Social order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences that refers to a set of linked social structures, social institutions and social practices which conserve, maintain and enforce "normal" ways of relating and behaving.
A "social order" is a relatively persistent system of institutions, patterns of interactions and customs, capable of continually reproducing at least those conditions essential for its own existence. The concept refers to all those facts of society which remain relatively constant over time. These conditions could include both property, exchange and power relations, but also cultural forms, communication relations and ideological systems of values.
Social order as discussed in this article primarily refers to these structures and not to "order in society" with which it should not be confused. In this way, a society might be chaotic and dysfunctional but there is still a social order in a sheer sociological sense.
Read more about Social Order: Sociology, Principle of Extensiveness, Groups and Networks, Status Groups, Values and Norms, Power and Authority, Spontaneous Order, Social Honor, Attainment of Social Order
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or order:
“Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve;Mthe heart burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissensions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)