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Categories are characterized by an aggregate of individuals who share something in common, but only become groups when their similarities have social implications. [4] Categories can appear to be higher in entitativity and essentialism than primary, secondary, and collective groups. This group is generally the largest type of such, where ...
Explicitly contrasted against a social cohesion based definition for social groups is the social identity perspective, which draws on insights made in social identity theory. [9] Here, rather than defining a social group based on expressions of cohesive social relationships between individuals, the social identity model assumes that ...
Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with "social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded.
A sociological theory is a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective, [1]: 14 drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge.
Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. [1] A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies (e.g. positivism and antipositivism), the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity.
Perhaps the most highly developed integrative effort to link micro- and macro-sociological phenomena is found in Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration, in which "social structure is defined as both constraining and enabling of human activity as well as both internal and external to the actor." [7]
The issue with associating a concrete definition to the term sociological abstraction, is that there is no universally accepted definition. Although the earliest form of abstraction in sociology was discussed by sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s, his work in The Social System (1951) failed to identify an exact definition. Rather, he ...
This theory allows simple formal definition of collective intelligence as the property of social structure and seems to be working well for a wide spectrum of beings, from bacterial colonies up to human social structures. Collective intelligence considered as a specific computational process is providing a straightforward explanation of several ...