NOTE: Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided a list of recent works at the end of the article to facilitate research and exploration of the topic.

It is necessary to highlight this central area selectively, considering the breadth and variety in its specification, and to emphasize current concerns, relying on past overviews to detail their origins (e.g., by Znaniecki 1945; Gerth and Mills 1953; Faris 1964; Eisenstadt 1968; Parsons 1968; Udy 1968; Smelser 1988).

Social organization is nonrandom pattern within human populations that comprise society by sharing the main aspects of a common existence over time as well as nonrandom patterning, the human and interhuman activities through which patterns are formed, retained, altered, or replaced. These twin aspects of social organization had been considered structure, relatively stable patterns of interrelations among persons or other...