Society

The notion “society” is often regarded as problematic because of the large number of versions of it that are available and because some of them inevitably lose traction. The discussion in this entry, however, acknowledges that there are different noncompeting notions of “society” that have distinct histories and relate to different aspects of social life. These are society as “companionship, conjugate and civil,” society as “moral community,” and society as a “public good.” None of these different notions of “society” relies upon sociological authority although various sociological accounts acknowledge aspects of each of them. In addition to these three notions of society the distinct and diverse treatments of “society” in sociological traditions are also discussed. In this context the absence of a single or converging conception of society is a reflection of distinctive intellectual needs generative of diverse ideas about “society.” It is shown that there is a more or less stable set of conceptions of “society” in sociology, ranging from the idea that society is a context of self‐perception, interaction between social actors, discernable sets of problems, issues or themes that can be investigated and reported, and the complex of actors and parts (institutions and conditions) that relate to and interact with each other.