Ethics is involved not only with personal decisions and the assessments of individual behavior but also with social institutions, especially, in the contemporary world, with those institutions constituted by scientific and technical professions as well. Classic sociology—as developed by social scientists considered in entries on "Durkheim, Émile," "Marx, Karl," and "Weber, Max," among others—identified a number of basic social institutions such as the family, religion, state, economy, and education. Social institutions in this sense are defined by persons acting in concert to address distinctive human interests; as such they are characterized by social roles that people accept when acting, for instance, in relation with those to whom they have biological links (the family), in relation to that which is seen as sacred (religion), in relation to the exercise of group power (state), and so on. Each social institution is thus defined by...