Live in USA
 |
A human society is a group of people involved in persistent Interpersonal
relationships, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or
social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant
cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of
relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive
culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of
such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a
larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in
subgroups.
Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members
to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis;
both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in
many cases found to overlap.
A society can also consist of like-minded people
governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This
is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within
criminology.
More broadly, a society may be illustrated as an economic,
social, or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied collection of
individuals. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups. A society
can be a particular ethnic group, such as the Saxons; a nation state, such as
Bhutan; or a broader cultural group, such as a Western society. The word society
may also refer to an organized voluntary association of people for religious,
benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. A
"society" may even, though more by means of metaphor, refer to a social organism
such as an ant colony or any cooperative aggregate such as, for example, in some
formulations of artificial intelligence.
Society, in general, addresses the
fact that an individual has rather limited means as an autonomous unit. The
great apes have always been more (Bonobo, Homo, Pan) or less (Gorilla, Pongo)
social animals, so Robinson Crusoe-like situations are either fictions or
unusual corner cases to the ubiquity of social context for humans, who fall
between presocial and eusocial in the spectrum of animal ethology.
Human
societies are most often organized according to their primary means of
subsistence. Social scientists have identified hunter-gatherer societies,
nomadic pastoral societies, horticulturalist or simple farming societies, and
intensive agricultural societies, also called civilizations. Some consider
industrial and post-industrial societies to be qualitatively different from
traditional agricultural societies.
Today, anthropologists and many social
scientists vigorously oppose the notion of cultural evolution and rigid "stages"
such as these. In fact, much anthropological data has suggested that complexity
(civilization, population growth and density, specialization, etc.) does not
always take the form of hierarchical social organization or
stratification.citation needed
Cultural relativism as a widespread approach
or ethic has largely replaced notions of "primitive", better/worse, or
"progress" in relation to cultures (including their material culture/technology
and social organization).
According to anthropologist Maurice Godelier, one
critical novelty in human society, in contrast to humanity's closest biological
relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos), is the parental role assumed by the males,
which supposedly would be absent in our nearest relatives for whom paternity is
not generally determinable.
Download