Basic Concepts: Society, Community, Association, Institution, Group, Culture, Status, Role and Socialisation
This domain tests definitional precision and your ability to distinguish concepts that overlap in everyday speech. Expect short-answer questions that ask you to compare, define or apply a concept.
Core distinctions
Society is the widest web of relationships and institutions; community is a locality-based, relatively close network with shared identity (Tönnies' Gemeinschaft); association is deliberately formed for a specific interest, such as a trade union; institution is a stable cluster of norms and procedures regulating a basic social need, such as marriage or education. Social groups involve interaction, identity and shared norms; a crowd or category is not a group. Culture is learned, shared and transmitted: it includes material objects, symbols, language, values, norms and sanctions. Status is a position in a social structure; role is the expected behaviour attached to it. Socialisation is the lifelong process of learning culture and identity, primary in childhood and secondary in later roles.
Worked example
A woman is a daughter (ascribed status), a nurse (achieved status) and a mother (mixed). Her role set includes patient, colleague and child. If hospital duty clashes with caring for a sick child, she experiences role conflict. Explaining her choice requires statuses, roles, norms and socialisation, not personality alone.
Traps
Status is not role: a position is not its performance. Community and association are not synonyms: community involves locality and belonging; an association has a specific purpose. Culture is not only 'high art'. Socialisation does not stop at childhood. A group requires interaction and identity, not merely shared characteristics.