Oxford English Dictionary, definition 7:
"An establishment, organization, or association, instituted for the promotion of some object, esp. one of public or general utility, religious, charitable, educational, etc., e.g. a church, school, college, hospital, asylum, reformatory, mission, or the like."
For example:
1878: "He may establish useful public institutions, such as free public libraries, museum, public parks, etc."
1999: "That the governing board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that most cautious of Hollywood institutions, would abandon the town's ruling narrative conventions and embrace historical indeterminacy by voting--without dissent or demur—to present this year's honorary Oscar to a proud, fragile, now almost silent old man named Elia Kazan is astonishing." (From Richard Schickel, "An Oscar For Elia," Time Magazine, March 8, 1999, p. 72.)
Oxford English Dictionary, definition 6:
"An established law, custom, usage, practice, organization, or other element in the political or social life of a people; a regulative principle or convention subservient to the needs of an organized community or the general ends of civilization."
"b. colloq. Something having the fixity or importance of a social institution; a well-established or familiar practice or object."
For example:
1860 Thackeray: "I am not going into the slavery question; I am not an advocate for the `institution.’"
1864: "A certain institution in Mr. Podsnap’s mind which he called `the young person’ may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it." (From Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 129.)
1871: "The institution of property is recognized and sanctioned by the authority of God."
1999: "To what extent is the drop of over two-fifths in the marriage rate during the last quarter of a century a function of a gradual postponement of marriage - or an abandonment of this institution? And what explains the huge increase in non-marital births - from 1.5 to 27 per cent of births since the mid-1960s?" (From Garret Fitzgerald, "Social Policy Must Assess Shifting Marriage Mores," The Irish Times, January 16, 1999, p. 14.)
"A Good Whuppin? Many Who Survived Childhood Spankings Now Endorse Them, Renewing Debate Over a Peculiar Institution." (From DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post, September 13, 1998, p. F01.)
Institutional Racism:
Feagin and Feagin’s definition
"Once a colonial system is established historically, those in the superior position seek to monopolize basic resources. In this process, privilege becomes institutionalized, that is, it becomes imbedded in the norms (regulations and informal rules) and roles (social positions and their attendant duties and rights) in a variety of social, economic, and political organizations." (Joe R. Feagin and Clairece Boohr Feagin, "Theories of Discrimination, " People, Power, and Politics, Vol. II, 7th ed., edited by the Departments of Political Science and Sociology, Brooklyn College (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 213.
For example:
1999: "[The End of Racism] is specifically about African-Americans, who, according to [the author] D’Souza, should stop using institutional racism as an `excuse’ for their `failure’ to achieve what whites and Asians have achieved. Instead, they should accept that they are held back by a `culture of poverty’ consisting of high crime and illegitimacy rates, and dependency on welfare and other government programs." (From Deborah Taylor, "Slouching Toward Bigotry," Extra, Vol. 12, No. 2 (March/April 1999), p. 14.)
1995: "For seven days earlier this month, The Record examined charges of institutional racism in Teaneck's public schools. Although the series found that the district has worked harder than most to address a chronic achievement gap between whites and minorities, the series also showed that the district still faces a significant challenge....Black teenagers in Teaneck tell of how they were steered away from honors courses because guidance counselors thought the work would be too challenging. A black who is now a senior at Teaneck High tells of how, despite his good grades, his mother had to fight to get him into higher-level courses." (from Staff, "Teaneck's Achievement Gap; Ensuring An Equal Education For All," The Bergen Record, April 23, 1995, p. 2. )
1994: "The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Monday accused television networks of `institutional racism,’ and vowed to encourage viewers to boycott networks that refuse to schedule programs with positive ethnic images or do not place minorities in key decision-making positions. `We know that significant shows were cut off from Fox this season, and that is of great concern to us,’ Jackson said. `We look at the data we have on NBC. It is substantial. It is ugly. We look at the projected format for CBS this fall. In the real sense, all of them are recycling racist practices. It is called institutional racism. It is manifest not only in their hiring, but in their priorities.’" (From Greg Braxton, "Jackson Calls TV Racist, Urges Action," The Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1994, p. B1.)
More than you probably wanted to know about institutionsFrom Erik Doxtader, "Learning public deliberation through the critique of institutional argument," Argumentation and Advocacy, vol. 31, n. 4 (Spring 1995), p. 185:
"There are few self-evident definitions of the term `institution.'(6) Basically, institutions are systems of order that create, act on, preserve, and legitimize complex forms of common knowledge. Given the task of stabilizing the identity of a society, institutions emerge from what Burke calls an act of constitution; that is, institutions enact norms necessary for social problem-solving (Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 341). Tied to Arendt's important theory of power, an institution is a body of people and thought that endeavors to make good on common expressions of human purpose. Its prototypical form is the modern state (Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World), 1970, p. 41).
Institutions have a kind of double character. As the construction and articulation of human form, institutions develop by enacting shared identity through necessarily exclusive norms of representation. Collective identity is the creation of self through the negation of other (Burke 408). As such, while the ability of institutions to represent human experience services the end of collective action coordination, this process necessarily depends on partisan definitions of common interest. In a democracy, this tension is a productive way of defining the concept of an institution. That is, institutions are systems of representation dedicated to the enactment of a collective (public) identity which itself cannot be wholly representative."
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