Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements which form the society as a whole, and which determine, to some varying degree, the actions of the individuals socialized into that structure. The meaning of “social structure” differs between various fields of sociology. On the macro scale, it can refer to the system of socioeconomic stratification (e.g., the class structure), social institutions, or, other patterned relations between large social groups. On the meso scale, it can refer to the structure of social network ties between individuals or organizations. On the micro scale, it can refer to the way norms shape the behavior of actors within the social system.
These meanings are not always kept separate. For example, recent scholarship by John Levi Martin has theorized that certain macro-scale structures are the emergent properties of micro-scale cultural institutions (this meaning of “structure” resembles that used by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss).
The English word ‘society’ can be stretched or narrowed to cover almost any form of association of persons possessing any degree of common interests, values, or goals. ‘Society’ in the nineteenth century meant the upper classes; one might now refer to ‘international academic society’ or ‘European society’, though these uses might be disputed. The primary and most normal sense refers to a society defined by the boundaries of the state, even though this usage is odd and potentially misleading in the many cases where there is more than one sizeable ethnic or cultural group in a society, like Canada and South Africa.
Philosophy Dictionary: society
A group of persons unified by a distinctive and systematic set of normative relations, whereby actions of one are perceived as meriting characteristic responses by others. To be part of the same society is to be subject to these norms of interaction.
A society is a group of humans or other organisms of a single species that is delineated by the bounds of cultural identity, social solidarity, functional interdependence, or eusociality. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive culture or institutions. Like other groups, a society allows its individual members to achieve individual needs or wishes that they could not fulfill separately by themselves, without the existence of the social group. Society, however, may be unique in that it is ontologically independent of, and utterly irreducible to, the qualities of its constituent individuals. As a reality sui generis, or “of its own kind”, it is emergently composed of social facts that often hinder rather than help the pursuits of the subjects that form its physical and psychological underpinnings.
More broadly, a society is an economic, social or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied multitude of individuals. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups. A society may be a particular ethnic group, such as the Saxons; a nation state, such as Bhutan; a broader cultural group, such as a Western society; or even a social organism such as an ant colony.
The word society may also refer to an organized voluntary association of people for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.
