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Society

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Community organisations;
Politics and government

   Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society.
   Enlarge
   Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society.

   A society is a grouping of individuals, which is characterized by
   common interest and may have distinctive culture and institutions.
   "Society" may refer to a particular people, such as the Nuer, to a
   nation state, such as Switzerland, or to a broader cultural group, such
   as Western society. Society can also be explained as an organized group
   of people associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural,
   scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

Origin and usage

   The English word society emerged in the 15th century and is derived
   from the French société. The French word, in turn, had its origin in
   the Latin societas, a "friendly association with others," from socius
   meaning "companion, associate, comrade or business partner." Implicit
   in the meaning of society is that its members share some mutual concern
   or interest, a common objective or common characteristics.

   In political science, the term is often used to mean the totality of
   human relationships, generally in contrast to the State, i.e., the
   apparatus of rule or government within a territory:

          "I mean by it [the State] that summation of privileges and
          dominating positions which are brought into being by
          extra-economic power... I mean by Society, the totality of
          concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions
          between man and man..."

   In the social sciences society has been used to mean a group of people
   that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are
   with other individuals belonging to the group.

   According to sociologist Richard Jenkins, the term addresses a number
   of important existential issues facing people:

   1. How humans think and exchange information – the sensory world makes
   up only a fraction of human experience. In order to understand the
   world, we have to conceive of human interaction in the abstract (i.e.,
   society). 2. Many phenomena cannot be reduced to individual behaviour –
   to explain certain conditions, a view of something "greater than the
   sum of its parts" is needed. 3. Collectives often endure beyond the
   lifespan of individual members. 4. The human condition has always meant
   going beyond the evidence of our senses; every aspect of our lives is
   tied to the collective.

Evolution of societies

   Gerhard Lenski, a sociologist, differentiates societies based on their
   level of technology, communication and economy: (1) hunters and
   gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4)
   industrial. This is somewhat similar to the system earlier developed by
   anthropologists Morton H. Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman
   Service, an integration theorist, who have produced a system of
   classification for societies in all human cultures based on the
   evolution of social inequality and the role of the state. This system
   of classification contains four categories:
     * Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
     * Tribal societies in which there are some limited instances of
       social rank and prestige.
     * Stratified structures led by chieftains.
     * Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized,
       institutional governments.

   Over time, some cultures have progressed toward more-complex forms of
   organization and control. This cultural evolution has a profound effect
   on patterns of community. Hunter-gatherer tribes settled around
   seasonal foodstocks to become agrarian villages. Villages grew to
   become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and
   nation-states.

Characteristics of society

   The following three components are common to all definitions of
   society:
     * Social networks
     * Criteria for membership, and
     * Characteristic patterns of organization

   Each of these will be explored further in the following sections.

Social networks

   Social networks are maps of the relationships between people.
   Structural features such as proximity, frequency of contact and type of
   relationship (e.g., relative, friend, colleague) define various social
   networks.

Organization of society

   Human societies are often organized according to their primary means of
   subsistence. As noted in the section on " Evolution of societies",
   above, social scientists identify hunter-gatherer societies, nomadic
   pastoral societies, horticulturalist or simple farming societies, and
   intensive agricultural societies, also called civilizations. Some
   consider industrial and post-industrial societies to be qualitatively
   different from traditional agricultural societies.

   One common theme for societies in general is that they serve to aid
   individuals in a time of crisis. Traditionally, when an individual
   requires aid, for example at birth, death, sickness, or disaster,
   members of that society will rally others to render aid, in some
   form—symbolic, linguistic, physical, mental, emotional, financial,
   medical, or religious. Many societies will distribute largess, at the
   behest of some individual or some larger group of people. This type of
   generosity can be seen in all known cultures; typically, prestige
   accrues to the generous individual or group. Conversely, members of a
   society may also shun or scapegoat members of the society who violate
   its norms. Mechanisms such as gift-giving and scapegoating, which may
   be seen in various types of human groupings, tend to be
   institutionalized within a society.

   Some societies will bestow status on an individual or group of people,
   when that individual or group performs an admired or desired action.
   This type of recognition is bestowed by members of that society on the
   individual or group in the form of a name, title, manner of dress, or
   monetary reward. Males, in many societies, are particularly susceptible
   to this type of action and subsequent reward, even at the risk of their
   lives. Action by an individual or larger group in behalf of some
   cultural ideal is seen in all societies. The phenomena of community
   action, shunning, scapegoating, generosity, and shared risk and reward
   occur in subsistence-based societies and in more technology-based
   civilizations.

   Societies may also be organized according to their political structure.
   In order of increasing size and complexity, there are bands, tribes,
   chiefdoms, and state societies. These structures may have varying
   degrees of political power, depending on the cultural geographical, and
   historical environments that these societies must contend with. Thus, a
   more isolated society with the same level of technology and culture as
   other societies is more likely to survive than one in closer proximity
   to others that may encroach on their resources (see history for
   examples}. A society that is unable to offer an effective response to
   other societies it competes with will usually be subsumed into the
   culture of the competing society (see technology for examples).

Shared belief or common goal

   Religious procession.
   Enlarge
   Religious procession.

   Peoples of many nations united by common political and cultural
   traditions, beliefs, or values are sometimes also said to be a society
   (such as Judeo-Christian, Eastern, and Western). When used in this
   context, the term is employed as a means of contrasting two or more
   "societies" whose members represent alternative conflicting and
   competing worldviews (see Secret Societies).

   Some academic, learned and scholarly associations describe themselves
   as societies (for example, the American Society of Mathematics. More
   commonly, professional organizations often refer to themselves as
   societies (e.g., the American Society of Civil Engineers, American
   Chemical Society). In the United Kingdom and the United States, learned
   societies are normally nonprofit and have charitable status. In
   science, they range in size to include national scientific societies
   (i.e., the Royal Society) to regional natural history societies.
   Academic societies may have interest in a wide range of subjects,
   including the arts, humanities and science.

   In some countries (for example the United States and France), the term
   "society" is used in commerce to denote a partnership between investors
   or to start a business. In the United Kingdom, partnerships are not
   called societies, but cooperatives or mutuals are often known as
   societies (such as friendly societies and building societies). In Latin
   America, the term society may also be used in commerce denoting a
   partnership between investors, or anonymous investors; for example:
   "Proveedor Industrial Anahuac S.A." where S.A. stands for Anonymous
   Society (Sociedad Anonima); however in Mexico in other type of
   partnership it would be declared as S.A. de C.V.

Ontology

   As a related note, there is still an ongoing debate in sociological and
   anthropological circles as to whether there exists an entity we could
   call society. Some Marxist theorists, like Louis Althusser, Ernesto
   Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, have argued that society is nothing more than
   an effect of the ruling ideology of a certain class system, and
   shouldn't be used as a sociological notion. Marx's concept of society
   as the sum total of social relations among members of a community
   contrasts with interpretations from the perspective of methodological
   individualism where society is simply the sum total of individuals in a
   territory.

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