Portal:Society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia portals: Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology

For related scientific fields, see the List of social sciences

edit

The Society Portal

A society is a group of people who form a distinct community, an evolving system, sharing cultures and institutions. Thus, the meaning of society is closely related to what is considered to be social. Implicit in the meaning of society is that its members may share some mutual concern or interest, a common objective or common characteristics.

The social sciences generally use the term society to mean a group of people who form a semi-closed social system which is still ever-changing. Most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group along with new individuals entering as well as leaving the group at any time. More abstractly, a society is defined as a network of relationships between social entities. A society is also sometimes defined as an interdependent community, but the sociologist Tönnies saw a contradiction between “society” and “community.” An important feature of society is social structure, aspects of which include roles and social ranking.

More about society...

Show new selections

edit

Featured article

left|150px|Akhtar Hameed Khan Akhtar Hameed Khan (Urdu: اختر حمید خان, pronounced [əxt̪əɾ hɐmiːd xɑːn]) (15 July 1914 – 9 October 1999) was a Pakistani development activist and social scientist credited for pioneering microcredit and microfinance initiatives, farmers' cooperatives, and rural training programmes in the developing world. He promoted participatory rural development in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other developing countries, and widely advocated community participation in development. His particular contribution was the establishment of a comprehensive project for rural development, the Comilla Model (1959). It earned him the Ramon Magsaysay Award from the Philippines and an honorary Doctorate of Law from Michigan State University.

In the 1980s he started a bottom up community development initiative of Orangi Pilot Project, based in the outskirts of Karachi, which became a model of participatory development initiatives. He also directed many programmes, from microcredit to self-finance and from housing provision to family planning, for rural communities and urban slums. It earned him international recognition and high honours in Pakistan. Khan was fluent in at least seven languages and dialects. Apart from many scholarly books and articles, he also published a collection of poems and travelogues in Urdu.

...Archive

Read more...

edit

Selected picture

Credit: Stevage
The Scenic Railway at Luna Park amusement park (Melbourne, Australia), the world's oldest continually operating rollercoaster, built in 1912.

Archive

edit

Quotes

“	When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan.	”
—John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions (1859)

Archive

edit

Featured articles

Selected Featured articles about Society:

Gender role · Greco-Buddhism · David Helvarg · Kashrut · Sociocultural evolution · Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

· Weber, Max

edit

Did you know...

... that the type of degree offered by a veterinary school can vary widely, ranging from the Bachelor of Science to the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine?
... that the native copper products of the Northern Canadian aboriginal Copper Inuit were highly regarded in the Bering Strait trade network?
... that Froduald Karamira, sentenced to death for his role in the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, was one of the last individuals executed before capital punishment was abolished in the country?
... that the 19th-century fad of Pedestrianism started with gambling over the speed of footmen by the British aristocracy?
... that in 1937, Oscar Garcia Rivera, Sr. became the first Puerto Rican to hold public office in the United States?

edit

Featured media

1964 — Remarks upon Signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Speech by Lyndon Baines Johnson upon signing the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964.