what do you understand by the term of social structure
Answers
Social structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. Although it is generally agreed that the term social structure refers to regularities in social life, its application is inconsistent.
Social structure is sometimes defined simply as patterned social relations—those regular and repetitive aspects of the interactions between the members of a given social entity. Even on this descriptive level, the concept is highly abstract: it selects only certain elements from ongoing social activities. The larger the social entity considered, the more abstract the concept tends to be. For this reason, the social structure of a small group is generally more closely related to the daily activities of its individual members than is the social structure of a larger society. In the study of larger social groups, the problem of selection is acute: much depends on what is included as components of the social structure.