"In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals."
: The pattern of relationships, institutions, and roles within a society.
Social stratification: The system of ranking individuals or groups according to their perceived worth, status or wealth.
Social class: The hierarchical arrangement of people based on their economic, educational, and occupational status.
Power and authority: The ability to control or influence the behavior of others.
Social mobility: The movement of individuals or groups between different social classes or status levels.
Culture and socialization: The shared beliefs, values, norms, and customs that define a particular social group or society.
Inequality and social justice: The study of disparities in access to resources, opportunities, and social rewards based on gender, race, ethnicity, or any other social category.
Social institutions: The major structures that organize the social life of individuals, such as family, education, religion, government, and the economy.
Group dynamics: The study of how individuals interact with each other in groups, and how group membership affects behavior, attitudes, and beliefs.
Social networks: The patterns of social relationships that link individuals and groups together.
Collective behavior and social movements: The study of how people come together to pursue common goals or interests, and how these collective actions are shaped by social structures and power relations.
Family Structure: Refers to the way families are organized and operate as social units, including patterns of authority, roles, and responsibilities.
Political Structure: Refers to the ways in which power is distributed and exercised in societies, including forms of government, institutions, and systems of governance.
Economic Structure: Refers to the ways in which societies produce, distribute, and consume goods and services, including economic systems, modes of production, and divisions of labor.
Religious Structure: Refers to the ways in which religious beliefs and practices shape societies and communities, including the role of religion in social life, religious institutions, and customs.
Educational Structure: Refers to the ways in which education is organized and deployed in societies, including the structure of schools, curriculum, and pedagogical practices.
Cultural Structure: Refers to the ways in which cultural values, beliefs, traditions, and symbols shape societies, including the arts, literature, media, and popular culture.
Linguistic Structure: Refers to the ways in which language shapes cultures and societies, including grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and linguistic forms.
Gender Structure: Refers to the social norms, roles and expectations assigned to people based on their gender, including the ways in which gender influences power, status, and social relations.
Race and Ethnic Structure: Refers to the social constructions of race, ethnicity, and other forms of social identity and how they shape social hierarchies, discrimination, and inequalities.
Organizational Structure: Refers to the ways in which organizations are structured, including patterns of authority, decision making, and communication within formal institutions.
"Society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes."
"Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class."
"It contrasts with 'social system', which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded."
"Social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc."
"It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society."
"Since the 1920s, the term has been in general use in social science."
"...especially as a variable whose sub-components needed to be distinguished in relationship to other sociological variables, as well as in academic literature, as a result of the rising influence of structuralism."
"The concept of 'social stratification', for instance, uses the idea of social structure to explain that most societies are separated into different strata (levels), guided (if only partially) by the underlying structures in the social system."
"...an organization's structure may determine its flexibility, capacity to change, etc. In this sense, structure is an important issue for management."
"On the macro scale, social structure pertains to the system of socioeconomic stratification (most notably the class structure), social institutions, or other patterned relations between large social groups."
"On the meso scale, it concerns the structure of social networks between individuals or organizations."
"'Social structure' includes the ways in which 'norms' shape the behavior of individuals within the social system."
"John Levi Martin has theorized that certain macro-scale structures are the emergent properties of micro-scale cultural institutions."
"...a recent study describes how indigenous social structure in the Republic of Panama changed macro social structures and impeded a planned Panama Canal expansion."
"Marxist sociology has also historically mixed different meanings of social structure, though doing so by simply treating the cultural aspects of social structure as phenomenal of its economic aspects."
"Social norms are believed to influence social structure through relations between the majority and the minority."
"Majority-minority relations create a hierarchical stratification within social structures that favors the majority in all aspects of society."
"As those who align with the majority are considered 'normal', and those who align with the minority are considered 'abnormal'..."
"Majority-minority relations create a hierarchical stratification within social structures that favors the majority in all aspects of society."