A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in subgroups.
Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.
A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.
More broadly, a society may be described as an economic, social, or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied collection of individuals. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups. A society can be a particular ethnic group, such as the Saxons; a nation state, such as Bhutan; or a broader cultural group, such as a Western society. The word society may also refer to an organized voluntary association of people for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. A "society" may even, though more by means of metaphor, refer to a social organism such as an ant colony or any cooperative aggregate such as, for example, in some formulations of artificial intelligence.
Read more about Society: Etymology and Usage, Conceptions of Society, Types of Societies, Contemporary Usage
Other articles related to "society":
... The Royal Society was founded in 1660, and in April 1661 the society debated a short tract on the rising of water in slender glass pipes, in which Hooke reported that the height water rose ... Robert Moray proposed that a Curator be appointed to furnish the society with Experiments, and this was unanimously passed with Hooke being named ... Boyle for releasing him to the Society's employment ...
... The Society is run by a President and a Council of twenty members, and is open to interested members of the public to join ... the peer reviewed quarterly Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR), the irregular Proceedings and the magazine Paranormal Review ... studied, and many prominent sceptics have been active members of the Society ...
... Since the Elder Brain contains the essence of every illithid that died in its community, it functions in part as a vast library of knowledge that a mind flayer can call upon with a simple telepathic call ... The Elder Brain in turn can communicate telepathically with anyone in its community, issuing orders and ensuring everyone conforms ...
... Historically, Basque society can be described as being somewhat at odds with Roman and later Western European societal norms ...
... argue, this class divide would be obliterated as society becomes more egalitarian ... It holds as its foundation the idea of class struggle that society mainly changes and progresses as one socioeconomic class takes power from another ... explanation for why socialism should, and will, replace capitalism in human society ...
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)
“Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“I’ve thought about how, were we to suddenly receive the freedom about which we talk so much when we spar with one another, we would not know what to do with it at first. We would expend it on denouncing one another in the newspapers for spying, for love of the ruble, we would frighten society with protestations that we have no people, no science, no literature, nothing at all!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)