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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 14 February 2025. Connected group of individuals For other uses, see Society (disambiguation). Clockwise from top left: A family in Savannakhet, Laos ; a crowd shopping in Maharashtra, India; a military parade on a Spanish national holiday. A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent ...
Social institution – Any persistent structure or mechanism of social order governing the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community. The term "institution" is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public services.
The latter, for example, investigated and analyzed the institutions of modern society: market, bureaucracy (private enterprise and public administration), and politics (e.g. democracy). One of the earliest and most comprehensive accounts of social structure was provided by Karl Marx, who related political, cultural, and religious life to the ...
In the social sciences, a social group is defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. [1] [2] Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties. For example, a society can be viewed as a large social group.
These are cues or characteristics that people in a society agree indicate how much status a person holds and how they should be treated. [10] Such symbols can include the possession of valued attributes, like being beautiful or having a prestigious degree.
Reference groups provide the benchmarks and contrast needed for comparison and evaluation of group and personal characteristics. Robert K. Merton hypothesized that individuals compare themselves with reference groups of people who occupy the social role to which the individual aspires. [10] [11]
Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. [24] [25] Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy and other cultural ...
Demographers study how these characteristics impact, or are impacted by, various social, economic or political systems. The study of population is also closely related to human ecology and environmental sociology, which studies a population's relationship with the surrounding environment and often overlaps with urban or rural sociology.