ABSTRACT
In modern industrial societies most places of work on land represent temporary locations typified by the factory or the office. The sharply defined time sequences of work and private life, as a normative pattern, are a product of industrialization, although the recurrent shifts from work to private life and vice versa have also characterized certain occupations in older types of societies. Both in agricultural and in industrial societies there are some types of work and other activities that impose a different cyclical ordering of events. Some social systems function on a more permanent basis and required member participate continuously in the system throughout a longer period. Among the more prominent of such social systems are the prison, the hospital, the army camp, the cloister, the boarding school, and the ship. Except for the ship and some other places of work, the total institution serves non-economic functions for some, usually the majority, of the members of the institution.
