SOCIAL SCIENCE

Culture and Society Defined
Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society. Thus, culture includes many societal aspects: language, customs, values, norms, mores, rules, tools, technologies, products, organizations, and institutions. This latter term institution refers to clusters of rules and cultural meanings associated with specific social activities. Common institutions are the family, education, religion, work, and health care.
Popularly speaking, being cultured means being well‐educated, knowledgeable of the arts, stylish, and well‐mannered. High culture—generally pursued by the upper class—refers to classical music, theater, fine arts, and other sophisticated pursuits. Members of the upper class can pursue high art because they have cultural capital, which means the professional credentials, education, knowledge, and verbal and social skills necessary to attain the “property, power, and prestige” to “get ahead” socially. Low culture, or popular culture—generally pursued by the working and middle classes—refers to sports, movies, television sitcoms and soaps, and rock music. Remember that sociologists define culture differently than they do cultured, high culture, low culture, and popular culture.
Sociologists define society as the people who interact in such a way as to share a common culture. The cultural bond may be ethnic or racial, based on gender, or due to shared beliefs, values, and activities. The term society can also have a geographic meaning and refer to people who share a common culture in a particular location. For example, people living in arctic climates developed different cultures from those living in desert cultures. In time, a large variety of human cultures arose around the world.
Culture and society are intricately related. A culture consists of the “objects” of a society, whereas a society consists of the people who share a common culture. When the terms culture and society first acquired their current meanings, most people in the world worked and lived in small groups in the same locale. In today's world of 6 billion people, these terms have lost some of their usefulness because increasing numbers of people interact and share resources globally. Still, people tend to use culture and society in a more traditional sense: for example, being a part of a “racial culture” within the larger “U.S. society.”
Definition Group
Encyclopedia Britannia defines (social) groups as “set of human beings having some interrelation with each other.” (Benton, 1974, p. 245). This excludes a common interest; it could also be the same background like family or living in the same village.
Not an activity makes you a group member, but the background. If someone joins a group (like on a social network) he/she can stay passive.
Definition Community
The Encyclopedia Britannia from 1974 (no online communities existed in that time), defines a community as “a group of people with common characteristics and interests living together within a larger society.” The current definition of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia defines “In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing a populated environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community, 2011)
Internet communities are only mentioned in the small sentence “To a growing part of people the meaning of the word "community" indicates a smaller or larger group of internet users signing up to become members of a community page/system on internet.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Community#Internet_communities, 2011), which leads to the conclusion that online communities are per definition not different from offline communities.
Compared to a group the members of a community are active, the work for the community
Definition Association
A formal organization of people or groups of people
The aot of a number of persons who unite or join together for some special purpose or business. The union of a company of persons for the transaction of designated affairs, or the attainment of some common object. An unincorporated society; a body of persons united and acting together without a charter, but upon the methods and forms used by incorporated bodies for the prosecution of some common enterprise.
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