So it is put for centuries that the person – a being social which without society can almost not live. Also the person does not exist out of a certain social group.
Society as set of social groups
Any society has a certain social structure – vertical and horizontal. The social structure, in turn, is formed by small and big groups among which there are a family, labor collective, a school class, student's group, etc. Each person during life consists in several groups.
The group is a set of two and more people who interact during certain time. People unite in group depending on community of interests, the purposes, values and so forth. It is accepted to call such groups social.
Allocate casual social groups. They are characterized by mass character and instability owing to spontaneous character. These are the people who came to a meeting, the audience in theater or movie theater, passengers in the car of the train or inside of the bus. In society carry school classes, student's groups, labor collectives to groups of average stability and so forth. The steadiest social community is the nation. In turn, the people entering into groups depending on its stability form big and small social groups. The nation – big social group, team of builders – small.
Groups depending on social contents
Key sign on which people are subdivided into social groups is their social contents. Sociologists allocate five groups: - socio-economic group (estate, class); - social ethnic group (sort, tribe, nation); - social and demographic group (youth, old men, children); - social professional group (teachers, doctors, builders); - social and territorial group (residents of regions, areas, republics). The same individual enters into all five social groups depending on what he holds position in society. It is worth knowing that groups in development of society were not created and are not created artificially, will of the person - they arose and were created spontaneously, that is empirically. Any person will not manage to avoid "membership" in any given group. However the person during certain periods of life can hold transitional position from one group in another. It, as a rule, lasts not for long. In modern society the most striking division of people into social groups depending on a condition of income, that is on the poor and the rich is observed. And societies in general the science sociology is engaged in studying social groups.