When you start to delve into the question "what is society" you will realize that this is indeed a very deep subject. There is no one answer because a society is not a thing that can be easily explained in one or two sentences. In fact, this could actually be a topic for a thesis by a graduate student in philosophy and it would take many volumes to include all the possible answers. Let's start by looking at what we consider to be a society. In our daily lives, a society is the place where we live. It is made up of the government, the education system, the health care and the many occupations that people have. Each and every person is an important part of a society because each one has something to contribute. It is a very broad concept that is often broken down into different segments or facets of life. Within a society, there are smaller societies or groups of people who have a particular goal or ambition. These could be government agencies, groups of students or groups raising money for a cause. There are also other factors that separate smaller societies from one another. These include culture, language, race, and religion. Within a society, there can be many different cultures. If you look at the whole world as one society, you can easily realize just how many differences there are. Even within a country, city or town, you have numerous differences and you can even have different societies within a neighborhood. The neighborhood of a city could be an ethnic society all its own. In the larger frame of things, all these societies interact with one another on a daily basis bringing new ideas and ways of doing things. Customs transfer from one culture to another, immigrants become assimilated within a society and people react with violence when a part of their society is threatened. All of these things make up a society, which is more of a quality than a thing. |
