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A society is a group of people who form a semi-closed system. At its simplest, the term society refers to a large group of people sharing their own culture and institutions. A society is a network of relationships between people. The English word society is derived from the French société, which had its origin in the Latin societas, a "friendly association with others," from socius meaning "companion, associate, comrade or business partner." Thus, the meaning of society is closely related to what is considered to be social. Implicit in the meaning of society is that its members may share some mutual concern or interest, a common objective or common characteristics. The social sciences generally use the term society to mean a group of people who form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group. More abstractly, a society is defined as a network of relationships between social entities. A society is also sometimes defined as an interdependent community, but the sociologist Tönnies sought to draw a contrast between society and community. An important feature of society is social structure, aspects of which include roles and social ranking.

The social sciences are a group of academic disciplines that study human aspects of the world. They differ from the arts and the humanities, in that the social sciences tend to emphasize the use of the scientific method in the study of humanity, including quantitative and qualitative methods.

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More about Society and Social sciences...

Society and social sciences: Overview • Lists • Outlines • Portals • Categories • Glossaries • Indexes

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Overview (see for all subject areas)

Main articles: Social sciences and Society See also Science and Scientific method

Social sciences – Anthropology • Archaeology • Cognitive science • Communication studies • Critical theory • Cultural studies • Development studies • Economics (Unsolved problems in economics) • Education • Geography • History • Linguistics (Unsolved problems in linguistics) • Law • Political science • Psychology • Social policy • Sociology

Society – Ethnic groups • Group • Infrastructure • People

Community – Structure and agency • Socialization • Sense of community • Communitarianism • Social capital • Community development

Social development – Decadence • Social progress • Technological evolution

Sociocultural evolution, the progression: Hunter-gatherer bands → Social rank → tribes → Social stratification → chiefdoms → Neolithic Revolution →→→ Civilization: Agrarian society (Pre-industrial society): Agrarian villages → Towns → Cities → City-states → Nation-states →→ Industrial Revolution → (Modern) Industrial society →→ (Postmodern) Post-industrial society → Informational Revolution → Information society → Digital Revolution →→ Globalization → World government? → Space colonization?

Social institutions – Organization

Family – Daughter • Extended family • Father • Grandparent • Home • Human bonding • Mother • Nuclear family • Parent • Son

Religion – (see #Religion and belief systems above)

Infrastructure

Public infrastructure – highways • streets • roads • bridges • mass transit • airports and airways • water supply and water resources • wastewater management • solid-waste treatment and disposal • electric power

Private infrastructure – Automobiles • Homes • Personal computers • Personal property • Real estate

Economy and Business – Finance • Management • Marketing

Education – Academia • Homework • Learning • Pedagogy • School • Student • Study skills • Teacher

Civil society –

Government and Politics – Politics by country • Criminal justice • International relations • Law • Public affairs

Social network – Communication • Social capital

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Lists (see for all subject areas)

Business: Accounting • Corporate assets • Enron scandal • Business ethics • International trade • Business law • Philosophy of business • Political economy • Product failures • Strikes • Stock market indices • Store brands • Theory of Constraints • Traded commodities • U.S. states by unemployment rate • European sovereign-debt crisis: List of acronyms

Businesses, Organizations, and Companies: Assets owned by Microsoft Corporation • Assets owned by The Coca-Cola Company • British natural gas companies • Cooperatives • Banks • Department stores • Employee-owned companies• Employer associations • Stock exchanges • Supermarkets • Think tanks • Trade unions

Business people: Business theorists • Economists

Critical theory:

Education: Academic disciplines • Fields of doctoral studies • Admissions tests • Universities and colleges • Schools by country • School and university in literature

Environmental issues

Law: Case law • Civics • International public law

Linguistics: Languages • English words • Acronyms and initialisms • Consonants • Vowels (table) • Hieroglyphs • Emoticons • French words and phrases used by English speakers • Neuro-linguistic programming • Phonetics • Shibboleths • Symbols • Writing systems

Organizations: British professional bodies • Civic, fraternal, service, and professional organizations • Employer associations • Environmental organizations • LGBT-related organizations • Trade unions • United States Mints

Politics: by country • Political parties (Generic names of political parties) • National legislatures • National anthems • Green topics • Intelligence agencies • Secret police organizations • United Nations member states • United States federal agencies • Current members of the United States Congress • List of US Presidents with facial hair • Micronations

Psychology (Lists): Autism • Clinical Psychologists • Cognitive biases • Credentials in psychology • DSM-IV Codes • DSM-IV Codes (alphabetical) • Drugs • Emotions • Famous figures in psychiatry • Fictional psychiatrists • Mental illnesses • Memory biases • NLP-related articles • neurological disorders • Psychiatric drugs • Psychiatric drugs by condition treated • Psychology disciplines • Psychological schools • Psychologists • Psychotherapies • Publications in psychology • Scientific journals in psychology • Sexology • Timeline of psychology • Timeline of psychotherapy • Thinking • Web experiments

Social psychology: Social psychologists

Sociology: Ethnic groups • Feminism • Children's rights • Youth rights • Lifestyles • Sociologists • Subfields of sociology • Timeline of sociology

Society: Guide Dog Schools • Honorary societies • Prizes, medals, and awards

Urban studies - Public utilities

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Outlines (see for all subject areas)

Science – systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. An older and closely related meaning still in use today is that of Aristotle, for whom scientific knowledge was a body of reliable knowledge that can be logically and rationally explained.

