Society is a key concept scholars use to understand human life. It is a very broad, fuzzy concept in some ways. Many times people use it descriptively rather than with any specific, rigourously defined sense. Still, when scholars seek to answer a question about patterns of behavior in social terms, they do have a specific sense of society. It is good to ask yourself, “OK, what does this scholar think a society is? What is their theory of society, and how does this inform how they see what people do?”

Although scholars differ on how they define society, there is a key way in which social scientists use of the concept differs from other uses.

A society is not like a building. This is a mistaken way to think about society. A building has a structure of walls and floors that divide up space. People in the building can only move around in certain ways. To go from one room to another, they have to go through a door. To go from one floor to another, they have to climb stairs. So, a building constrains the movement of people inside it. A society does often feel like this to people inside it, so I think that's why it is common to conceptualize society as being simply a rigid, fixed structure that limits what individuals do.
A society is more like a machine. it has many specialized parts. Each part of the machine fits together with other parts, like gears in a clock to make the whole machine work. Put another way, a social system is also like a living organism. It can also be explained as a system of organs that all depend on each other. But an organism is also more than the sum of its parts.

Here's the tricky part… One of the specialized elements of a social system is its “structure.” Social machines do need a solid frame to hold things together, and all the functioning parts of society depend on this being there. Using the metaphor of an organism, the “structure” would be the bones and skin. An organism is not just its bones and skin, though. It also has to have systems of circulation, digestion, respiration, etc.

In other words, societies are systems. They are made up of parts, and all the parts are connected to form one whole. The parts depend on each other. Social analysis means looking at one thing, one type of behavior or idea in a society, and placing it in a larger social contexts. That means seeing it as a part of a larger whole.