisted living institutions play a vital role by providing help and assistance to less-independent individuals, and for many, they are a chance for survival or a dignified life because they offer food and shelter. However, nursing homes as assisted living institutions are not limited to satisfying the needs of their residents. There is something surprising and worrying about their functioning. To use R.K. Merton's terminology, they operate according to latent functions that maintain social order and social control. To better understand the problem, it is worth looking at Erving Goffman' s popular theory of total institutions and Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory.
Highlights
Is their primary function to satisfy the individual needs of residents, or do they provide for some latent social needs that are not defined in legal regulations? is the ultimate goal to help the individual or to help the state? We will try to answer the above questions from a broader perspective by showing the role of nursing homes as assisted living institutions in maintaining social order and in controlling behaviour
Are the residents of nursing homes doomed to live in institutions that constrain their liberty? What are the priorities in an assisted living institution: the interests of the residents or the interests of the institution? Is the freedom of residents limited for the sake of controlling and maintaining social order? Do new nursing homes really ensure the freedom and better quality of life of residents, as they want to be perceived by society, or is this mere illusion? Are assisted living institutions still total institutions, and if so to what extent? In order to answer these questions, a thorough analysis of these institutions, supported by empirical material, is needed
Luhman’s observations are relevant to nursing homes: “All reproduction and structure formation presuppose a combination of order and disorder: a system’s own structured and an incomprehensible foreign complexity, a regulated and a free complexity” (Luhmann, 2007, p. 201)
Summary
ASISTED LIVING INSTITUTIONS AS THE BASIS OF ORDER AND A FORM OF BEHAVIOUR CONTROL FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ERVING GOFFMAN’S SYSTEMS THEORY. Assisted living institutions such as nursing homes were established to answer a vital social need. Such services are needed by the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill. Nursing homes as assisted living institutions are not limited to satisfying the needs of their residents. The importance of institutions arises from the functions they serve to satisfy the collective needs of a society. Institutional analysis applies numerous theories (the most popular being functionalism) in order to justify their social participation. The latent functions, as they are surrounded by an air of secrecy, privacy, invisibility and inaccessibility, inspire a quest to reveal the unseen side of institutions
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