Basis of science
- Scientific method – body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.^[1] To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[2]
Scientific community
- Big Science –
Branches of science
- Social sciences – study of the world and its cultures and civilizations.
  - Anthropology – study of how humans developed biologically and culturally.
  - Archaeology – study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation, and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes.
  - Economics – study of how people satisfy their wants and needs. Economics is also the study of supply and demand.
  - Geography – study of physical environments and how people live in them.
  - History – study of the past.
  - Law – set of rules and principles by which a society is governed. (For branches, see Law under Society below).
  - Linguistics – study of natural languages.
  - Political science – study of different forms of government and the ways citizens relate to them.
  - Psychology – study of mental processes and behavior.
    - Human intelligence – mental capacities of human beings to reason, plan, problem solve, think, comprehend ideas, use languages, and learn.
    - Parapsychology – field of research that studies a number of ostensible psychology-related paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation and apparitional experiences.
  - Semiotics –
  - Sociology – study of the formation of human societies and social organizations, their structure, and the interaction and behavior of people in organized groups.
  - Relationships –associations between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring, based on love, solidarity, business interactions, or other social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the context of social, cultural and other influences.

Society – group of people sharing the same geographical or virtual territory and therefore subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Such people share a distinctive culture and institutions, which characterize the patterns of social relations between them.

Business – organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers.^[3]
- Economics – analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It aims to explain how economies work and how economic agents interact.
  - Microeconomics – studies the economic decisions of individual households and enterprises
    - Industrial organization – studies the structure of and boundaries between firms and markets and the strategic interactions of firms.
- Finance – study of funds management.
- Management – comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal.
  - Project management –
- Marketing – process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development.^[4] It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments.^[4]
- Production –
Communication – activity of conveying meaningful information, which requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient.
- Journalism –
  - Environmental journalism – collection, verification, production, distribution and exhibition of information regarding current events, trends, issues and people that are associated with the non-human world with which humans necessarily interact.
Community – group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household.
Crime
- Domestic violence – violence between partners in a close relationship. This form of violence can manifest itself in a variety of ways.
Education – any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to another. Education can also be defined as the process of becoming an educated person.^[5]
- Harvard University – private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States^[6] and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in that country.
Firefighting – sum of actions aimed at extinguishing fire or preventing a fire from causing further harm.
Politics – process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the corporate, academic, and religious segments of society.
- Political ideologies
  - Environmentalism – broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements.
  - Green politics – political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy.^[7]
- Government types
  - Democracy – form of government in which all the people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives.^[8] Ideally, this includes equal (and more or less direct) participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law.^[8]
- International organizations
  - United Nations
- Law – A set of rules and principles by which a society is governed.
  - Commercial law – body of law that governs business and commercial transactions.
  - Criminal justice – system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. Those accused of crime have protections against abuse of investigatory and prosecution powers.
    - Law enforcement – any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to promote adherence to the law by discovering and punishing persons who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term usually refers to organizations that engage in patrols or surveillance to dissuade and discover criminal activity, and to those who investigate crimes and apprehend offenders.^[9]
  - Intellectual property – distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law.^[10]
  - Tort law – laws and legal procedures dealing with torts. In common law jurisdictions, a tort is a civil wrong^[11] that involves a breach of a civil duty (other than a contractual duty) owed to someone else. A tort is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general. Though many acts are both torts and crimes, prosecutions for crime are mostly the responsibility of the state; whereas any party who has been injured may bring a lawsuit for tort.
  - Law of the United States
    - Evidence law in the United States –
    - United States federal Indian law and policy –
- Political movements
  - Psychiatric survivors movement
- Public affairs – public policy and public administration. Public policy is a principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of a state with regard to issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. Public administration is "the management of public programs";^[12] the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day";^[13] and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies."^[14]
- Rights – legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.

References

^ Goldhaber & Nieto 2010, p. 940
^ "[4] Rules for the study of natural philosophy", Newton 1999, pp. 794–6, from Book 3, The System of the World.
^ Sullivan, arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 29. ISBN 0-13-063085-3.
^ ^a ^b Kotler, Philip; Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong, John Saunders (2009). "Marketing defined". Principles of marketing (5th ed.). p. 7. http://books.google.com/books?id=6T2R0_ESU5AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=&f=true. Retrieved 2009-10-23.
^ Don, Berg. Definition of Education. teach-kids-attitude-1st.com. 30 Sep 2011.
^ Rudolph, Frederick (1961). The American College and University. University of Georgia Press. p. 3. ISBN 0820312851.
^ Wall 2010. p. 12-13.
^ ^a ^b Larry Jay Diamond, Marc F. Plattner (2006). Electoral systems and democracy p.168. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
^ Kären M. Hess, Christine Hess Orthmann, Introduction to Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (2008), p. 1.
^ Intellectual Property Licensing: Forms and Analysis, by Richard Raysman, Edward A. Pisacreta and Kenneth A. Adler. Law Journal Press, 1998-2008. ISBN 973-58852-086-9 ^{[verification needed]}
^ Glanville Williams. Learning the Law. Eleventh Edition. Stevens. 1982. p. 9
^ Robert and Janet Denhardt. Public Administration: An Action Orientation. 6th Ed. 2009: Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont CA.
^ Kettl, Donald and James Fessler. 2009. The Politics of the Administrative Process. Washington D.C.: CQ Press.
^ Jerome B. McKinney and Lawrence C. Howard. Public Administration: Balancing Power and Accountability. 2nd Ed. 1998: Praeger Publishing, Westport, CT. p. 62