Society is a human community with a relatively fixed territorial location, sharing a common culture, and common activities. There is cultural and institutional interdependence between members of a society and they are differentiated from other communities and groups. A society that is unable to offer an effective response to other societies it competes with will be subsumed into the culture of the competing society. A society is a group of individuals, or a large social group sharing the same social territory, subject to the same political authority, and dominant cultural expectations. A particular society may be described as the sum total of relationships among its constituent of members. A large society often exhibits stratification or dominance patterns over subgroups. Societies construct patterns of behavior by deeming certain actions as acceptable or unacceptable. These patterns of behavior within a given society are known as societal norms.
Societies are generally identified as existing at the level of nation states, but there can be regional and cultural communities within nation states that possess much of the cultural distinctiveness and relative self-sufficiency of societies. Society is people with whom one has companionship or friendly association. Society is the system of customs and organization adopted by a body of individuals for harmonious and interactive coexistence or for mutual benefit, or defence. In a Collaborative Community, people must look beyond their jobs and take larger initiatives.
According to Maurice Godelier, the novelty in society, in contrast to humanity's closest biological relatives like chimpanzees, is the parental role assumed by the males, which would be absent in our nearest relatives for whom paternity is not generally determinable. - Jack Goody. "The Labyrinth of Kinship". New Left Review.
Society is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. Society is also the aggregate of fashionable, wealthy, or otherwise prominent people regarded as forming a distinct class or body in a community.
In sociology, the idea of community has provided a model to contrast to the emergence of more modern less personal societies where cultural, economic and technological transformation has uprooted tradition and where complexity has created a less personal and more rationalized and goal-directed social life. Community is a society where peoples relations with each other are direct and personal.
Sociologists like Gerhard Lenski differentiate societies based on their level of technology, communication, and economy: (1) hunters and gatherer society, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial, and (5) special. - Lenski, G. 1974. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology.
We define group very broadly. Included are formal organizations, political groups, families, intimates, social categories and societies. A social group is defined as two or more people who identify themselves as a group and interact with one another in that group.